Dieter Dengler, Shipmate and Friend

In early 1966, on the aircraft carrier Ranger in the Gulf of Tonkin off the steamy coast of North Vietnam, I was a 19-year-old aerographer’s mate, taking weather observations, plotting weather maps, and launching weather balloons.

On February 1 of that year, two Ranger pilots were lost at almost the same time when their planes were shot down by enemy fire. One of them was Lieutenant (j.g.) Dieter Dengler. I well remember one of Dengler’s squadron mates coming into the weather service office, located one level below the flight deck, and saying, “If anyone can get out, our guy Dieter can.”

Six months later, after being beaten, tortured and held captive by the Pathet Lao in a jungle POW camp with six other prisoners — two of them fellow Americans — in the dark heart of Laos, an emaciated but joyous Dieter returned to a raucous welcome aboard Ranger. As prophesized, he had made it back — after organizing and leading a mass escape. I was among hundreds of sailors and pilots on the hanger deck that July day, clapping and cheering and welcoming back our hero. At the time, I thought this was like a scripted scene in a Hollywood movie. By then, Ranger had lost nearly a dozen pilots in the air war over Southeast Asia, and once gone they had not returned — none, that is, except the amazing Dieter Dengler.

After Vietnam, I went to college on the G.I. Bill and became a newspaper reporter. Having told the story of Dieter’s escape hundreds of times, I looked him up in the 1970s. Dieter was then an airline pilot. I interviewed him and wrote an article. After that, we stayed in touch throughout the years. I always felt that one day I would write more of Dieter’s story.

In the 1990s, with both of us living in the San Francisco area, we became friends. By then, I had written nearly twenty nonfiction books. We decided to do a book together about Dieter’s life before and during Vietnam, and pitched the idea to several publishers. All of them said essentially the same thing: “Vietnam doesn’t sell.”

I told Dieter the climate would most likely change one day, and when it did we would come back to the book we envisioned doing together.

However, soon diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Dieter would not live to return to our project. He died in 2001 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Subsequently, I decided to tackle the book on my own, as a tribute to my fallen friend and hero pilot. HERO FOUND: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War is the result.