On September 9, 1965, the commander of the air group (CAG), flew his Douglas A-4 Skyhawk off the deck of USS Oriskany for the last time. Stockdale’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire later in the mission. The mission on which Stockdale was shot down, a bombing run over the North, took place just a little more than one year after the Gulf of Tonkin incident of August 2 and 4, 1964. That, in turn, had cleared the way for bombing North Vietnam. The retaliatory bombing raids ordered by President Lyndon Johnson were the first major step in the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam
