On June 5, 1946, he graduated with a
Bachelor of Science degree from the
U.S. Naval Academy with the Class of 1947 due to the reduced schedule still in effect from
World War II. Academically, he ranked 130th among 821 graduates in his class. His first assignment was assistant
gunnery officer aboard the
destroyer minesweeper from June to October 1946. He next served aboard the from October 1946 to February 1947, the from February 1947 to July 1948, and the from July 1948 to June 1949. Stockdale was accepted for flight training in June 1949 and reported to
Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. He was designated a
Naval Aviator at
Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, in September 1950. He was next assigned for additional training at
Naval Air Station Norfolk in
Virginia from October 1950 to January 1951. In January 1954, he was accepted into the
United States Naval Test Pilot School at the
Naval Air Station Patuxent River base in
Southern Maryland, and he completed his training in July 1954. There he tutored the
U.S. Marine Corps aviator
John Glenn in
mathematics and
physics. He was a
test pilot until January 1957. In 1959, the U.S. Navy sent Stockdale to
Stanford University, where he earned a
Master of Arts degree in
international relations in 1962. Stockdale preferred the life of a
fighter pilot over academia, but he later credited
Stoic philosophy with helping him cope as a
prisoner of war.
Vietnam War Gulf of Tonkin Incident attack jet weeks before becoming a POW On August 2, 1964, while on a
DESOTO patrol in the
Tonkin Gulf, the destroyer engaged three North Vietnamese Navy
P-4 torpedo boats from the 135th Torpedo Squadron. After fighting a running gun and torpedo battle, in which
Maddox fired more than 280 shells, and the torpedo boats expended their 6 torpedoes (all misses) and hundreds of rounds of 14.5mm machine gun fire; the combatants broke contact. As the torpedo boats turned for their North Vietnamese coastline, four
F-8 Crusader fighter aircraft from arrived, and immediately attacked the retreating torpedo boats. Stockdale (
commander VF-51 (Fighter Squadron 51)), with
Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Richard Hastings attacked torpedo boats
T-333 and
T-336, while Commander R. F. Mohrhardt and Lieutenant Commander C. E. Southwick attacked torpedo boat
T-339. The four F-8 pilots reported scoring no hits with their
Zuni rockets, but reported hits on all three torpedo boats with their
20 mm cannon. Two nights later, on August 4, 1964, Stockdale was overhead during the second reported attack in the
Tonkin Gulf. Unlike the first event, which was an actual
sea battle, no Vietnamese forces were believed to have been involved in the second engagement. In the early 1990s, he recounted: "[I] had the best seat in the house to watch that event, and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no
PT boats there. ... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power." The next morning, on August 5, 1964,
President Johnson ordered bombing raids on North Vietnamese military targets which he announced were retaliation for the alleged incident of August 4. When Stockdale was awakened in the early morning and was told he was to lead these attacks he responded: "Retaliation for what?" Later, while a prisoner of war, he was concerned that he would be forced to reveal this secret about the Vietnam War.
Prisoner of war On September 9, 1965, while flying as the Carrier Air Wing Sixteen Commander from on a mission over North Vietnam, Stockdale ejected from his Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, which had been struck by enemy fire and completely disabled. He parachuted into a small village, where he was severely beaten and taken prisoner. Stockdale was held as a prisoner of war in the
Hỏa Lò Prison (the "Hanoi Hilton") for the next years. As the senior naval officer, he was one of the primary organizers of prisoner resistance.
Tortured routinely and denied medical attention for the severely damaged leg he suffered during capture, Stockdale created and enforced a code of conduct for all prisoners, which governed torture, secret communications, and behavior. In the summer of 1969, he was locked in leg irons in a bath stall and routinely tortured and beaten. When told by his captors that he was to be paraded in public, Stockdale slit his scalp with a razor to purposely disfigure himself so that his captors could not use him as propaganda. When they covered his head with a hat, he beat himself with a stool until his face was swollen beyond recognition. When Stockdale was discovered with information that could implicate his friends' so-called "black activities", he slit his wrists so they could not torture him into confession. During the course of his captivity, due to torture, his leg was broken twice. Early in Stockdale's captivity, his wife,
Sybil Stockdale, organized
The League of American Families of POWs and MIAs, with other wives of servicemen who were in similar circumstances. By 1968, she and her organization, which called for the president and the U.S. Congress to publicly acknowledge the mistreatment of the POWs (something that had never been done despite evidence of gross mistreatment), gained the attention of the American press. Sybil Stockdale personally made these demands known at the
Paris Peace Talks. Stockdale was one of eleven U.S. military prisoners known as the "
Alcatraz Gang". Owing to their reputation as resistance leaders, they were separated from other captives and placed in solitary confinement in "Alcatraz", a special facility in a courtyard behind the North Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense, located about one mile away from Hỏa Lò Prison. They were imprisoned in windowless, concrete cells measuring with a light bulb kept on around the clock, and locked in
leg irons each night.
The Stockdale Paradox James C. Collins related a conversation he had with James Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp. When Collins asked which prisoners didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied: Collins called this the Stockdale Paradox. Both Miller and Wilber received
letters of censure. Debilitated by his captivity and mistreatment, Stockdale could not stand upright and could barely walk upon his return to the United States, which prevented his return to active flying status. In deference to his previous service, the U.S. Navy kept him on active duty, steadily promoting him over the next few years before he retired as a vice admiral on September 1, 1979. He completed his career by serving as the president of the
Naval War College at
Newport, Rhode Island, from October 13, 1977, until August 22, 1979.
Civilian academic work and writings After his retirement in 1979, he became the president of
The Citadel. His tenure there was short-lived as he found himself at odds with the college's board as well as most of its administration, by proposing radical changes to the college's military system and other facets of the college. He left The Citadel to become a fellow of the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1981. During his twelve-year tenure at the Hoover Institution, Stockdale wrote and lectured extensively. His primary focus was ancient
Stoicism and the Roman slave-turned-philosopher
Epictetus, whose lessons captured in
The Enchiridion Stockdale credited with providing him strength during his ordeals as a prisoner in the
Hanoi Hilton. Between 1981 and 1988 Stockdale also served as chair of the White House Fellows under the
Reagan administration. In 1984, Stockdale and his wife Sybil co-authored ''In Love and War: the Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam War'', which was published by
Harper and Row. It recounts Stockdale's experiences while in Vietnam; additionally, in alternating chapters, it also tells the story of Sybil Stockdale's early involvement in the League of American Families of POWs and
MIAs, which she helped to found, and served as its first chairperson. Their story was later made into an
NBC television movie under the name
In Love and War, starring
James Woods and
Jane Alexander. Stockdale was a member of the board of directors of the
Rockford Institute, and he was a frequent contributor to
Chronicles: A magazine of American Culture. ==Vice presidential candidacy==