GALANTI, PAUL EDWARD
Name: Paul Edward Galanti
Rank/Branch: O3/United States Navy/pilot
Unit: VA 216
Date of Birth: 11 July 1939
Home City of Record: Lodi NJ
Date of Loss: 17 June 1966
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 191500N 1054600E
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: A4C #149528
Missions: 97
Incident No: 0364
Other Personnel in Incident: none
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK March 1997 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Update 2008.
REMARKS: 730212 RELEASED BY DRV
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME copyright 1977
Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret), Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and
spelling errors).
UPDATE - 09/95 by the P.O.W. NETWORK, Skidmore, MO
PAUL E. GALANTI
Lieutenant Commander- United States Navy
Shot Down: June 17, 1966
Released: February 12, 1973
"My nearly seven years of captivity could be summed up in the space of a
postage stamp. But I learned a valuable lesson in appreciation."
The years of zero in Commander Galanti's life began when he was shot down on
June 17, 1966 near Vinh, North Vietnam. His A-4 Skyhawk was hit after an
attack on a railroad siding and, although he could see the rescue destroyers
off-shore, his plane went out of control before he could reach them.
He ejected from his plane, was captured, taken North to Hanoi and paraded in
the infamous "Hanoi March". "This was ostensibly a 'spontaneous demonstration'
on the part of the Vietnamese," says Galanti. "However, as we left the park,
the blindfolds were removed, we were handcuffed in pairs and marched into the
street. The first thing I saw was a bunch of political cadres with megaphones
inciting the people. At the end of the first block there was a big truck with
movie equipment in it to play this spectacle up. A man came running up from
the side, gave me a soccer-like kick in the groin and I went down in a heap.
There was so much yelling it sounded like Notre Dame scoring a touchdown at
South Bend. It lasted about forty five minutes. They finally got us to a
soccer stadium, where they had trucks waiting, then took us back to the
prison."
In addition to the physical tortures, Commander Galanti was subjected to an
agonizing session after "violating the prison regulations." Having received
two letters and a package from Phyllis, he assumed it was a special deal to
make him look bad in the eyes of his fellow POW's. In order to show that such
was not the case, he threw a package of Lifesavers to one of the other cells
in the bath-house. A guard saw and reported it. For this he was made to sit on
a small stool in an interrogation room during the coldest part of the year. He
sat there for ten days and nights, drugged and deprived of sleep, before being
forced to apologize to the camp commander.
Although these and other individual torture stories often seemed the result of
individual North Vietnamese actions, Galanti warns Americans not to forget
that the overall goal of Communism is world domination. "It often got blackest
just after they started smiling," he says.
Optimism helped Galanti most in surviving his ordeal. "I think it s human
nature . America human nature any way. The fact that they stopped the sleep
deprivation period and let me go on living was a good sign that I'd
probably be going home someday. When the bombing stopped that would be a
good sign. When it started up again that would be a good sign. I
sincerely believe that optimism is the basis of all faith and without
it I'd probably have gone crazy.
"I was born in New Jersey and raised in an Army family. I graduated from
Valley Forge Military Academy in 1957 and the U.S. Naval Academy in 1962.
Phillis and I were married in August 1963 and I received my Navy wings shortly
after that.
My Dad taught me that you must have goals-an overall goal and smaller goals in
between. My lifelong goal was to be a pilot; the smaller ones were to finish
elementary school then high school then enter college and finally to finish
flight training. During captivity the Code of Conduct was my goal. Sometimes
pretty tough to live up to the Code was the standard the goal to strive for."
Galanti finished flight training refresher in November 1973. He served a tour
in Navy Recruiting in Richmond, Virginia pushing optimism in over 200
presentations to schools churches and civic groups. He is currently attending
Graduate School at the University of Richmond. Paul and Phyllis Galanti
reside a few miles from the University in Richmond's scenic West End.
------------------------------
Paul Galanti retired from the United States Navy as a Commander. He and his
wife Phyllis reside in Virginia. They are active in the ex-pow organization
NAM-POWs, Inc.
-------------------------------
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Sunday, February 15, 1998
COMMENTARY
AN EX-POW REFLECTS, A QUARTER CENTURY OUT Paul Galanti of Richmond spent 6
1/2 years in North Vietnamese prison camps. He reflects here on his
experiences on the 25th anniversary of his release from captivity.
"This can't be happening to me," thought this cocky young Navy jet pilot
as his A-4 Skyhawk was blasted from the hostile skies of North Vietnam 32
years ago. My next 2,432 days were spent in the various POW camps in North
Vietnam collectively called the "Hanoi Hilton" by their residents. It wasn't
supposed to happen - but it did. Here with the story of a small number of
American servicemen who were forced to endure significant adversity, but who
emerged personally victorious from the experience on February 12, 1973 - 25
years ago this past Thursday.
With a quarter-century of hindsight, I think some truths are evident. Some
of those truths were the unintended consequences of ill-conceived actions
taken in haste, but all raise questions in the present, when truths are,
apparently, whatever one wants them to be.
I really didn't expect to be held long. My estimate of my release to the
"Old Guys" upon arrival in Hanoi was six months to a year - at the most. The
reason? I'd seen the plans for the total destruction of North Vietnam in
1965, but waited in vain for them to be carried out. Instead, there were
"cease-fires" of various durations, usually to appease domestic
constituencies in the U.S. In March, 1968, peace talks began. They dragged
on for nearly five years while the Communists built up their strength, and
their allies in the U.S. - witting and un- - helped the Communists' cause by
weakening U.S. resolve.
I spent more than a year in solitary confinement with the hours broken
only by infrequent communications (tapping through 18a of concrete) with
other Americans and a quarterly miserable re-introduction to the "Camp
Regulations for Captured American Criminals." A twice-daily English language
broadcast provided a version of the war as seen by the Communists (and their
too-many American supporters) and gave us deep insights into a government of
lies, deceit, and perfidy - theirs, not ours, or at least that's what we
thought at the time.
I lived in 10 camps scattered all over North Vietnam - several in Hanoi,
the capital; a couple in the countryside, including the Son Tay camp raided
by U.S. Special Forces in November, 1970; and one near Lang Son, a few
kilometers from the Chinese border. The camps were similar, consisting of
small cells that held from one to four POWs each. Attempts to communicate
with other Americans or other rooms were punished by a month in leg irons
with one's hands handcuffed behind his back and a torture session to force
the POW to apologize for "breaking the camp regulations" and "committing
crimes against the 'Vietnamese people.' "
Despite all efforts to break the POWs, we remained as unified as possible
under the circumstances. Our excellent leadership (Colonel Robbie Risner and
Commander Jim Stockdale) held us together under those difficult
circumstances, and we came out - most of us - better men than when we went
in. Stockdale, tortured many times for his efforts to unify us, received the
Medal of Honor. Seven Vietnam POWs received the Medal of Honor - three for
heroism prior to their being captured - an incredible percentage for a group
that totaled 801, including civilians.
After the Son Tay raid in 1970, the North Vietnamese hastily moved all
American POWs to camps in the Hanoi area. Because there were too few of the
small rooms, they were forced to move up to 50 POWs into each of several 60'
by 20' cells. During solitary confinement, many of us had relived our lives,
going back in time to each of the classrooms where we had learned while
growing up and in college. Now that we were together at last - for the
longest held, Everett Alvarez, it had been more than six years - we formally
organized a structured learning environment.
While each room was slightly different, mine held classes on every
conceivable topic. I taught French from my Naval Academy courses and learned
Spanish and German. Russian was taught, as were math, architecture,
engineering drawing, and even music. Classes taught without benefit of
books, A-V equipment, or teaching certificates were so effective that three
of our enlisted men who'd had no college training prior to capture passed
more than 100 semester hours of college-level validation exams on their
return.
We were proud to be serving our country and openly ridiculed our North
Vietnamese captors, who proclaimed that they were going to drag the war out
so their allies in the United States would force the American government to
withdraw. We discounted trips to Hanoi by various American personalities
such as Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark, and a few anti-war no-names who were
referred to as "comrade" by the Vietnamese.
When President Nixon mined the harbors of Vietnam in 1972 and unleashed
the very heavy bombing of the country that had been planned in 1965, we POWs
knew that the war would be over within weeks. We had known seven years
before the missions were actually implemented what it would take to force
the North Vietnamese to negotiate seriously.
And, indeed it was so. The North Vietnamese agreed to release the
prisoners of war. The U.S. agreed to go home, and the North Vietnamese
agreed to stay out of South Vietnam. We were going to resupply the South
Vietnamese and give that country support in the event of further Northern
aggression. The POWs were released, and many happy scenes occurred
throughout the nation when families were reunited after many years of
separation.
What has happened in the 25 years since then? Amid the turmoil
surrounding Watergate, an indifferent Congress pulled the plug on the
Republic of Vietnam, and we observed the Soviet- and Chinese-supplied North
Vietnamese invade the South while an unequipped South Vietnamese army was
impotent to repel the invasion.
And so now, 25 years later, these questions: Had the press not reported
total defeat at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong
following the devastating (to them) Tet offensive in 1968, would the war
have ended in 1968 rather than in 1973 and 40,000 lives later? Do those who
manned the barricades to protest the war realize the part they played in
costing some of those lost lives? Had Watergate not distracted President
Nixon, would we have intervened in 1974 to save the Republic of Vietnam?
And these further questions, extrapolated to the present day: Does the
disgraceful conduct of the Commander-in-Chief amidst his incredible
popularity polls similarly render impotent any foreign policy initiative to
contain Saddam Hussein? Or will that conduct result in a McNamara-type
sacrifice of American lives as a distraction? Does the President's apparent
personal absolution by the public in the polls render it okay for mere
military personnel to engage in similar debauchery? Is there any cause the
American public thinks worthwhile enough to judge on its merits? Is there
anything sacred?
Tough questions. From those heady days of finally being free again in 1973
to having to ask these questions today is a stretch I never thought I'd have
to make. I don't know the answers, but I do know the questions will not be
answered by the current Washington power-elites. I'm not sure whether I want
to get mad about it or to cry. I do know this anniversary is not as happy as
it should be.
But I also know that when my fellow ex-prisoners of war and I reunite in
Dallas later this year, we will rejoice in the personal friendships and
experiences gained under fire. We'll pray for the country, because it
appears to be navigating rocky shoals without a moral compass or a leader
who commands respect. And we will hope that, somehow, our children will be
spared the kind of amoral actions taken by our political leaders in the
'60s.
======================
35 Years After Shoot-Down:
Ex-POW Reflects on Life After Hanoi
PAUL GALANTI
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Jun 17, 2001
June 17, 1966. Thirty-five years ago. Not much of note
happened that day. The murder of three people in a bar in Patterson, New
Jersey, allegedly by boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, dominated the domestic
newsfront. The Chief of Naval Operations approved a plan to reduce the time
in overhaul for nuclear submarines (that ultimately was suspected as a cause
of the sinking of the USS Scorpion several years later). It was just another
"ho-hum" day for many Americans.
But several "firsts" happened to me on that day. For the
first time in my life I got shot down in flames in my A-4 Skyhawk, ejected
violently from the bird at almost 600 mph, made my first parachute descent,
was shot on the way down, and arrived in a country whose locals didn't
exactly roll out the Welcome Wagon.
At least in retrospect, the next nearly seven years seemed
to go by quickly - subjecting me to varying degrees of torture, solitary
confinement, humiliation, harassment, intimidation, and incredibly inhumane
treatment. Volumes have been written about the experience of the prisoners
of war in Vietnam, and my purpose here is not to rehash it. Contrary to what
several psychologists had led our families to believe, the ordeal was not a
debilitating experience for most of us - but it did provide much time for
thought. And it did enhance any latent abilities to put things into
perspective.
No Reason to Question Policy
I never questioned our involvement in the Vietnam War -
not before, not during captivity, not since. It was not my place as a career
Naval officer to do so in the first place, nor did I have any reason to
question it. The atrocities the North Vietnamese perpetrated daily on us
POWs certainly convinced me that everything I'd heard and read about the
Communist system and the atrocities they were committing daily in South
Vietnam had to be true. And it more than justified my firm belief - then and
now - that we had to be where we were and that the overall goal, containment
of Communism, was worth the price.
The ultimate irony was being tortured to write a statement
saying I was receiving "lenient and humane treatment" from my captors. It
caused me to question anything I hear from Communists or their many
sympathizers or copycats or dupes in America who tended then - and still
tend - to distort the truth for their personal gain, or even (gasp) to lie
if that will achieve the desired end.
It seemed that my life was a series of lows (that were
always lower than the preceding one), followed by highs (that were always
higher than the previous high). Things like torture followed by improved
treatment followed by beatings followed by even better treatment . . . .Why,
it was just like a sine wave from my old electrical engineering classes at
the Naval Academy!
The experience taught me to question our own free press
that parroted the words of the Communists while, as a debating
counterpoint, casting doubt on our own system. The use of a not-so-subtle
"but" is enough to ruin a story for me by giving equal weight to an often
self-serving nonentity in the name of "fairness" to present a "balanced"
picture.
Homecoming in 1973 was a renaissance - literally and
figuratively. My marriage was intact. Indeed, my formerly shy wife was a
national leader who had addressed the joint session of the Virginia General
Assembly and met with President Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and (in France)
hundreds of Communists on behalf of all the prisoners of war. It seemed not
much of substance had changed, but I, whose every experience was a total
delight, soon became appalled at the in-your-face nastiness that had seemed
to materialize during my extended tour of what some of my Marine friends
referred to as "overseas shore duty."
Americans Complained Endlessly
Where I could see only positives, many Americans were
endlessly complaining. At our first POW reunion, many of my ex-POW friends
lamented their countrymen's whining. I'd heard before that the squeaky wheel
gets the grease, but it seemed many in the good ol' USA were convinced our
country had gone to hell in a handbasket. They complained about nearly
everything. To us, having a hot meal, a warm bed to sleep in, and the
ability to do anything we wanted nearly any time we wanted, was the dream we
had had for so many years when deprived of our freedom. Putting all those
into perspective was easy.
Much of the complaining seemed to come from those who had
hyphenated their Americanism. Apparently, by using the tactic of divide and
conquer, many groups set forth their self-perceived grievances by
hyphenating their categories and claiming some special status. It seemed
much like the Communists' bragging, "Everyone in your country is opposed to
this war: young people, old people, black people, white people, handicapped
people," et-sickening-cetera. The motto unity over self that effectively
held our POWs together under difficult circumstances seemed to have been
replaced at home with the first-person singular - myself, I, and me.
What has happened since 1973? A lot - mostly good. But the
omnipresent complaining persists. I went through Navy flight refresher
training and spent nine more terrific years in the Navy: flying, recruiting,
earning a Master of Commerce degree from the University of Richmond. I spent
my final three Navy years on the Commandant's staff at the Naval Academy. It
was a magnificent nine years that passed much more quickly than the previous
seven! The world at large seemed to be emulating a verbal sine wave -
transforming nearly everything into good news/bad news categories, often
with increasing frequency and amplitude.
Our first son was born in 1975, the same year the North
Vietnamese violated the agreement they had signed in Paris and invaded and
crushed South Vietnam, from which our Congress had pulled its support. ("You
mean they lied when they said they wouldn't do that?") Gerald Ford was a
caretaker President. The next year, Jimmy Carter won the election and
pardoned the Vietnam draft-dodgers - presumably including his successor four
elections hence.
There followed four years of frustration as the country
rolled into a double-digit inflationary period with nothing done by either
an incompetent - though well-meaning - President or the do-nothing, often
ill-meaning, Congress still self-flagellating over Watergate.
I had a great final three years in the Navy despite the
devastation Carter's policies had wrought on the military. My last Navy year
was under one of the finest-ever Commanders-in-Chief, who led the country
out of Jimmy Carter's unlamented and self-caused "malaise." In my first few
years of retirement Carter's stubborn double-digit inflation hung on and a
recession ensued. But there was very good news as well! Son No. 2 was born
and somehow greatly overshadowed my disappointment with the Naval Academy
grad and Georgia governor trying to play President.
I watched in awe as President Reagan rebuilt the country
into one that once again was respected and respectable.
President Reagan's eight years went by too quickly. Among
other things his policies set in motion the greatest economic expansion in
our country's history. He rebuilt our military and forced the Communist
government in Russia to fold its cards and steal away from the gaming table.
He was as popular leaving office as he was coming in - something not seen
since the Eisenhower days. He was an anachronistic "straight-shooter" and
people loved him for it.
It was another occurrence of the sine wave - the amplitude
increasing from the low of Carter to the high of Reagan - and the time
interval (wave length) was decreasing between the cyclical swings. The sine
wave reached its zenith in the Gulf War victory that resulted from President
Reagan's defense build-up in the 1980s.
Looking at the Clinton Years
And now faster and faster, higher and lower, the sine wave
continues - such as in the Clinton years . . .
When things that used to be banned in Boston became
dinner-table topics. When it was okay to appear to do something treasonous
(take lots of money from the Chinese and call off the dogs if something
looked a little suspicious). When use of the military was considered a great
way to deflect attention from things "we'd rather not discuss."
But from that low has come another upward swing of the
sine cycle. Will this swing go so high as Clinton's went low? If the
apparent cyclical swing holds true, it just might.
A pure sine wave applied to electronics and sound equals a
pure frequency or tone. But the sine waves generated by historical parallel
are not pure. Like the highs and lows of my experience in Hanoi and the war
in Vietnam, there were small waves residing on the big wave itself. That
effect in sound is called noise. I suppose it causes much of the noise on
the political landscape.
From overhead as a Navy pilot and from within a Communist
prison, my perception of the war was certainly different from that of the
flower children busily making love not war. Like the sound wave that has a
mirror image superimposed over it, the country's valiant efforts to prevent
the spread of Communism were neutralized by a shrill minority making noise
out of all proportion to its size. This principle - employed in
noise-cancelling earphones used in aircraft - also damps down political
rhetoric by cancelling out opposing views.
So for the past 35 years my experience-driven perception
has been largely cancelled out by the louder, noisome, efforts of the other
side. I hope the slope of the overall curve is increasing slightly - the
positives outweighing the negatives. Perhaps one day soon we'll start
heading back up the sine wave to a time as good for this country as Ronald
Reagan's eight years were.
Maybe the upper half of the sine wave should start making
a little more noise to accelerate the process.
----------------------
Paul E. Galanti
Richmond, Virginia
Inducted 12 Nov 2005 into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.
Inducted in 2005, Paul E. Galanti began his flying career at the U.S.
Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1962. He immediately
entered Navy jet flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola,
Florida and completed advanced flight training at Naval Air Station
Beeville, Texas. In 1963 he received his Naval wings and was chosen
to be a flight instructor at Pensacola. In November 1964 Paul was
assigned to the Navy Light Jet Attack Squadron 216 (VA-216), flying
the A4-C Skyhawk and was based aboard the carrier USS Hancock. In
November of 1965 the USS Hancock departed for Southeast Asia. On
June 17, 1966 while conducting an attack on a railroad siding near
Vinh, North Vietnam, Paul was shot down and taken prisoner. He had
flown 97 combat missions. He was released from prison nearly 7 years
later on February 12, 1973. Following a rehabilitation period at the
Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Va., he was assigned to the Navy
Recruiting District in Richmond as an Executive Officer. He then was
assigned CO of the Richmond Recruiting district and set new records
as Chief Recruiter in Virginia. In 1979 Paul retired from the Navy.
In 1983 he became the first non-pharmacist Executive Director of the
Virginia Pharmaceutical Association in its 100 year history and
initiated many innovations in his 9 year tenure. He is currently in
charge of marketing and external affairs for Eye-Q, UC, a web
application developer. He is author and webmaster of the NAM-POW
webpage and holds many awards for his military service and for his
work in the civilian sector. He is also a motivational speaker and
has spoken to over 1300 groups, including school children and
physicians.
=====================
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