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This is the only known reconnaissance photo ever to capture actions leading to a Medal of Honor. Joe Jackson’s C-123, then an Air Force lieutenant colonel, top center, prepares to evacuate the last three men from Kham Duc in Vietnam, May 12, 1968.
Episode 2742 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about Air Force Col. Joe Jackson and his Congressional Medal of Honor award. The featured story comes from The U.S. Department of Defense website and was titled: Medal of Honor Monday: Air Force Col. Joe Jackson. It was submitted by Katie Lange, the outstanding writer for DOD News.
Lange, in her story, reported that Air Force Col. Joe Jackson earned the nation’s highest honor by rescuing three men in Vietnam in 1968, and he became a living example of military valor for 50 years after that. Unfortunately, he passed away Jan. 12 at age 95. But his story — and the famous photograph that goes with it — will live on in military pilot lore for decades to come.
Lange added this about Joe Jackson, he was born on March 14, 1923, and grew up in Newnan, Georgia. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps right out of high school in March 1941 because he said he’d always wanted to be an aircraft mechanic. He worked in that field until he happened to be on a flight where the plane caught fire. His knowledge of the plane’s mechanics helped land the aircraft, and that’s when he decided to become a pilot himself.
Jackson was commissioned as a pilot in April 1943. The rest of his World War II experience was spent training aircraft gunners, but by the end of the Korean War, he had flown more than 100 missions as a fighter pilot. As the 1950s progressed, he also became one of the first pilots of the U-2 spy planes.
He continued his military career into the 1960s and deployed to Vietnam as a lieutenant colonel.
Listen to episode 2742 and discover more about Air Force Col. Joe Jackson and his Congressional Medal of Honor award.
