This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Up next, a story courtesy of the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge. Larry Spencer served

251 days as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, six days short of seven years. As one of the first 20

POWs of the Vietnam War, Larry served longer than any other Iowan.

Larry passed away on May 21st, 2022.

Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.

On February 18, 1966, James T. Ruffin and Larry Spencer, who you're about to hear from, were escorting an Air Force

reconnaissance plane over the Gulf of Tonkin.

And then a little series of things that all contribute to something bad happening take place.

Like we had an equipment problem with our radios on the airplane.

We were flying above clouds and got separated from the other two airplanes that we were with.

We got on the radio and said, hey, we got a problem.

We're not sure to this day whether anybody heard us or not.

But finally we found a break in the clouds could look down and saw that we were

over land and we knew that was a bad thing because we were supposed to be out over the water. So

we turned 180 degrees and headed east and declared an emergency and the next thing that happened

we heard a loud boom which it turns out was a

surface air missile exploding below and behind the airplane.

I can remember thinking, oh my, I'm going to be a POW.

I looked over to the side of the cockpit where I could look at the mirror up by the pilot,

and he gave me a thumbs up, which usually means that's a good sign

...