On 26 October 1967, Lieutenant Commander John McCain of attack squadron VA-163 rolled his A-4E Skyhawk into a dive on a thermal power plant in central Hanoi. As he started the dive, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile blew most of his right wing off. McCain ejected, breaking both arms and a leg, and came down in Truc Bach Lake, in the middle of the city.

Into the Lake

McCain described the moment in his own words in interviews published soon after his release in 1973. With both arms broken, he could not swim and was dragged down by his equipment. He inflated his life preserver with his teeth, and said that landing in the water saved his life even though he almost drowned. After a few minutes, North Vietnamese pulled him ashore. There the crowd turned on him: a rifle butt broke his shoulder and a bayonet was driven into his foot.

Mai Van On

Vietnamese accounts name the men who reached him first. According to the Hanoi newspaper Tien Phong, Mai Van On and a neighbour, Le Tran Lua, were the first to swim out to the downed pilot and pull him from the water. In the version of the story On told in later years, he had left an air-raid shelter to help, and then held back people on the shore who were attacking the injured American. McCain’s own 1973 accounts describe the beating but do not name anyone who protected him, so the details of that part of the story rest on On’s recollection and Vietnamese sources.

Decades later, Vietnamese authorities recognised On as the rescuer, and in 1996, by then a US senator, McCain met him in Hanoi and thanked him. A memorial beside Truc Bach Lake still marks the shoot-down. On died in the 2000s; reports at the time said he was 88.

Five and a Half Years

McCain received no medical treatment for days; he later said his captors relented only when they learned his father was a senior admiral. Admiral John S. McCain Jr. would go on to command all US forces in the Pacific. That connection also made the prisoner valuable for propaganda. In 1968 McCain refused an offer of early release, insisting on the prisoners’ code that men were freed in the order they had been captured. He was held in solitary confinement until late 1969, beaten repeatedly and tortured. He was finally released with other prisoners on 14 March 1973, one of the men brought home in Operation Homecoming.

Back to Vietnam

McCain returned to Vietnam many times, visiting Hoa Lo prison and, on his trips, looking for people who had helped him. With fellow Vietnam veteran senators including John Kerry, he worked to account for missing Americans and to restore relations. On 11 July 1995, President Bill Clinton announced the normalisation of diplomatic relations, naming McCain and Kerry among the veterans in Congress who had been able to move beyond the past. When McCain died in August 2018, people in Hanoi left flowers at the Truc Bach memorial.

What the Popular Version Gets Right

The story as it is usually told is broadly accurate: the date, the A-4 Skyhawk hit by a missile, the broken limbs, the landing in Truc Bach Lake, the five and a half years in prison, the refusal of early release, the March 1973 release, the 1996 meeting with Mai Van On and the 1995 normalisation of relations. Two points need care. On was not alone: Vietnamese sources credit him and a neighbour with the rescue. And while On’s role in pulling McCain from the water is recognised in Vietnam, the account of him pushing back the crowd comes from his own later telling; McCain’s 1973 descriptions of the beating on the shore do not mention a protector.

Sources: Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Associated Press interviews with John McCain (March and April 1973); Vietnam Air Losses database, loss of A-4E 149959; Tien Phong, Hanoi (2018); NPR (August 2018); Channels TV/AFP (26 August 2018); Public Papers of the Presidents, William J. Clinton, remarks announcing normalisation of relations with Vietnam (11 July 1995); History News Network, reprinting the Daily Mail (2008).