Iceal Hambleton

Iceal Eugene "Gene" Hambleton (November 16, 1918 – September 19, 2004) was a career United States Air Force navigator who was shot down over South Vietnam during the 1972 Easter Offensive. He was aboard an EB-66 aircraft whose call sign was Bat 21. As the ranking navigator/EWO on the aircraft, he was seated immediately behind the pilot, giving him the call sign "Bat 21 Bravo". He survived for more than eleven days behind enemy lines until he was retrieved in a ground operation. His rescue was the longest and most costly search and rescue mission during the entire Vietnam War.

Vietnam War Hambleton switched from the Strategic Air Command to Seventh Air Force and was assigned to the 42nd Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron (42 TEWS) in Korat, Thailand as a navigator. The 42 TEWS was equipped with EB-66C/E Destroyer aircraft that flew radar and communications jamming missions to disrupt enemy defenses and early warning capabilities. While just south of the DMZ and immediately north of Quang Tri at about , the aircraft was destroyed by a Soviet-built SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

Hambleton was the only one of the three-man crew able to eject from the crashing aircraft. He parachuted into the middle of the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive and landed in the midst of tens of thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers. His eventual rescue from behind enemy lines was the "largest, longest, and most complex search-and-rescue" operation during the entire Vietnam War.

Hambleton had received water survival training at Homestead Air Force Base, Florida, and escape and evasion training and survival basics at the Pacific Air Command Jungle Survival School in the Philippines.

General Creighton Abrams ordered that no further air rescue operations should be attempted, but ordered a ground rescue operation. Hambleton was a USAF ballistic missile expert with a Top Secret/SCI clearance and his capture by the North Vietnamese Army would have been of tremendous benefit to them and the Soviet Union. and VNN commando Nguyen Van Kiet Norris would go on to become a founding member of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.

Death Hambleton died on September 19, 2004, in Tucson, Arizona, at age 85. The cause of death was pneumonia related to lung cancer, according to a family member. He was interred in Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, Elwood, Illinois.

Awards and decorations Hambleton was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal and a Purple Heart during his career. This was followed by the dramatic 1988 film, Bat*21, starring Gene Hackman as Hambleton and Danny Glover as a forward air controller. A second book, The Rescue of Bat 21, based on a large amount of declassified information, was written by Col. Darrel D. Whitcomb and published in 1998. Whitcomb was a decorated pilot, and from 1972 to 1974 a forward air controller based in Southeast Asia.

Mysteries of the Unknown - Season 3, Episode 129, Aired on May 13, 2024, did a segment recounting Hambleton's amazing escape and rescue, detailing how the US used coded messages to direct Hambleton to a safe rescue point.