The ones that got us I just came through the side of the ship and just blew up.

I knew something was wrong but your mind getting shots a little strange

your mind just sort of refuses to acknowledge that something was going on and

so I just wanted to get more steel between me and the bullets.

50 years ago at the height of the Cold War, an American naval vessel was attacked in the icy North Pacific by the world's most secretive communist state.

The North Koreans wanted the U.S. to them that we were in their territorial waters spying on them.

The crew of more than 80 young servicemen was taken prisoner and subjected to a terrifying 11-month ordeal.

They told him that they're going to start shooting. terrifying 11 months ordeal.

They told him that they're going to start shooting one man a day, starting with the youngest

man.

Start shooting one man a day to Pete confessed.

The ship was the USS Pueblo.

Its capture was a major embarrassment for the United States

and triggered a serious international crisis.

Yet half a century on, the Pueblo incident has been almost totally forgotten.

I'm Tim Hewell here on the BBC World Service and this is the story of the

Pueblo one of very few US ships to have been captured in the last 200 years

the only commissioned American vessel still in enemy hands.

When most Navy ships go out to sea, they go on a convoy. There'll be six or eight ships with

mutual support systems and things. So if one had a problem, then the others would be there to help.

But we went out alone.

That's Bob Chika, then 23, a Korean language specialist.

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