How a Navy sailor fell off his ship, played dumb — and became a Vietnam POW hero

Doug Hegdahl, pictured in captivity around Christmastime in 1968, was serving with the Navy on a warship off the coast of Vietnam in 1967 when he fell overboard – paving the way for him to become the youngest, lowest-ranking US POW at the Hanoi Hilton, where he brilliantly pretended to be a fool as he gathered intel against the Communists - (US Information Agency)

The front-page newspaper photograph was striking on the morning of April 6, 1967 — a dramatic image showing the U.S.S. Canberra firing at Communist targets from the warship’s position in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Little did those readers know – his shipmates certainly didn’t – that one of the Canberra’s most junior sailors was struggling through those very same waters that day.