December 23, 1923 – July 5, 2005

“The worst thing that can happen is death, and that’s not the worst thing in the world either.”

James Bond Stockdale was born and raised in Abingdon, Illinois. He lettered in football, basketball and track, won a regional piano competition, and graduated second in his high school class. He was appointed to the Naval Academy in the middle of World War II. Soon after graduating in 1946, Stockdale reported to Pensacola for flight training.

1927: James B. Stockdale, at the age of three wearing a sailor suit, with his father at home in Abingdon, Illinois.

Stockdale flew almost every propeller-driven aircraft in the Navy’s inventory, but he yearned for greater challenges. In 1954, Stockdale applied for Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland. Along with 17 others — including future astronaut John Glenn — he made the cut.

1954: Test Pilot Training Class 14 in Patuxent River, Maryland. Instructors are in the front row. James Stockdale is in the front row 3rd from the left. In January 1954, James Stockdale was accepted into the United States Naval Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River base in Southern Maryland and then completed his training.

At Patuxent, Stockdale was a standout. He amassed more than a thousand hours in the F-8U Crusader, then the Navy’s hottest fighter. Promotions followed, and by the mid-1960s, Stockdale was at the very pinnacle of his career and profession, commanding a fighter squadron.

September 1965: Jim Stockdale on the flight deck of USS Oriskany, one week before he was shot down in Vietnam.

In August 1964, Stockdale’s squadron played a role in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which involved North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. naval vessels. The Johnson Administration invoked these occurrences to justify a massive American military response. Interestingly, Stockdale always maintained that during the incident’s key “engagement,” he saw no enemy vessels. In his words, “I flew so low there was salt spray on the windshield, and I still didn’t see a thing!” But the die was cast. The next morning, he was ordered to lead a raid on North Vietnamese oil refineries. America — and Jim Stockdale — were at war.

James Stockdale (second from left) in POW camp in Hanoi, North Vietnam, a week before his release in February 1973. Stockdale was held as a prisoner of war in the Hoa Lo Prison for seven and a half years. As the senior Naval officer, he was one of the primary organizers of prisoner resistance. Tortured routinely and denied medical attention for the severely damaged leg he suffered during capture. He created and enforced a code of conduct for all prisoners, which governed torture, secret communications and behavior. (Courtesy of James Bond Stockdale)

On September 9, 1965, Stockdale catapulted his A-4 Skyhawk off the flight deck of the USS Oriskany on what turned out to be his final mission over North Vietnam. Approaching his target, his plane was riddled with anti-aircraft fire. Within seconds, his engine was aflame and all hydraulic control was gone. He “punched out,” watching his plane slam into a rice paddy and explode in a fireball. Stockdale himself best describes what happened next:

“As I ejected from the plane, I broke a bone in my back, but that was only the beginning. I landed in the streets of a small village. A thundering herd was coming down on me. They were going to defend the honor of their town. It was the quarterback sack of the century.” They tore off his clothes and beat him mercilessly. Stockdale suffered a broken leg and paralyzed arm before a military policeman took him into custody. He was now a prisoner of war, the highest ranking naval officer to be held as a POW in Vietnam.

Aerial view of the notorious prison camp in North Vietnam for the United States Prisoners of War during the Vietnam War, sarcastically known to American POWs as “The Hanoi Hilton.” (Courtesy of James Bond Stockdale)

Stockdale wound up in Hoa Lo Prison – the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” — where he spent the next seven years under unimaginably brutal conditions. He was physically tortured no fewer than 15 times. Techniques included beatings, whippings, and near-asphyxiation with ropes. Mental torture was incessant. He was kept in solitary confinement, in total darkness, for four years, chained in heavy, abrasive leg irons for two years, malnourished due to a starvation diet, denied medical care, and deprived of letters from home in violation of the Geneva Convention.

February 15, 1973: Eldest son James Stockdale and family greet Navy pilot and then-Captain James B. Stockdale, after Stockdale’s release as an American POW for seven and a half years, at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego.

Through it all, Stockdale’s captors held out the promise of better treatment if he would only admit that the United States was engaging in criminal behavior against the Vietnamese people, but Stockdale refused. Drawing strength from principles of stoic philosophy, Stockdale heroically resisted. His courage was an inspiration to his fellow POWs, with whom he communicated in an ingenious code, maintaining unit cohesion and morale. His jailers increased the level of torture, so Stockdale determined to fight back in the only way he could.

James Bond Stockdale and his wife, Sybil. Early in Stockdale’s captivity, Sybil Stockdale organized The League of American Families of POWs and MIAs with other wives of servicemen who were in similar circumstances. By 1968, her organization called for President Richard Nixon and the United States Congress to publicly acknowledge the mistreatment of the POWs, and gained the attention of the American press. (Courtesy of James Bond Stockdale)

Told that he was to be taken “downtown” and paraded in front of foreign journalists, Stockdale slashed his scalp with a razor and beat himself in the face with a wooden stool. He reasoned that his captors would not dare display a prisoner who appeared to have been beaten. When he learned that his fellow prisoners were dying under torture, he slashed his wrists to show their captors that he preferred death to submission. Stockdale literally gambled with his life, and won.

March 4, 1976: President Gerald R. Ford presents the Medal of Honor — awarded for his personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty — to Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN, during an awards ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Admiral Stockdale earned the nation’s highest decoration for his extraordinary bravery and leadership as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam from September 9, 1965 to February 12, 1973. (AP)

Convinced of Stockdale’s determination to die rather than cooperate, the Communists ceased trying to extract bogus “confessions” from him. The torture of American prisoners ended, and treatment of all American POWs improved. Upon his release in 1973, Stockdale’s extraordinary heroism became widely known, and he received the Medal of Honor in the nation’s bicentennial year. He was one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the Navy, with 26 personal combat decorations, including four Silver Star medals in addition to the Medal of Honor.

Medal of Honor recipients: Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN, Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN and Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN at the American Academy of Achievement’s 2001 Banquet of the Golden Plate in San Antonio, TX.

Throughout Stockdale’s captivity, his wife Sybil campaigned for respectful treatment for the families of all POWs by founding the League of Families. Sybil Stockdale was presented with the U.S. Navy Department’s Distinguished Public Service Award by the Chief of Naval Operations. She is the only wife of an active-duty officer ever to be so honored.

2001: Medal of Honor recipient Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN, addresses the Academy delegates and members at the American Academy of Achievement’s 2001 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in San Antonio, Texas.

After serving as the president of the Naval War College, Stockdale retired from the Navy in 1978 and embarked on a distinguished academic career, including a term as president of the Citadel, and 15 years as a senior research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. In 1992 he graciously agreed to a request from his old friend H. Ross Perot to stand with Perot as the vice-presidential candidate of the Reform Party. Stockdale disliked the glare of publicity and partisan politics, but throughout the campaign he comported himself with the same integrity and dignity that marked his entire career. Together, the Stockdales told their story in a joint memoir, In Love and War. Admiral Stockdale and his wife lived quietly on Coronado Island, off of San Diego, until his death at age 81. In 2009, the U.S. Navy honored him by naming a new missile destroyer in his honor, the USS Stockdale.

Source: achievement.org