Finding Dave Dinan: A Vietnam War POW-MIA Story
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ed Sykes shares the remarkable story of his friendship with fellow fighter pilot Dave Dinan and the decades-long effort to bring his fallen comrade home.
During the Vietnam War, Sykes flew dangerous combat missions in the F-105 Thunderchief alongside a close-knit brotherhood of pilots. One of those men was Dave Dinan, a brilliant young airman who was shot down over Laos in 1969 while flying in the secret “Hidden War” connected to the conflict in Vietnam. Dinan’s body was never recovered, and over time his family was told there was little hope that his remains would ever be found.
But Sykes never forgot his friend. Here's Ed with the story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.1 | And we return to our American stories. |
| 0:17.4 | From 1959 to 1975, the Civil War raged on in the jungles west of Vietnam |
| 0:25.6 | between the Kingdom of Laos, supported by the United States, and Loeatian communists supported |
| 0:32.2 | by North Vietnam. The hidden war saw great devastation, not only to the Lausians living in the middle of it, |
| 0:40.8 | but to Americans fighting in it as well. One of those Americans fighting was Ed Sykes. |
| 0:47.1 | Ed was the commander of the 184th Kansas Air National Guard, and is a well-regarded fighter pilot. |
| 0:55.4 | He is here to tell his story of service and a bond that was formed between him and another |
| 1:01.0 | brother-in-arms that lasted far beyond the end of the Vietnam War. |
| 1:06.7 | And by the way, his son, Bart Sykes, will be doing a reading from his father's book, |
| 1:12.7 | and Bartz is himself a former Air Force pilot. |
| 1:16.9 | Take it away, Ed. |
| 1:22.1 | I decided I was going to be a fighter pilot. |
| 1:24.6 | Pretty young. |
| 1:25.3 | I had gone to a movie, Saber Jets, with a good friend of |
| 1:29.2 | mine. It was about F-86s in Korea. And we were sitting out on the swings after that. His name was |
| 1:39.0 | Butch Paster, Frank Paster. And we were sitting out on the swings swings and we decided we were going to be fighter |
| 1:45.7 | pilots and we followed through on that but I was sort of dumb about this I thought in order |
| 1:57.1 | to be a fighter pilot I needed to be an. So I headed off to the University of Wisconsin in Madison |
| 2:05.6 | and joined Air Force ROTC, made sort of a fool of myself by being a young kid from Kentucky. |
| 2:13.6 | And the first encounter I had with a military officer, Colonel Hosman, he threw me |
... |
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