TANGEMAN, RICHARD G.
Name: Richard G. Tangeman
Rank/Branch: O3/United States Navy
Unit: RVAH 1
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: New York NY
Date of Loss: 05 May 1968
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 181800N 1053800 E
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RA5C
Other Personnel in Incident: Norrington, Giles, Returnee
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK April 1997 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
REMARKS: 730314 RELEASED BY DRV
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME copyright 1977
Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret), Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and
spelling errors).
RICHARD G. TANGEMAN
Lieutenant - United States Navy
Shot Down: May 5, 1968
Released: March 14, 1973
After graduating from New York University in February 1964, I joined the United
States Navy. My initial active duty assignment was as a naval aviation officer
candidate stationed at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. I was
commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve on August 17,1964.
Upon graduation from NAO school I was assigned to Naval Air Station, Sanford,
Florida in the RA5C program. During my tour as a student I was teamed with my
initial pilot, Lt. Giles R. Norrington. We continued to fly as a crew until
three years later when we were shot down over Ha Tinh Province while flying a
reconnaissance mission over Highway 15.
During my approximate five years of imprisonment I lived with LCDR Norrington
for a total period of 23 months. I had the privilege of disembarking from the
air evacuation plane at Clark AFB with him.
My thoughts at this time were ones of overwhelming gratitude and respect for
the unselfish acts performed on behalf of the POWs and the MlAs by the
President of the United States and the American public. Although it was a time
of great personal happiness, it was also a time to remember and pray for the
many men missing in action and hope for their return.
I was deeply moved by the warmth and sincerity of all the wonderful people who
welcomed us home and witnessed our "rebirth". Seeing grown men's eyes colored
with tears and hearing women speak to me as if I were their returning son
reinforced my belief in the ultimate kindness of the American people and that
America is truly the greatest country of all. The honor was mine to be
permitted to serve my country.
As before and during my imprisonment, my thoughts revolved around my beautiful
wife, wonderful son and loving mother. My wife Linda and I were married
January 16, 1966 in Sanford, Florida. During my first cruise God blessed us
with our son Derek, born November 7, 1966. We were reunited March 17, 1973 in
Jacksonville, Florida.
During my imprisonment my faith in God, country and man was confirmed and
strengthened by the wonderful way in which my fellow prisoners conducted
themselves in the face of extreme physical and mental deprivation and
pressure. The foundation of genuine and altruistic support given us as POWs by
the American people sustained and encouraged us throughout the long years.
My present goals are centered around the hope and desire to serve my country
as a member of the United States Navy.
In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the President of
the United States and the American people for their concern, kindness and
understanding shown to my family during my long absence. However, I have one
more request of your kindness. Don't let the MlAs or their families be
forgotten. Now that we are home, please transfer the support you have shown
us, the returned POWs, to the effort of aiding the MIA families in their
search for knowledge concerning their heroic loved ones. These families still
face the pain and problems connected with the absence of their husbands,
fathers and sons. God bless your efforts in the past - and those in the
future.
December 1996
Richard Tangeman retired from the United States Navy as a Captain. He and
his wife Linda reside in Virginia.
-------------------------------------------------
Memories of Vietnam
Club Honors Ex-POW on Anniversary of His Release
By Lan Nguyen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27 1997; Page V01
The Washington Post
Navy Lt. Giles Norrington was making his 22nd reconnaissance flight into
North Vietnamese territory when communist rebels shot off the right wing of
his RA-5C Vigilante. The plane erupted into a fireball. As Norrington and
his navigator, Richard Tangeman, tried to escape, Norrington thought, "It's
taking a long time to die."
Forty-five minutes later, after dodging bullets on the parachute down,
nursing two severely burned hands and -- under the cover of a bushy gully --
communicating with U.S. pilots in a desperate bid to arrange his rescue,
Norrington was captured by armed communist peasants. The 33-year-old pilot
from Ohio would spend the next four years, 10 months and nine days in
barren, dank cells with little more than two blankets and a tin cup to hold
water.
Norrington, now 61 and living in Arlandria, was one of more than 500
American prisoners of the Vietnam War. Last week, the Baileys Crossroads
Rotary Club honored him with a surprise "welcome home" party to mark the
24th anniversary of his March 14, 1973, release. Norrington has been a
member of the nonprofit service group for more than seven years.
The Baileys Crossroads club, which also was celebrating its 20th
anniversary, reunited Norrington with his navigator and with Norman
McDaniel, a fellow POW who lives in Fort Washington. During the ceremony,
Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) praised the POWS and spoke about current
efforts to determine how many POWs were captured during the war.
"These guys paid a very heavy price," said John Hotzclaw, the Rotary Club's
president-elect. "When they came back . . . they were never given any kind
of public recognition like this. It's important that generations today learn
what happened and never forget. It seems like in every generation, we make
the same mistakes."
Norrington said he has been able to put the years of torment behind him. Yet
he remembers vivid details, from the iron shackle that chained his feet to
the facial expressions of a particularly brutal camp official who bound and
beat U.S. soldiers for military information.
"One of the things that has helped me to heal a lot is that I've been
willing to talk about it," said Norrington, who has given speeches to
students and community groups about his experience. "I'd like very much to
go back. I think it'd be interesting to go back."
Communist officials moved Norrington to five camps during his captivity,
including the so-called Hanoi Hilton, where John McCain, now a Republican
senator from Arizona, was among his fellow prisoners. POWs dubbed the place
Camp Unity, because it was the only place where U.S. soldiers and officers
were allowed to stay in large cellblocks and communicate freely. Using the
concrete floor as a chalkboard and pieces of bricks to write with, they
bided their time teaching one another foreign languages, math, even sailing,
Norrington recalled.
The POWs were given two sets of uniforms: a roughly sewn pair of shorts and
a short-sleeved shirt for summer and a long-sleeved shirt and pants for
winter. Their most prized possessions were their toothbrushes, toothpaste
and tin cups to hold water. They created a sign language to communicate and
formed secret committees to organize escapes, though none tried after a
failed attempt by two soldiers, one of whom was pummeled to death after
being recaptured.
Meals consisted mostly of what loosely could be called soup: boiled water
with pumpkin, cabbage or what the POWs dubbed "sewer greens," a foul-tasting
vegetable.
Norrington said he went through a range of emotions during his captivity.
The dominant one was guilt "about being shot down . . . and leaving my wife
and children," he said. "I felt very alone, especially during the early
period of time. Then it was a matter of realizing if I was going to survive
emotionally, I would have to quit beating myself up."
He spent the rest of his career with the Navy, retiring in 1988 as a captain
and policy director stationed at the Navy Annex off Columbia Pike. That
year, he married his second wife, Eileen O'Hickey, the Navy's first female
chaplain. Now he volunteers with the Salvation Army and is active with the
Rotary Club.
Initially, Norrington opposed the U.S. policy of normalization with Vietnam,
but he accepts it now.
"It took me a long time to get to that point," he said. "It takes time to
heal the wounds.
"We are the largest superpower on the planet. If we cannot forgive an old
enemy, there's something wrong with our system."
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