‘It was a battle’: Navy vet Everett Alvarez says belief in America got him through 8½ years as POW in Vietnam
By DOUG G. WARE
STARS AND STRIPES • May 11, 2023
ROCKVILLE, Md. — The passage of almost 60 years has done nothing to dim former Navy fighter pilot Everett Alvarez Jr.’s memories of the night that he was shot down in the South China Sea and began what would be the second-longest period of captivity for an American service member in the Vietnam War.
At 85 years old, Alvarez still vividly remembers his Douglas A4 Skyhawk filling with smoke and coming apart as he had just a few seconds to make a series of life-or-death choices.
“I was really low. I knew I had to get out right there,” he said Wednesday in an interview at his suburban Washington, D.C., home. “I was trying to get altitude, I was trying to get out to the sea [away from the North Vietnamese coastline], I was trying to maintain control, but I couldn’t do it.”
Then a lieutenant junior grade, Alvarez made one final radio transmission to his wingmen from the USS Constellation before he hit the ejector seat and bailed out into the stormy darkness on Aug. 5, 1964 — only three days after the Gulf of Tonkin incident that triggered America’s full-scale entry into the war.
“I’ll see you guys later,” he told them.
https://www.stripes.com/veterans/2023-05-11/navy-pilot-vietnam-war-hanoi-hilton-10084744.html
