As he neared the target, warning systems in McCain's A-4E Skyhawk alerted him that he was being tracked by enemy fire-control radar.^[93] He held his dive until he released his bombs at about 3,500 feet (1,000 meters)^[94] (he was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for this day).^[88] As he started to pull up, the Skyhawk's wing was blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile fired by the North Vietnamese Air Defense Command's 61st Battalion.^[89]

 

McCain's plane went into a vertical inverted spin.^[95] Bailing out upside down at high speed,^[96] the force of the ejection fractured McCain's right arm in three places, his left arm, and his right leg, and knocked him unconscious.^[96] McCain nearly drowned after making a parachute landing in Trúc Bạch Lake in Hanoi; the weight of his equipment was pulling him down, and as he regained consciousness, he could not use his arms.^[93] Eventually, he was able to inflate his life vest using his teeth.^[93]

 

Several Vietnamese, possibly led by Department of Industry clerk Mai Van On, pulled him ashore.^[97] A mob gathered around, spat on him, kicked him, and stripped him of his clothes; his left shoulder was crushed with the butt of a rifle and he was bayoneted in his left foot and abdominal area.^[96][93] He was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs.^[98]

McCain reached Hoa Lo in as bad a physical condition as any prisoner during the war.^[98] His captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information; they beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth^[99][100] (the only information he was required to provide under the Geneva Conventions). Soon thinking he was near death, McCain said he would give them more information if taken to the hospital,^[99] hoping he could then put his interrogators off once he was treated.^[101]

 

A prison doctor came and said it was too late, as McCain was about to die anyway.^[99] Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care,^[99] calling him "the crown prince".^[98] Two days after McCain's plane went down, that event and his status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times^[80] and The Washington Post.^[102]

 

Interrogation and beatings resumed in the hospital; McCain gave the North Vietnamese his ship's name, squadron's name, and the attack's intended target.^[103] (Disclosing this information was in violation of the U.S. Code of Conduct, which McCain later wrote he regretted, although he saw the information as being of no practical use to the North Vietnamese.)^[104] Further coerced to give future targets, he named cities that had already been bombed, and responding to demands for the names of his squadron's members, he supplied instead the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line.^[103][105]

McCain spent six weeks in the hospital,^[91] receiving marginal care in a dirty, wet environment.^[106]

 

A prolonged attempt to set the fractures on his right arm, done without anesthetic, was unsuccessful;^[107] he received an operation on his broken leg but no treatment for his broken left arm.^[108] He was temporarily taken to a clean room and interviewed by a French television reporter whose report was carried months later on CBS.^[109] McCain was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including Defense Minister and Army commander-in-chief General Vo Nguyen Giap.^[110]

 

Many of the North Vietnamese observers assumed that McCain must be part of America's political-military-economic elite.^[111] Now having lost fifty pounds (twenty-three kilograms), in a chest cast, covered in grime and eyes full of fever, and with his hair turned white,^[91] in December 1967 McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp on the outskirts of Hanoi nicknamed "the Plantation".^[112]

 

He was placed in a cell with George "Bud" Day, a badly injured and tortured Air Force pilot (later awarded the Medal of Honor) and Norris Overly, another Air Force pilot; they did not expect McCain to live another week.^[113][114] Overly, and subsequently Day, nursed McCain and kept him alive;^[114] Day later remembered that McCain had "a fantastic will to live".^[115]

 

^...McCain and other prisoners were moved around to different camps at times, but conditions over the next several years were generally more tolerable than they had been before.^[95] Unbeknownst to them, each year that Jack McCain was CINCPAC, he paid a Christmastime visit to the American troops in South Vietnam serving closest to the DMZ; he would stand alone and look north, to be as close to his son as he could get.^[149]

 

By 1971, some 30–50 percent of the POWs had become disillusioned about the war, both because of the apparent lack of military progress and what they heard of the growing anti-war movement in the U.S., and some of them were less reluctant to make propaganda statements for the North Vietnamese.^[131]

 

McCain was not among them: he participated in a defiant church service^[150] and led an effort to write letters home that only portrayed the camp in a negative light,^[151] and as a result spent much of the year in a camp reserved for "bad attitude" cases.^[131]

 

March 14, 1973 - Hanoi. John Sidney McCain III was released in almost perfect condition, - sic! - not on crutches

... he being taken by bus to Gia Lam Airport, transferred to U.S. custody, and then flown by C-141 to Clark Air Base in the Philippines