Bio, Stafford, Hugh A.

STAFFORD, HUGH ALLEN
DECEASED 12/28/03

Name: Hugh Allen Stafford
Rank/Branch: O4/US Navy
Unit: Attack Squadron 163, USS ORISKANY (CVA 43)
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: Cambridge MD
Date of Loss: 31 August 1967
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 204100N 1063200E (XH596876)
Status (in 1973): Released POW
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: A4E

Other Personnel in Incident: David J. Carey (released POW); Richard C. Perry
(remains returned)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 June 1990 from one or more of
the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence
with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W.
NETWORK 2005.

REMARKS: 730314 RLSD BY DRV

SYNOPSIS: The USS ORISKANY was a World War II-era carrier on duty in Vietnam
as early as 1964. The ORISKANY at one time carried the RF8A (number 144608)
that Maj. John H. Glenn, the famous Marine astronaut (and later Senator),
flew in his 1957 transcontinental flight. In October, 1966 the ORISKANY
endured a tragic fire which killed 44 men onboard, but was soon back on
station. In 1972, the ORISKANY had an at-sea accident which resulted in the
loss of one of its aircraft elevators, and later lost a screw that put the
carrier into drydock in Yokosuka, Japan for major repairs, thus delaying its
involvement until the late months of the war.

The ORISKANY's 1966 tour was undoubtedly one of the most tragic deployments
of the Vietnam conflict. This cruise saw eight VA 164 "Ghostriders" lost;
four in the onboard fire, one in an aerial refueling mishap, and another
three in the operational arena. However, the 1967 deployment, which began in
June and ended on a chilly January morning as the ORISKANY anchored in San
Francisco Bay, earned near legendary status by virtue of extensive losses
suffered in the ship's squadrons, including among the Ghostriders of VA 164,
and Saints of VA 163. One reason may have been that Navy aviators were, at
this time, still forbidden to strike surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites
which were increasing in number in North Vietnam.

On July 18, 1967, LCDR Richard D. Hartman's aircraft fell victim to
anti-aircraft fire near Phu Ly in Nam Ha Province, North Vietnam. Hartman,
from VA 164, ejected safely, but could not be rescued due to the hostile
threat in the area. Others in the flight were in radio contact with him and
resupplied him for about three days. He was on a karst hill in a difficult
recovery area. Eventually the North Vietnamese moved in a lot of troops and
AAA guns, making rescue almost impossible.

One of the rescue helicopters attempting to recover LCDR Hartman on the 19th
was a Sikorsky SH3A helicopter flown by Navy LT Dennis W. Peterson. The crew
onboard the aircraft included ENS Donald P. Frye and AX2 William B. Jackson
and AX2 Donald P. McGrane. While attempting to rescue LCDR Hartman, this
aircraft was hit by enemy fire and crashed killing all onboard. The remains
of all but the pilot, Peterson, were returned by the Vietnamese on October
14, 1982. Peterson remains missing.

The decision was made to leave Hartman before more men were killed trying to
rescue him. It was not an easy decision, and one squadron mate said, "To
this day, I can remember his voice pleading, 'Please don't leave me.' We had
to, and it was a heartbreaker." Hartman was captured and news returned home
that he was in a POW camp. However, he was not released in 1973. The
Vietnamese finally returned his remains on March 5, 1974. Hartman had died
in captivity from unknown causes.

In July 1967, LCDR Donald V. Davis was one of the Saints of VA 163 onboard
the ORISKANY. Davis was an aggressive pilot. On the night of July 25, 1967,
Davis was assigned a mission over North Vietnam. The procedure for these
night attacks was to drop flares over a suspected target and then fly
beneath them to attack the target in the light of the flares. Davis and
another pilot were conducting the mission about 10 miles south of Ha Tinh
when Davis radioed that he had spotted a couple of trucks. He dropped the
flares and went in. On his strafing run, he drove his Skyhawk straight into
the ground and was killed immediately. Davis is listed among the missing
because his remains were never recovered.

LTJG Ralph C. Bisz was also assigned to Attack Squadron 163. On August 4,
1967, Bisz launched on a strike mission against a petroleum storage area
near Haiphong. Approximately a minute and a half from the target area, four
surface-to-air missiles (SAM) were observed lifting from the area northeast
of Haiphong. The flight maneuvered to avoid the SAMs, however, Bisz'
aircraft was observed as it was hit by a SAM by a wingman. Bisz' aircraft
exploded, burst into flames, and spun downward in a large ball of fire.
Remnants of the aircraft were observed falling down in the large ball of
fire until reaching an altitude estimated to be 5,000 feet and then appeared
to almost completely burn out prior to reaching the ground. No parachute or
ejection was observed. No emergency beeper or voice communications were
received.

Bisz' aircraft went down in a heavily populated area in Hai Duong Province,
Vietnam. Information from an indigenous source which closely parallels his
incident indicated that his remains were recovered from the wreckage and
taken to Hanoi for burial. The U.S. Government listed Ralph Bisz as a
Prisoner of War with certain knowledge that the Vietnamese know his fate.
Bisz was placed in a casualty status of Captured on August 4, 1967.

The Navy now says that the possibility of Bisz ejecting was slim. If he had
ejected, his capture would have taken place in a matter of seconds due to
the heavy population concentration in the area and that due to the lack of
additional information it is believed that Bisz did not eject from his
aircraft and that he was killed on impact of the SAM.

Classified information on Bisz' case was presented to the Vietnamese by
General Vessey in the fall of 1987 in hopes that the Vietnamese would be
able to resolve the mystery of Bisz' fate. His case is one of what are
called "discrepancy" cases, which should be readily resolved. The Vietnamese
have not been forthcoming with information on Ralph Bisz.

On August 31, three pilots from the ORISKANY were shot down on a
particularly wild raid over Haiphong. The Air Wing had been conducting
strikes on Haiphong for two consecutive days. On this, the third day, ten
aircraft launched in three flights; four from VA 164 (call sign Ghostrider),
four from VA 163 (call sign Old Salt) and two from VA 163. As the flight
turned to go into Haiphong, one of the section leaders spotted two SAMs
lifting off from north of Haiphong. They were headed towards the Saints
section leader and the Ghostrider section leader, LCDR Richard C. Perry.

The Saints section leader and his wingman pitched up and to the right, while
Old Salt 3 (LCDR Hugh A. Stafford) turned down, his wingman, LTJG David J.
Carey close behind him. Carey, an Air Force Academy graduate, was on his
first operational mission. The missile detonated right in front of them and
aircraft pieces went everywhere.

The other SAM headed towards Perry's section, and he had frozen in the
cockpit. All three planes in the division pulled away, and he continued
straight and level. His helpless flightmates watched as the missile came
right up and hit the aircraft. The aircraft was generally whole and heading
for open water.

Old Salt Three and Old Salt Four, Stafford and Carey, had by that time
ejected from their ruined planes and were heading towards the ground from an
altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Both were okay, but Stafford had landed in
a tree near a village, making rescue impossible. Carey had landed about a
mile away near a small village. Stafford and Carey were captured and held in
various prisoner of war camps until their release in Operation Homecoming on
March 14, 1973.

Richard Perry had also ejected and was over open water. But as Perry entered
the water, his parachute went flat and he did not come up. A helicopter was
on scene within minutes, and a crewman went into the water after Perry. He
had suffered massive chest wounds, either in the aircraft or during descent
in his parachute and was dead. To recover his body was too dangerous because
the North Vietnamese were mortaring the helicopter. The helicopter left the
area. Richard Perry's remains were recovered by the Vietnamese and held
until February 1987, at which time they were returned to U.S. control.

Flight members were outraged that they had lost three pilots to SAMs that
they were forbidden to attack. Policy was soon changed to allow the pilots
to strike the sites, although never to the extent that they were disabled
completely.

On October 7, 1967, VA 164 pilot LT David L. Hodges was killed when his
Skyhawk was hit by a SAM about twelve miles southwest of Hanoi. His remains
were never recovered and he is listed among those missing in Vietnam.

On October 18, 1967, VA 164 pilot LCDR John F. Barr was killed when his
Skyhawk was hit by enemy fire and slammed into the ground while on a strike
mission at Haiphong. Barr's remains were not recovered.

On November 2, 1967, VA 164 pilot LTJG Frederic Knapp launched as the lead
of a flight of two aircraft on an armed reconnaissance mission over North
Vietnam. The wingman reported that during an attack run, the aircraft
appeared to have been hit by anti-aircraft fire. The wingman saw Knapp's
aircraft impact the ground and did not see the canopy separate from the
aircraft. There was no parachute sighted or emergency radio beeper heard.
The aircraft crashed about 9 kilometers west-southwest of Cho Giat, near
route 116, in Nghe An Province.

A source later reported that people from his village had removed the remains
of a dead pilot from his aircraft and buried the remains nearby. These
remains are believed to be those of Knapp. On October 14, 1982, Vietnamese
officials turned over to U.S. authorities a Geneva Convention card belonging
to Ltjg. Knapp. To date, no remains have been repatriated.

Six of the thirteen pilots and crewmen lost in 1967 off the decks of the
ORISKANY remain prisoner, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for in Vietnam.
Disturbing testimony was given to Congress in 1980 that the Vietnamese
"stockpiled" the remains of Americans to return at politically advantageous
times. Could any of these six be in a casket, awaiting just such a moment?

Even more disturbing are the nearly 10,000 reports received by the U.S.
relating to Americans missing in Southeast Asia. Many authorities who have
examined this information (largely classified), have reluctantly come to the
conclusion that many Americans are still alive in Southeast Asia. Could any
of these six be among them?

Perhaps the most compelling questions when remains are returned are, "Is it
really who they say it is?", and "How -- and when -- did he die?" As long as
reports continue to be received which indicate Americans are still alive in
Indochina, we can only regard the return of remains as a politically
expedient way to show "progress" on accounting for American POW/MIAs. As
long as reports continue to be received, we must wonder how many are alive.

As long as even one American remains alive, held against his will, we must
do everything possible to bring him home -- alive.

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).

HUGH A. STAFFORD
Commander - United States Navy
Shot Down: August 31, 1967
Released: March 14, 1973

I joined the Navy September 28, 1955. I received my wings on March 16, 1957
at Beeville, Texas. From there I returned to Pensacola, Florida and taught
air-to-air gunnery in the T-28 at Barin Field. I then spent 1959-60 in VAH4
at Whidbey Island, Washington. I separated from the Navy in August 1960 and
attended Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Returning to active
duty in August 1962, I joined VU-7 at NAS, North Island, San Diego,
California. From 1964-66 I served with Tactical Air Control Squadron 12 at
Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, California. After A-4 training in VA-125 at
NAS, Lemoore, California, I joined VA-163 and went on cruise aboard the USS
Oriskany in June 1967 and was shot down on 31 August 1967.

Faith in God and in my country were the things that sustained me. Also the
fine group of men who were my fellow POWs were of such consistently high
caliber that one could never lose faith.

Hugh Stafford retired from the United States Navy as a Commander. He and his
wife Sheryl resided in Florida until his death in late 2003.

=================
TAS Live
Bye, Al
By Geoffrey Norman
Published 1/17/2005 12:05:49 AM

He contacted me -- by e-mail -- after he'd received my daughter's wedding
invitation. "Damn right I'll be there," Al said. "You want me to pick up
some crabs and a bushel of oysters when I come through Maryland?"

That was the pattern. When he'd drive up from Pensacola, Florida, to see us
in Vermont, Al would always detour through Oxford, near the mouth of the
Choptank River where he'd spent the best years of his youth and, maybe, his
entire life.

"Absolutely," I replied. "How long can you stay?"

Turned out, he couldn't stay a single night. Could not, in fact, make it at
all. His next e-mail said, "I'm afraid I won't be there for the wedding.
They found this damned cancer and it looks like I'm going to be joining old
Jones pretty soon."

"Jones" would be Robert F. Jones, a novelist and magazine writer -- most
prominently with Sports Illustrated -- and a neighbor and hunting companion
of mine. On his many visits to Vermont, Al had gotten to know Jones and
they'd become friends. Al admired Jones's for his talent, his erudition, and
his bluster. Jones's was fascinated by Al's story. He'd been a POW in
Vietnam for five and a half years.

When Jones had died of pancreatic cancer six months earlier, Al sent me an
e-mail. "Hard to believe old Jones has gone west," he said. "And before I
got a chance to talk to him about his last book."

WHEN I TOLD MY DAUGHTER that Al wouldn't be coming -- and why -- she cried.
The tears were part bridal sentimentality, of course. But there was
something else. She remembered going out with her sister on Al's sailboat
when they were not quite school age, back when we were spending time on the
Gulf Coast. Al would call and say, "Why don't you pick up a bucket of fried
chicken somewhere and bring your girls over for a sunset cruise."

We'd meet him at the Naval Air Station dock, on Bayou Texar off Pensacola
Bay. Al had retired from the Navy by then but he still had privileges or,
maybe it was just a courtesy. Either way, it was a prime spot and seemed
like a reasonable perq.

His greeting was always efficient -- almost brusque -- and it had taken the
girls a while to get used to it. We would hand over the chicken, the cooler,
and whatever else we had brought with us and then come aboard. Al would
immediately start working the lines and giving the girls jobs -- holding
this one, coiling that one -- in a manner that made it clear these were
important, even vital, tasks; that they weren't passengers or guests on his
vessel -- they were crew. And, of course, they loved it.

"They like him because he doesn't patronize them," I told my wife once.

"Wrong," she said, "Al patronizes everybody. They like him because he treats
them like they're adults."

She said it with affection, though she could find Al exasperating. Like, I
suppose, a lot of women. And it was true that Al had a way of explaining
things so carefully and in such elementary language that you could believe
he thought you were a little slow. It was as though he worried that if he
didn't make sure of every detail, there would be a misunderstanding and
things would go suddenly, disastrously wrong.

But, then, you could forgive this as understandable since his plane had
taken a direct hit from a surface-to-air missile that cooked off his entire
bomb load, blowing him out of the sky in a dirty orange explosion that
ignited the propellant in his ejector seat. He came to hanging in his
parachute four or five thousand feet over North Vietnam. Al had a very sure
sense of just how badly wrong things could go.

ONCE WE HAD CAST OFF, Al would handle the boat until we had cleared the
channel and were in the deep water of Pensacola Bay. Then he would turn the
helm over to one of the girls, give her a course to steer and explain how to
read the telltales to make sure we were on the correct point-of-sail. Even
though they had heard it before, they would listen intently.

"Let's sail out to the pass," Al might say, "and see what the Gulf looks
like."

Then, while the girls sailed the boat, he would get busy with the rituals of
stowing gear, coiling lines, and generally making things shipshape. It was
partly his nature and the other part his love of the boat, a 32-foot sloop
that he'd bought with some of the money that had accumulated while he was a
POW. The rest of the money had been spent by a wife he'd divorced not long
after he came home. That wife had been his second. The first marriage had
been worse and had also included children. Al barely knew them.

These days, he had the boat.

Once or twice a year, he would singlehand it from Pensacola across the Gulf,
and then around to the Bahamas where he would spend a couple of months
anchoring in the shelter of little, uninhabited Cays, spearing fish and
lobsters for food, then sailing on to some small harbor town when he needed
ice or water or, even, a little human contact.

I wondered about those trips. Hadn't he experienced enough solitude? The
worst part of his entire captivity, he once told me, had been when he was
locked in a little metal crib, alone, for 13 months.

"It isn't the solitude so much," he said, when I made the point. "It's the
sailing. Since I've come home, motion is my mantra."

AT THE MOUTH OF Pensacola Bay, Al would luff the sails and we'd eat our
fried chicken and drink our sodas while we watched a school of bottle-nosed
dolphins and listened to the mournful sound they made through their
blowholes. Toward dusk, we would sail back to the marina, generally upwind,
with Al explaining to the girls about how you tacked. At the dock, he would
tell them that they were a great crew and that he wanted them to come back
so he could teach them about oiling teak and polishing brightwork.

But there were fewer and fewer of those sailing trips once my daughters
started school. We were in Vermont most of the time so Al began coming up to
visit. He treated the drive like a cross-country hop and the passenger seat
of his little truck would be piled with charts on which he had marked his
route -- and his alternates -- in yellow highlight ink. He'd designed routes
to beat the tolls and take advantage of the best gasoline prices, to take
him by the homes of a couple of his old POW buddies and, also, to visit
Oxford and the Choptank where would pick up some seafood for us. The night
of his arrival, we'd always have friends over to help us eat the oysters
that Al and I would shuck.

On one of those evenings, he got into a conversation with someone who wanted
to know about his time in captivity. The questions weren't particularly
hostile, inquisitory or, even, political. Merely detailed and intense, with
a focus on the physical suffering.

Al did his best to deflect them -- treating them like gnats -- but he
couldn't make them go away. Finally, he said, "I'm really sorry. I'd like to
help but, you see, I only remember the funny parts."

MOST OF AL'S VISITS came in the Fall when he would bring an old shotgun he'd
used to hunt ducks on the Eastern shore. That had been in the '50s and he
hadn't done any hunting since then. He wanted to get back into it so he
would go out with me and my dog when we hunted birds -- grouse and woodcock
-- in the aspen and gone-by apple orchards. He wasn't much of a shot --
maybe because his gun was too big and clunky for the kind of quick work we
were doing -- but he was enthusiastic and he wanted to know everything. He
asked questions about the dog and how you trained one; the birds and how you
knew where to look for them; the guns and what made one superior to another.

It took me a while to realize that his was not so much a personality quirk
as learned behavior. Late in the war, when the heat was off and Al was not
in solitary but sharing a cell with one or more of the other POWs, there was
nothing to do but talk -- tell stories and ask questions. A lot of what he
knew, Al told me once, he'd learned from his fellow POWs. One of them had
taught him how to take apart a V-8 engine and rebuild it and when he got
home, Al bought the right model pickup so he could test himself.

"Only had to check the manual a couple of times. Everything else was right
here." He tapped his head with his finger. "Department of Auto Mechanics.
Hanoi U."

I suppose the POW experience could also explain Al's fondness for long
stories. He enjoyed listening to them and he especially liked telling them.
He was good at it, too.

He and I were sitting at the table in my kitchen one evening, after an
afternoon of hunting. A neighbor who had flown fighters with the Air Force
had come by and stayed for a beer. While my wife and I listened, my neighbor
and Al talked about their fighter pilot days.

"You must have flown out of Nellis," Al said at one point.

"Sure," my neighbor said.

"Well, I remember when I was at Miramar, back in the real early '60s, one of
the other guys in the squadron and I decided to take a couple of F-8s out
for a little cross-country hop. Bob was the guy's name. Neither of us had
ever been to Vegas so we filed a flight plan for Nellis and took off one
Saturday afternoon."

AL DESCRIBED JUST what the F-8 could do, in a lot of technical detail that
my neighbor understood and appreciated. Then Al explained that while he had
enjoyed hell-raising as much as the next fighter pilot, his intentions on
this trip were relatively pure. He'd always liked show tunes and there was a
singer -- I don't remember which one -- at one of the casinos that night. Al
planned to play a little blackjack, eat a good dinner, and then catch the
show.

Bob, it seemed, had more ambitious plans. So once they were in Vegas, they
split up and agreed to meet back at the flight line at "oh-dawn-thirty."

"Last I saw Bob," Al said, "he was heading down the strip with this gleam in
his eye."

Al's night went pretty much the way he planned. "When the wake-up call came,
I didn't even have to go into the bathroom to throw up. I was ready to fly."

But when he got back out to Nellis, there was no sign of Bob.

"I figured he was just running late so I changed into my flight suit and put
my g-suit on over it. Bob's stuff was still hanging there, next to mine.
Then I went into flight -ops, thinking he might have been there waiting for
me. But no sign of Bob and no message from him. I drank a cup of coffee and
I talked the duty officer for a while. Then it's getting hot inside all
those clothes, so I decided to take a walk out to the flight line just to
get some air and look at the airplanes while I'm waiting."

The F-8s were parked at the end of the flight line and Al had walked a long
way before he came to them. And he was thinking, as he walked, that there
was something wrong, something out of place, but he couldn't quite figure
out what.

He realized, when he got closer, that there was someone in the cockpit of
one of the planes. He guessed that one of the enlisted men from the service
crew had climbed up there and gone to sleep.

"So I went up the ladder all ready to wake the guy up and tell him to get
the hell out of our airplane. Turned out, it wasn't some Air Force tech guy.
It was Bob. Totally passed out. And it seemed he had gotten separated from
his clothes since I last saw him. He wasn't wearing a single stitch except
for his flight helmet. The oxygen mask was pulled off to one side and the
visor was down, covering his eyes. And written on the visor, in red
lipstick, along with the shape of a valentine, were the words, "Bye Bob."

I MADE IT TO PENSACOLA not long after my daughter's wedding. Al's wife --
"the one I should have married the first time" -- met me in the driveway.

"How is he?"

"Bad," Sheryl said. "Real bad." Like Al, she never tried to sugar-coat it.

"I won't stay long."

"Stay until he tells you to leave. He's been looking forward to this."

Al looked wasted and talking made him tired. But he made the effort it took
to brief me. The essential piece was . the doctors had given up on chemo and
other treatments that morning. He was now a hospice patient.

I couldn't think of anything to say so I merely nodded.

"Now," Al said, as though that were all housekeeping stuff and he was
relieved to be done with it. "Are you busy? You have to be anywhere in the
next couple of hours?"

"No."

"Let's take a ride."

A friend of his was building a boat, he explained when we got in my car, and
he wanted me to see it. The boat wasn't really important, though; the drive
was the point. Motion was still his mantra, it seemed, and maybe it gave him
some relief.

We talked about small things. It would not have been Al if he'd tried to run
some transcendent insight on me. In one of those conversations he would get
into with my friends in Vermont, someone had once asked him if he had any
regrets about those five and a half years, "what with the way the war turned
out, you know."

"I'm an old fighter pilot," Al said, shaking his head. "The way I look at
it, the blue sky behind you is just wasted air space."

Before I left that day, Al said, "When will you be back?"

"Couple of months."

"I'll hang on that long."

"Then I'll see you in a couple of months."

He didn't make it. Before I even opened the card with the Pensacola
postmark, I thought of the line from some old song -- "Another good man
gone."

Then I said, out loud so he could hear it, "Bye, Al."

Geoffrey Norman is a writer in Dorset, Vermont. This memoir appeared last
summer in the July-August 2004 issue of The American Spectator.