CAPTURED: Shot Down In Vietnam

The first episode of a new show from the CAPTURED team. August 8th, 1974 marked the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency, but what if it didn’t? In this series premiere, we revisit the emotional final hours of Nixon’s administration and imagine what might’ve happened if he had fought to stay in office. Featuring archival audio and expert interviews, the episode blends history and fiction to ask: how...

From the team that brought you CAPTURED comes a new series that explores the concept of Richard Nixon staying in office for his full second-term: If Nixon Stayed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing a new docuseries, from the team that brought you CAPTURED: Shot Down In Vietnam, that reimagines the course of history. Using newly-released archival materials, expert interviews and historical analysis, this podcast takes a deep-dive to explore what could have been if President Nixon continued the success of his 1972 landslide election victory to complete his second term and fulfill h...

Recorded live at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum's 50th-Anniversary Reunion for former Vietnam War POWs in May 2023, Sid Stockdale, one of Vice Admiral Jim and League of Wives co-founder Sybil Stockdale's four sons, joins Tyler to discuss what he remembers of his parents' critical roles in the Vietnam POW crisis and how their impact reverberates five decades later. Sid's book, A...

The finale of our story brings us to December 1972, as President Richard Nixon's administration strives to bring an end to the stalemate in peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese. In this episode, we'll hear how Operation Homecoming came to bring 591 POWs home in February of 1973, 8.5 long years after Everett's capture. For more info and photos specific to this episode, visit www.capturedpod...

In November of 1970, fifty-six U.S. Special Forces soldiers executed the most ambitious rescue mission of the Vietnam War, raiding a North Vietnamese prison camp known as "Son Tay," just outside of Hanoi. In this episode, we hear from Terry Buckler, the youngest of the Son Tay Raiders. At the time, he was a 20-year-old Buck Sergeant who had never before seen combat. Despite this lack of experience...

In Part 2 of our two-part focus on the League of Wives, we examine how exactly this courageous band of women was able to organize under Sybil Stockdale and make a significant impact on the return of their lost men. We rejoin Andrea Rander, wife of Chief Warrant Officer Donald Rander, and Pat Mearns, wife of Lt. Col. Arthur Mearns, in 1967. Andrea has been notified that Don was a confirmed POW, bei...

In Part 1 of our two-part focus on the League of Wives, we are introduced to Andrea Rander and Pat Mearns, each young mothers to two girls when their husbands were shot down in North Vietnam. Guided by expert historian and author Heath Hardage Lee, we set the scene for the League's formation by tracing Andrea and Pat's experiences up until the notification, or lack thereof, that their husbands had...

In this special episode, we depart from our central narrative and turn our attention to Washington D.C., where Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson & Richard Nixon were making a crucial impact on the treatment and release of the hundreds of American prisoners of war who were being brutally mistreated in North Vietnamese prisons. By way of recordings from the White House, curator & historian Bob Bostock wa...

Mike McDaniel was nine years old when his father, Capt. Red McDaniel, was shot down and captured in the jungles of North Vietnam on May 19, 1967. It would be three long years until he and the rest of the clan heard any further news on the status of their patriarch. Meanwhile, Everett hinged his optimism on the dream of an eventual reunion with his wife, whom had promised that she would wait for hi...

18 months into Cmdr. Everett Alvarez's captivity, the North Vietnamese "torture regime" begins as he and fellow prisoners are forced to endure physical abuse, in addition to mental torture, amidst already-deplorable living conditions. After Capt. Red McDaniel is shot-down in May of 1967, he, too, is imprisoned in the 'Hanoi Hilton' and immediately subjected to an array of inhumane treatment. In th...

On a crisp afternoon in August of 1964, Everett Alvarez Jr. found himself floating in the emerald waters of Hạ Long Bay, North Vietnam, having just ejected from his flaming A-4 Skyhawk aircraft. He was about to be captured by hostile militia, becoming the first American POW in the Vietnam War. While President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration escalated aerial bombing attacks in the North, in supp...

The story continues with the harrowing Vietnam wartime experience for Naval Capt. Eugene "Red" McDaniel. His shoot-down and capture, three years after Alvarez's, highlights the differences in preparation American servicemen had for becoming a prisoner of war. Red was forced to endure North Vietnamese captivity, torture, and egregious mistreatment in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" for more than six lo...

We rewind to the year 1964 and are introduced to 26-year-old Naval aviator Everett Alvarez Jr. Hear from the now-85-year-old Commander Alvarez himself, as we follow his journey from modest beginnings in Salinas, CA to the moment of being shot down over North Vietnam, leading to more than eight years as a prisoner of war (POW). Following a brief period of American peacetime between the years of the...

Exactly 50 years ago, the Nixon administration saved 591 prisoners of war from North Vietnamese captivity. Many of them are still with us and willing to tell their stories like never before in this limited docuseries, from the dramatic moment of being shot down to the tearful family reunion.  You will be put into the action with actual audio from the Vietnam era, original interviews with POWs and...