Thursday, April 27, 1972
11 Days In Jungle Radios, Training Saved Flier's Life
CLARK AIR BASE, Philippines (UPI) --An unflappable U.S. Air Force navigator, rescued after 11 harrowing days in the jungles of South Vietnam's war zone, Tuesday credited his two tiny radios and his jungle survival training with keeping him alive.Weak, tired and 35 pounds underweight, Lt. Col. Iceal Eugene "Gene" Hambleton, 53, was picked up by a U.S. Navy team in a sampan April 13. Bad weather and heavy Communist fire had forced the Air Force to abandon attempts at an aerial rescue after his plane was shot down."That sampan looked like the Queen Mary," Hambleton said in a hospital interview here. Except for a broken left wrist and a fractured index finger on his left hand, Hambleton -born in Rossville, Ill., but who calls Tucson, Ariz., home -looked in good condition.Hambleton told how his plane, an EB66 jet fighter-bomber belonging to the 42nd Tactical Electronics Warfare Squadron (TEWS), was on a radar spotting and jamming mission April 2 shortly after the North Vietnamese began their offensive. The plane with its six-man crew was struck by a Russian-build surface-to-air missile at an altitude of 29,000 feet 10 to 15 miles below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)."I watched the plane go into a cloud bank and I didn't see any more chutes come out," he said. The other five crewmen are listed as missing.The navigator landed in a rice paddy right in the middle of a battle with troops shooting on both sides. He hid in a nearby tree line for the next five days, he said, eating banana stalks and berries and drinking rain water while awaiting rescue.But bad weather and Communist fire on rescue planes forced him to remain in the jungle. Military spokesmen in Saigon said seven aircraft were shot down trying to get to Hambleton."11 Days in Jungle, Radios, Training Saved Flier's Life", by (UPI) published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Thursday, April 27, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.