Battleground LIVE: Imprisoned, Interrogated, and Tortured by the Chinese | SHANE OSBORN - The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Good warning. You're about to enter the arena and join
the battle to save America with your host Sean Parnell.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everybody, welcome to Battleground Podcast. Today, I have an
amazing guest. I've been excited to talk to him for
a while now. His name is Shane Osborne. Shane is
a former Naval eighty aviator who extended his tour after
nine to eleven to continue flying combat mission. Shane was
assigned to the Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron one the world

(00:44):
watchers and Shane kind of had an interesting experience in
the air when he collided with a Chinese aircraft. Somehow
he managed to safely land the plane, but he along
with twenty three of his people who are on that
plane and we're surrounded by the Chinese military for almost
a month.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Shane.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh, now you're the CEO of r WH Energy, which
is a company that is just like kicking ass and
taking names, and it's Shane. It's an honor to have
you here. Thank you for giving us some of your time.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Thanks for having me, Sean, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So you got to take me back to the very
beginning and tell me about how you decided to serve
your country. I know that flying is something that is
that you've wanted to do since you were young.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah, So my mom was I was raised by a
single mom. She was director nurses at the Nebraska Veterans Home.
So after school weekends, holidays, I hung out with vets
all the time here in World War two, Korea War stories,
Vietnam obviously, and so I always wanted to serve. So
I didn't go through life wondering what I was going
to do. I knew it by the time I was
in the second grade. I was writing the papers, want

(02:00):
to fly for you, the Air Force, the Naviian. So
I was lucky enough, and I graduated high school in
ninety two, and that was the downturn, right the Cold
War ended and there wasn't a lot of plots, lot
of things. So I was lucky because we were, you know,
we didn't have a lot of money, and I was
able to get an R OFFC scholarship to the University
of Nebraska, and so that's that's how it all started.

(02:21):
And graduated in ninety six, was there when the Huskers
actually played good football they will be again soon, And
then headed off to flight school in Pensacola and was
able to live my dream.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
So so I was wondering if you went to the
Naval Academy, you know, and you know when you prep
for these interviews, like I want to know about you,
but I will I don't want to know too much
because I want to learn during the interview process. And
I just thought to myself, like I wonder if he's
a Naval Academy guy.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Because I'll tell you this, like, no, I tried, you
did what? Okay? Tell me. I was nominated to the
Senator accident the time nominated me to West Point and
I wanted to fly. I didn't even apply to West Point.
I don't know what happened with their paperwork, but they
nominated me to the wrong academy. So heartbroken. I wish

(03:12):
I could have gone on APPLIS, but it all worked
out well.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
So I don't think I could have handled I don't
think I could have handled West Point. I mean I
was an ROTC guy as well. I think that ROTC
teaches you some like very important life lessons about being
a college student and like getting to where you need
to be on time and not having somebody like putting
a finger in your chest telling you to do it,
you know, So I think that there's value in that.
But I also like when when Outlaw Patune came out,

(03:36):
it's like required reading at west Point and they've got
a class on it. So I'll go and meet with
those cadets and I see the life that they live. Man,
And I say this often, I don't think I could
do it, Like, I don't know that if I entered
the military through an academy, I don't know if I
could have made it.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
I just don't. It was they didn't. They didn't get
the college life we did. We'll just leave it back
to city, right, I mean, that's definitely a dedication. And
I remember because all my best friends in the Navy
were academy guys. We all got down to Pensalcola to
flight school and they went nuts, right, they were exactly

(04:16):
they were having a good time. Well that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Like, so we had at least in the Army and
in the infantry, because I was in the infantry. So
we would have two kinds and two kinds of West
Point officers. And by the way, like I'm not judging
at all, Like I love what I've got tons of
friends that are West Point guys, but like well now
in West Point women as well. But we had people
that would graduate that would come out that were super smoked,

(04:43):
you know, because they had just done four years of
like really tough stuff, you know, four years of basic
training essentially, and then they'd come into a unit and
already already emotionally, mentally, physically exhausted. Then he had the
other guys that were just super gung ho, and and
when they got to their unit, I do feel like
there was a little bit of like they go to

(05:04):
the infantry offs or basic course to go to their schools.
I do feel like there's a little bit of like
release there, like like they're pretty like is that.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Escaped prisoners or something.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
It's funny, Yeah, so you that's so. So you get
to Pensacola and you're flying, so like tell me, like,
I'm not a Navy guy, so I don't know anything
about the rigors of your training, Like tell me, tell
me about what flight school was like at Pensacola. And
obviously your Navy so you Navy flies rotary wing and

(05:35):
fixed wing, So how did you get selected for fixed wing?

Speaker 1 (05:39):
So so it's it's all it's all about really the
needs of the Navy is what it is. So the
week you graduate, whatever flots they have, that's what's there.
But the the the interesting thing about me is I
was in I was actually I went from Pensacola to
Corpus Christie, Texas and trained there, and I had been

(05:59):
so they were trying to meet the numbers for the year.
So they were flying me twice a day, which was rare,
and I got accelerated. But I graduated number one of
my class. And the history of the Navy is if
you graduate number one, you get your choice. And I
wanted to fly fighter jets, right. I was a top
gun kid. That wasn't you know me growing up? The
first version you know that was it had I had
the whole roll down the glasses everything. That's all I'd

(06:22):
ever wanted to do since I was five six years old.
And they had a new platform for props that it
was a King air that they just introduced. They hadn't
put a student through this airplane yet, and so they
took four of us as a test to put us
to this class. So they took four of us that
were all tops of our classes, just so it would

(06:43):
make sure it would go well. And so I was
the first guy, at least that I know of in
the history at least the last forty years, that graduated
number one in his class and didn't get his top choice.
So at first I was pretty bummed, but we all know,
you know, you get setbacks in life, and it ended
up working out for the best. So I went through
the PROP training, went through Jacksonville, and when I was

(07:06):
in Corpus after I selected PROPS, I was out with
a couple of instructors who were awesome guys, kind of
kind of odd, and they kind of pulled me aside.
So there's only two of these squadrons of the world.
Now there's just one. And they were they were like, hey,
have you ever thought of going VQ which is electronic warfare,
it's reconnaissance, and and I'm like, I hadn't really thought

(07:27):
about it, and they're like, well, we'd like you to
consider it. So this is a you know, these two
squadrons pretty much hand select who's going to come in
right and be part of the brotherhood so to speak, sisterhood,
whatever you want to call it. But and so I
got interested in it. But I speak Spanish, So there's
one squadron wouldby island watching in VQ one, and then
there's another VQ two. It's it's now in what would be,

(07:49):
but it's in Rhodea, Spain, like literally on the beach.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
And I'm like, oh, I'm going VQ two. I want
VQ two. Guess what they sent me to VQ one.
I'm like, you got me. I say, I'm going to
meet my wife over there. This is going to be great,
you know they do. All their tours are to like
suit of bate Crete and Europe.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
And you know, so with the island on the west
coast goes to Massawa, Japan, which is the northern tip
the frozen tundra of Japan, Okinawa, Bahrain. You know what
I mean. It's it's it's you know, you're covering the
important areas of the world. Don't get me wrong, but
as far as places are deployed to, they're they're not
not near as uh enticing as Souda Bay and you know,

(08:30):
Germany and things like that. But it works out, like
I said, once again, it works out.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
So the Navy, the Navy took a Spanish speaking naval
officer and instead of sending that person to Spain. They
sent him to Japan.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah. Well, we're basically beyond as north of Seattle, and
it's a fishing town and it is one of those
beautiful places on Earth if you're married. I was not.
You've got to drive an hour half to see to
even see a female like you got to go to
Seattle or Vancouver, which we went to Vancouver a lot
because this was just a little small fishing town and
they didn't particularly like us there that much. You know,

(09:08):
the local fishermen didn't care for us. So it was
it was interesting, it was beautiful, but not a place
for a young single guy to be.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
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(09:43):
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(10:05):
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(10:27):
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and career opportunities. So how did you not? So you

(10:56):
didn't get your first choice out of flight school? And
for me, if the terminology is incorrect, but you didn't
get your first after after you left flight school because
you were selected for an experimental program or something.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah. They Yeah, they had a new airframe, a new
airplane that they were going to start training, and they
didn't even have simulators for it. It's just a King
Air two hundred. But they wanted to make sure that
you know, it was successful, right, and it you know,
it all worked out. I mean I was promised my
choice of assignment for taking this on, and that didn't
that got changed because the needs of the Navy or

(11:31):
are more than the needs of Shane Osborne. Right, it
just learned at the time. You're upseven. Now I look
back on I'm like, yeah, that stuff in the military,
and you know what I'm talking about, it's not the
good days that built you, it's the bad ones. Right.
It's not getting what you want, it's getting what the
Navy needs and just taking it and understanding that you know,
there is a cause greater than your own personal want

(11:54):
of wanting to be on the beach and rode to
Spain as opposed to wid bey on on Washington. And
that's just you know, the wonderful life lessons that you
just I don't think you can get outside of the military.
Maybe there's other places you can learn some of this stuff,
but you know, going with a crew to pulling halfway
around the world and having that responsibility and taking that on,
that's just something you're not going to get in the

(12:14):
civilian world.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
I completely agree that age. No, I completely agree with you.
How old were you during all this?

Speaker 1 (12:22):
So I literally I graduated college when I was twenty one,
and I graduated flight school in literally under two years,
which is very rare. And so by the time I
was a mission commander, I was the youngest mission commander
in our squadron seventy eighty. Well it's been gosh eighty

(12:45):
ninety years now, God, I'm getting old. But history. So
I was like a brand new O three. I just
pinned it on and I was a mission commander in
charge of that airplane when my incident happened in China.
I'd only been flying as an aircraft commander for ninety
hours until the min air happened. I was I was

(13:07):
pretty young and pretty green.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Well that's crazy, because you know, you talk, you talk
about like the needs of the Navy, and you know
at that time, I mean, because you you extended your
tour after nine to eleven, and this was just when
I mean nine to eleven was was that moment that
I decided to join. So that's what drove me into service.
Got I don't come from a long line of like

(13:30):
military generals or something. I was just a kid that
saw our country attacked and wanted to get in the fight.
But yeah, did the operational tempo like because there, I
feel like we had a very different military prior to
September eleventh, and then nine to eleven happens. Not only
does it not only does it change our military and

(13:50):
the operational tempo, but it also changed our country forever.
I feel like, did you notice a big change in
the way and it's more sense of urgency or what?
Did you notice a change before and after nine eleven?

Speaker 1 (14:06):
A little bit? But the unique thing about my squadron
VQ one and the VQ two is there was only
two of them and we had to cover. We were
collecting intelligence and peace time and war time, right, so
we do combat missions, but also you got you know,
we had patches. It's that were a ripoff of Ronald Reagan.
It's said in God, we trust all others we monitor.

(14:28):
So we we really had an op tempo where we
were deployed, not going out six months and then coming
back for a year, year and a half and going
you know, we deployed. We've been deployed three hundred and
sixty five days a year and at least two or
three locations around the world. My squadron for the last
since World War Two, so our op tempo. I'm not

(14:50):
going to say it didn't step up a little. It
just changed where we were at more because we used
to kind of move around. We started completely we'll get
into this player, but it started, you know, after nine
to eleven, started oring the Far East in China, which
is ridiculous. But the fact is that we were always deployed,
and that was the cool thing about our squadern. I
I went out as a twenty six year old young

(15:11):
O three lieutenant and I was it like I would
deploy with the crew and some maintenance. I was in
charge of everything. I had no adult supermission to speak of.
There was no commanders there. They were back in with
the island, you know, monitoring things. So we'd have a site,
you know, maybe a crew in Massle, maybe a crew
in Kadena, and maybe in a crew in Bahrain, and

(15:33):
so I was in charge of that crew. I was
you know, you're setting up housing, you're making sure, you know,
everything's taken care of, the maintenance of the airplane. So
it was a really huge responsibility that was pretty cool
and unique.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
It's amazing the level of responsibility that the United States
military gives to twenty somethings. It's it's and it's it's.
I hear story after story of people like like you, Shane,
who have like like who've just given enormous responsibilities, and
like it's it's so funny. Like as a young platoon leader.

(16:06):
So in Afghanistan, I was twenty three, twenty four years old,
it was a platoon leader in charge of forty men.
Come back for six leading those guys through combat, right,
like those guys, those men, because back then in the infantry,
it's just men, but like they were, they were. It's
basically like I was the CEO of a company of
forty Basically you signed for everything. You know, it's it's

(16:29):
just you're an executive essentially. And then I come back
after three years of an experience like that, I'm promoted
to executive officer of an infantry company, which is one
hundred and twenty people. And basically the job description of
an executive officer, the second in the chain of command
of the company commander is you just basically do everything
that the company commander doesn't want to do, which is
basically everything that's not leading people in the field. So

(16:51):
if you're not if you're not deployed, you're doing basically
everything that includes like beans, bullets, logistics. But again, I
was twenty seven, and then I took an interim company
command at twenty eight, and then a battalion rear detachment
command in charge of a battalion at twenty nine. So
it's like where and then you come back to the
civilian world, Shane, and I have to admit this is
a little bit like shocking to me just how little

(17:13):
civilians truly understand how much authority and power that young
military officers have. And I often wonder, I mean, because
you're the CEO of a successful company now, Shane, but
I often wonder it is it do you say, do
you get the same sense that there is a huge
communication gap or a huge gap between you know, the

(17:38):
type of service at veterans had blows away.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
It blows me away, even with people that have like brothers, sisters,
kids in the military, just how little they truly know
about the mile.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
It's so true, you know, I mean, there's.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
The responsibility aspect. They all, they all, they all think
we act like we're in boot camp the entire time
you know, yelling orders at each other or all the time.
I'm like, oh, no, oh, that would work at all.
I'm sorry, but you know they think that, you know,
you're it's like, it's just it. But over time. At

(18:11):
first it's shocking. When I got out, I kind of
went into a depression. I didn't know what to do.
I got into the civilian world and we call everybody
vice presidents and stuffy, give everybody all these type I know,
but it could mean you're like the number two guy
at JP Morgan, or you're a nobody like I just like,
what does this mean? Now? I strongly believe you treat

(18:32):
everybody the same, so it doesn't matter final That's not
what I'm saying. It was just so confusing to me.
You know, in the military, you had a rank, you
had you had an MOS or whatever, you know, what
you did and that, and so it was pretty uneasy
to understand where you were in the food chain and
what your responsibilities were. And in the civilian world it
was it was so less structured that I've been used

(18:55):
to that structure. It just took a while to adjust
and I kind of find the civilian world pretty There's
tough challenges of just don't get me wrong, but nobody's
shooting at you, you know what I mean? And that
I think that perspective as a veteran helps me chill
out when something doesn't the deal doesn't go behin, right,
I lose a big deal that this costs me millions

(19:16):
of dollars, things like that, where most people be freaking out.
It's kind of like, Okay, that sucked. Moving on, Yeah, right,
the old saying and embrace the sun, right, just take it,
breathe it in, smile a little bit, you know, maybe
take an evening and have a few and then get
back at it. Man, I.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
It's so funny. It's amazing like you you being in
the navy, me being in the army, but our experiences
are so so similar. I just it never ceases to
amaze me how that tends to be the case of veterans,
you know. So take me back to the moment where

(19:57):
those two instructors are are coming to you and saying, like,
have you ever thought of what do you call it?

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Like?

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Electronic warfare?

Speaker 1 (20:05):
It's called yeah, it's called electronic warfare. The capabilities of
that planet's getting it's going to be getting retired.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Here which plane, Shane to eat the EP three PEP three.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
So this is a big four engine prop. When people
I tell people I flew a spy plane, this isn't
a seventy one. It's not sexy mock one. This is
a slow We called it the Skypig, and it's not
hanging off everywhere. You know, if we go faster than
two hundred and fifty knots, things start for playing and
tennis and stuff. So we're literally limited to two hundred

(20:39):
and fifty knots. It's the size of the seven thirty seven,
like a Southwest chap So it's it's a big converted airliner,
is what it is.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
So so you, first of all, you could totally and
you should tell people that you fly SR seventy ones.
I mean, like you, I think with your experience, like.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Your experience leble allergies. I keep cough out.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Oh god, Shane, it's okay, it's okay. But you should
totally tell people that because your job is the job
that you did just sounds super cool. And also the
sky Pig is like the worst nickname ever for an airplane.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Sounds ridiculous. This thing is. It's not pretty, but it
was We had a lot of cool gear on that airplane.
We can do a lot of you know, the crew
of twenty four people, that's a big crew. That is
a huge you know, that's yeah, we have we had
all we covered the full spectrum of intelligence gathering on
that thing.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
So, yeah, so you explained, explain to people what like
the mission was the stuff that you can talk about
because sure, you know you hear it's a spy plane.
But and I as a military guy, I want to
ask you about the capabilities of the plane. But of
course you might not be able to talk about that.
But like, what what was the mission? When you say
electronic warfare?

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Sure, the mission very depending on if it was wartime
or peace time. Peace time, We're just trying to figure
out how the enemy operates, right, So we're listening, we're watching,
We're detecting all types of different spec frum everything from
communications to signals to everything to just see how they communicate,
how they work. You know, we we we didn't fly

(22:16):
over obviously, we stayed out international airspace. But you know,
they would react to different sectors differently depending on where
you were at, like on the coast of China, right
the southern area operated completely differently than the northern and
so I don't want to get too specific, but that
was and then in wartime we we the fighter jets
didn't go in if us or we there's a Rivet

(22:38):
Joint RC. One th five. The air force had to
be airborne because we would we would let them know
if they were about to get shot. Basically, I'm just para.
But we knew if the enemy knew where where the
fighters were, so we would also locate things on the ground. Right,
we could pinpoint the location. So not only were we listening,
we knew you're at So like the beginning of Afghanistan,

(23:00):
they for some reason thought if it was nighttime, they
could do whatever the hell they wanted. Right, We're talking
literally the very first months of that of the war.
And it was like you know, and they would get
chatty Kathy on the radios while they were driving around
in their cones, you know. So we'd sit in and
listen in with our you know, linguists, and and had

(23:23):
to make that call good guy, bad guy, right, and
then you call it in and give them the location
and we'd say he hit this spot and they'd hit it.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Okay, So this is This is fascinating to me because
so we would we would have intel passed to us
from like Rivet Joint.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Or aircraft like you, and that was us. And by
the way, we never knew what the hell that was.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I mean, I'm just learning about it now. I mean
I've been out for Dan Bear over ten years, and
I still like because we would get this intel passed
down from us, and and we would we would like
take the intel that was passed from these airplanes and
because you know, pass on like what they were saying
and where you thought they would be, and oftentimes it's

(24:09):
it's they can one kilometer by one kilometer area, or
sometimes it's even more specific than that, and we would
we would take those locations in those eight digit grid
coordinates and plot them on our map and say, oh, man,
like this, yeah, this is the enemy and because this
is a historical ambush site and they must be there
planning an attack. So what we would do once we

(24:30):
got that intel is we would take our howitzers and
we would fire harassment and interdiction fires on those sites
after we got the intel from you, to let the
enemy know that like we know where they are and
we can monitor what they're saying. I mean, that's fascinating
that you can do that from that high up in
the air. We had people on the ground that that,

(24:50):
you know, I don't think by the way this, I
don't think I'm disclosing anything that's that's secret here. Because
the enemy knew. The enemy had their own com sect
that communication security. They would say like, for example, yeah,
like woods, they moved the wood from here to there.
They were talking about wood meant rockets. So they had
their own communications purity because they knew that we were

(25:11):
monitoring what they were saying.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, it took him a while to figure it out.
They made it was it was. It was not not
smarter on their part those first probably six to eight
months of the war.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
I'll tell you that even when I was there in
two thousand and six, this was five years after you're
talking about, we would still meet remote tribes in and
like in eastern Afghanistan that had never seen an American
And I mean there's no TVs, there's no electricity, there's
no running water, there's no cable.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
They get no news like and I mean, like if you.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Want to go back to a time when Christ walked
the earth and an Ak forty seven and a pickup
truck and at Icon Radio and that's Afghanistan. And like
these people like we would we would lace targets for
fixed wing aircraft or close airsport for jadeam or something.
And they were thinking that, like they thought that we
were like wizards, like we were calling this stuff down
from heaven on them. And I'm not even exaggerating. They

(26:06):
they thought it was magic.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
No, it's amazing how far removed they are from modern society.
You just don't even think it could exist.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
It's like it's truly we're on the ground in Afghanistan
and it was the closest thing to real life, you know,
the Flintstones meet the Jetsons, you know, because they they
would see stuff we would get out of our trucks,
you know, and our helmets or some are glasses, blistic glasses,
gloves covered from head to toe and armor, like we'd
look like we were some damn alien like climbing out

(26:38):
of a spacecraft or something.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
You know. So, yeah, it's crazy, but it's fascinating to
me to hear that. How are you able?

Speaker 2 (26:46):
How do you know? So we get intel from you,
right and we know that it's coming from higher that's
basically how that's basically how we know.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
But where how do you know where to look? Well,
I mean you've got you've got his historical stuff going on.
You've got certain methods in your scanning too, Right, you're
not always precise. So that's why we had such a
big crew. Right, we're monitoring a lot of different channel.
When I was i'd be a flying I would have

(27:16):
probably ten twelve different conversations going on and one some
in the left ear some of the right because I'm
monitoring the back that's going on while I'm flying the airplane.
Because I was the mission commander too, I wasn't just
the aircraft commander. And so you're you're hearing all these
reports and then you're hearing your your folks in the
back talking to each other as they're trying to we're
trying to verify, right, we don't just go okay, we've

(27:37):
found some people. Yeah, you know, we got to make
sure that they're bad guys and not just some you know,
poor bastard trying to get the hell out of there.
You know, at the start of the war, you know,
because a lot of people just run into Iran and
run in the pack standing to get out of town.
They didn't want, you know, and so you had to
make that determination. So it took a lot of different
We didn't want to just go up a one source.

(27:57):
We'd want to make sure we're verified. And that's why
I said. Beginning, it was just crazy what they were
saying on the radios and stuff. You know, it was
like they were just oblivious. And then they started, you know,
like you said, use some comsect on it and get
a little better about it. But those first few months,
it was like, I can't believe they just said that
on the radio, you know what I mean. It's like, Okay,

(28:21):
that's that's pretty convincing to me.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
We're moving Osama bin Laden to this address. I so
what altitude do you fly at?

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Oh jeez, we're at like twenty four thousand feet. The
plane has so many holes in it from all these
dishes and stuff attached to it. We couldn't pressurize and
get any higher. Now, the Ribbit joint was is a
seven oh seven, so they can get up in the thirties.
They could cover a lot more ground because the higher
you are, the more electrons are hitting the airplane. Right,
So the larger area you can cover and monitor. Does

(28:57):
that make sense? No, No, that's you want. Well, you know,
it's all about the curvature of the earth, right, So
the higher you are, the more it's going to hit you.
More electrons are going to hit your airplane.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
More electrons.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Yeah, and radio signals, radar, everything. This is why you fly.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
You know, I'm just I'm just a simple ground pounding
grunt like electrons.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Don't kid yourself. I'm not that bright.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Okay, So you got to tell me, you got to
tell me. So you had, like you gained international recognition.
I mean, what when you're when your spy plane crashed
into a Chinese aircraft?

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Was it a MiG Yeah, it was a J eight.
It was an indigenously produced fighter plane, but a big
one kind of like it looks a lot like the
old F four Phantom. It was that size. So it
was a big, old Cold War era fighter dead. So
we monitor constantly. Like I said earlier, you know, all

(30:03):
of our friends and foes quite frankly, you know, and
we were used to you know, we got off the
coast of China. But when this occurred, this incident occurred
April first, two thousand and one. So it was prior
to September eleventh, and Bush had just taken office. And
as you know, those guys were all hawkish as hell

(30:23):
to say the least, right, they tensions with China went
up with Jane as a man quick, right. So we
went from doing a few missions to a lot of
missions off of China. You know, we do one or
two a week, two five days a week, right, and
it was pissing them off. We would stay off the coast.
We were, you know, operating an international airspace. Don't get

(30:44):
me wrong, but it just you know, nobody just like
we freak out when the Russians come over near Alaska. Right,
It's like, now they can operate there, that's international law.
Stop making it a big deal. It's when it's unprofessional
that it becomes a big deal. Right. So they had
a particular squadron leader that was getting more and more
at reps. And like I said, I was a brand
new mission commander. This was my first deployment as a

(31:06):
mission commander. You know, I had maybe ninety hours as
a commander, and so which is not a lot when
you fly ten eleven hour missions, you know what I mean.
Just to put it in a perceptive ninety hours is
you know, I'd done some training and maybe six or
seven missions, right, not much, and so he was getting

(31:27):
more and more harassing. And you know, they this had
gone on with the Russians and the Cold War. They'd
intercept and come up and thump you, which means, you know,
they go underneath the airplane and go vertical right in
front of you and make you fly through their jetwash,
which shakes the hell out of the airplane. We were
actually used to that. But the Russians knew how to fly.
They were trained in formation training. Back then. The Chinese
didn't even teach form flying. They've come a long way.

(31:50):
This is two thousand and one. They've come a long way,
trust me. But back then they didn't even train in
their own squadrons flying formation off of each other. So
now they're coming up trying to harass us, and they're
flying off our wing, trying to fly form off a
slow plane doing like one hundred and eighty knots at
twenty four thousand feet. Well, fighter jets aren't built the
fly that slow that high, so they're unstable and that

(32:10):
was really the problem. So in the weeks leading up
to this he'd become more and more harassing. They'd come
out usually with two, sometimes four, but most of the
time two fighter jets and they just sit out there
and we'd exchange hand signals the windows and stuff like that,
and you know, it was it was so crazy. I
look back at now, that was it started to become

(32:30):
everyday life. Like literally, I'm unarmed flying a slow, lumbering
prop in the middle of the ocean, and I've got
a fighter jet with missiles on. It threatened me, you know,
on a daily basis. And so this day we were
literally done with the mission. We were like ten minutes
from going home. We get in, we get we get

(32:52):
instructions that we're going to be intercepted, and so I said, okay,
we're staying on because that's when you collect good intel, right,
they're talking into their base, you're figuring out what's going on.
You're going to see their tactics, et cetera. So instead
of just running, I stayed. That's, you know, that's my call.
Some would say that was aggressive. I don't think it was.
I think it was my damn job. And so we

(33:15):
stayed and this guy came up and this time, instead
of staying off my winging like forty fifty feet. He
came up and he was in between my props like
three feet away, and I'm like, what in the hell.
So I'm calling back to my navigator, going check our
position because I thought we were screwed up and we're
in their airspace? Do you know what I mean? I mean,
this was like, this ain't good. So I immediately called back,

(33:38):
going you know, nab to Regina Kaufman. She was We
called her the pocket Nab. She was about five foot tall,
so we called her pocket Man and and she's like, no,
we're way, We're not even. And I said okay. So
he comes up twice and one time he stalled underneath
me lost controlled flight fell off. So they turned away

(34:01):
and I'm like, okay, they're turning away. It's time to
go home, right And I'm thinking, oh my god, this
is I knew that right then. The President would know
about this in about two minutes. That's how serious this was.
So I'm turned around, headed towards Okinawa. I'm starting to
speed up to go home, because when we're on station,
we go as slow as we can to say gas,
so we can stay there longer. Right, So I'm speeding up.

(34:23):
I got the autopilot on. All of a sudden, I
get a call from the back and they said, here
they come again. And I'm like, what in the hell
is this guy doing because they usually came once, stayed
a while, messed around, and left right now, this was
the third intercept of this flight, which for me had
never happened. I'm not saying it never happened before, but

(34:43):
not to me. And so the third time he came in,
he came from behind us too fast, and he tried
to slow down by pitching his nose up, and he
went right into my left prop, so where his tail,
you know, meets his fuselage or the airplane right there,
my left far left engine cut him in half. It's

(35:03):
like the best way to describe it as if you're
a redneck like I am, it's like it's like doing
one hundred miles an hour down a gravel road and
hitting walk forward. That's the best way I had to
describe it. If you've ever done drive driven gravel road,
you know at that point you're just along for the ride.
You hope it stays on the road. And so as
it cut his plane in half, my nose flipped violently

(35:23):
to the left, obviously because my wing had just been impacted.
His tail broke off, tore through my aileron which turns
the airplane, tore a hole through that, and then his
nose broke apart, hit my nose and tore my nose
completely off of the airplane. And next thing I know,
we're inverted in it were we were in an inverted
die for almost two miles. Are you in the airline?
You know, the planes exploded and there's you know, I

(35:45):
had and I just thought were dead. And I look down,
I'm looking, you know, I'm looking up at the ocean,
and I see his plane, half of it, the front fuselage,
with like a two block flame bursting out of the
back of it. You know, He's going straight towards the ocean.
And I was like, man, he's you know, he's going quick.
And I realized we were falling at almost the same rate.

(36:06):
You know, that's my reference point. I saw him punch out.
He literally asked for permission to eject. This is the
kind of government. This guy's going down in flames and
he's calling his commander to ask for permission to eject.
It's insane. That probably I probably should have just said that,

(36:27):
but I did anyway. So we were falling at this
rate and I'm like, I'm trying to get the plane
right side up. And I finally got it right side up,
and we're still in a nose dive. But I knew
it just it was taken full right, right righter to
hold the plane up. But I just had this feeling
of don't pull, don't pull, don't pull, And it was
God plain and simple. And I'll tell you why in

(36:49):
a minute. So we started out twenty four thousand feet.
I got the plane somewhat out of the diet at
about seven thousand feet. So that's a long that's a
long drop. And I can't even I can't believe the decompoy.
We had explosive decompression. So there's winds screaming through the airplane.
There's cables that were torn off when the nose was departed,
their slapping the wind screen. My left engine, that prop

(37:13):
is out there. It just didn't cut him in half.
And so now that engine had obviously failed and the
prop went flat, so it's out their windmilling. It's like
tying a parachute to your left wing. Aerodynamically, speaking, it's
causing that kind of force. So I'm holding this and
I'm a big guy. Took it. Tore my shoulder apart.
Holding this airplane up. It took us thirty five minutes,
and so I knew we had specific instructions depending on

(37:36):
the target country of what we're supposed to do in
an implight emergency. And back then we pulled our carriers
into China. Still like there was a lot of controversies
laterally saying, oh, why didn't you crash into the ocean.
I'm like, I had specific directive orders to destroy the
equipment and land and that's what we did. So now
the crew in the back, they've been pinned to the
floor and as Inverdant died and I'm calling back to

(37:58):
him saying, one, get your parachute on to activate the
destruction checklist. So they're opening up the emergency exits over
the wings and they're chopping up the gear and chucking
it out. In the meantime, the other finer jet rolled
on our six and asked for permission to shoot us down,
and they, thank god, told him no. And so you know,

(38:20):
I'm trying to hold this plane up. I've got two
of my four engines damaged, no nose, and my tail
was really acting weird. I couldn't get the forces out.
I had to hold force onto it. Usually you can
trim it out. I don't want to be too technical,
but when I'd landed and later infected the airplane, there's
a wire that goes from the very tip of the

(38:41):
of the roof of the cockpit to the tail. The
front had torn off and it had wrapped around my tail. Okay,
so I had a wire jammed in an elevator which
makes the plane go up and down. Not good. Well, later,
when I was back the people that took the airplane apart,
one of the engineers I was getting ready to go.
I was actually one of them on an instructor. I
had two students going to fly. This is months later.

(39:04):
Comes out, he says, hey, the ten osband I took
apart in your plan. I said, great, I'm going to
go flying from the top of it back. He goes,
you know you always complained about that wiren't your tast
And I said yeah. He goes yeah. When we unraveled it,
the elevator fell off the airplane. That wire wrapped around
my tails was keeping me up in the air, so
we were calling may days, They're not answering us. We
have to come in. And I didn't want to fly

(39:25):
over the top of the city because this plane's disintegrated,
and I didn't want to kill a bunch of people
if we came apart. So I had a maneuver. Now
I knew where every airbase is on the east coast
of China. I'll just leave it at that right, So
I knew where I was going, and it was the
exact airbase where these guys were out of. So we
came around, but by then I lost my altitude, so
I didn't have any air speed. They were torn off,

(39:46):
so all we had was the navigator calling out our
GPS speed. But my flats were damaged. I had two
engines out of the four, and I didn't even know
if my landing you were going to come down because
he hit my nose. I didn't know if my nose
it was going to come down. I couldn't dump fuel miaged,
so I'm like twenty five thousand pounds overweight. So we
ended up touching down at over one hundred and eighty

(40:07):
knots because the plane wentn't flying slower you normally landed
about one fifteen. So now we're overweight, we're landing, you know.
And so it took everything I happened to get that
plane stop before it went off the end of the runway.
And so, you know, you touch down and you're like,
holy crap, the good Lord just stepped in. Clearly this
wasn't this wasn't mine and the other skill right, you know,

(40:30):
the engineers, everybody did a great job, but there's more
involved here. And so you know, you're you're just your
adrenaline as pumping as you know it exactly. It's just
it's like being in a fire, you know, the adrenaline
is maxed out. And now I'm looking around and I
pull over to the side of the runway. Up comes
to troop carriers and a bunch of guys with a
KA forty seven surrounding my airplane. I'm like, gosh, yeah,

(40:54):
I wish I was just going to the officers club
to have a drink right now. I'm not going to
deal with this shit, you know. And so we made
sure we were destroying any of the last radios before
we got a satellite call out, and uh, and then
I you know, I didn't want to get anybody killed.
So I took everybody off the airplane at gunpoint and
then Alan started sean. That was the flying I'd been
well trained for. You know, we pulled it off. The

(41:18):
crew did a great job. But now you know, the
interrogations began and they isolated me. Was out of the commander.
So they basically kept me awake in a stool for
about eight days trying to break me. And a funny
side story is that I hit it. I hit it
from the Navy. But I've had sleep at me all
my life, and so back then, I when I got tested,

(41:40):
when I got the Navy, they said, you're sleeping about
an hour a day. That's all the sleep you're getting.
You're functioning. We don't know how you're doing it. But
here here you go. Here's here's a seapap. But I've
had one since I was like thirty two years old.
It's crazy. It's really great when you're in the dating
sceneing hold on, honey, let me put on my seat.
But the uh, they got a bit married now, but

(42:01):
but so so they were very intense, right and people think, oh,
were you really scared? What you knew? They I'm like
this is the Chinese. They're gonna do whatever they want.
I later found that the military cut off communications with
Beijing said we got this, we'll call you later, literally,
which I didn't know at the time, and I and

(42:22):
I wondered because we then got moved later when that broke.
But for a while, basically the Chinese Navy, their commander said,
I don't want to hear it. I don't want to
hear from you guys. I'm gonna I'm gonna break these guys.
And so that you know that changes your job, not
from just surviving, but my job was to protect my crew,
and so no matter what they threatened me with, and

(42:43):
no matter what they said, I knew that, you know,
it was my job to protect them, and that's that's
what I did. So the crew stuff together. I was isolated.
They went on a three day hunger strike, so they
were able to at least see me at meals, and
they knew they were gonna have to kill me if
they were going to get to my crew. So I'm
very proud of the fact that ninety percent of the

(43:04):
crew except the officers, they went through one interrogation for
twenty minutes, with two of them in a room, so
you got your buddy next to you. And so that's
about the most, you know, the best accomplishments of all that.
It wasn't aviation. It was protecting a crew and making
sure everybody you know, got home intact.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
How I have so many questions I've never heard. Look,
I've been in some crazy ass situations, combat situations, life
and desk situations, more firefights than I can possibly recount,
but I have never heard anything like this ever. And

(43:41):
it's like something that you'd see out of a movie,
you know, I mean, honestly, how.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Did you do? The funniest thing is is I did
the book Sean right. Lionsgate was going to do the movie.
They wrote a script and the Chinese killed it. They
pulled it because they fund Hollywood. Yeah, well that's exactly right.
I still can't go there. They still consider me a

(44:07):
murder and a spy.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
That is complete, That is complete bullshit. That that that Hollywood,
lions Gate, that they killed this project. First of all, Oh, they.

Speaker 1 (44:18):
Would deny it, but I got I got told by
somebody who you know. Well, of course it makes it
makes what we hear. You hear the stories all the time,
So of.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Course you know, the people that are watching and listening
to this, to this program are gonna they completely get it.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Of course, this is how it is.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, China. And that's why that's why a lot of
these Hollywood production studios like are afraid to push back
on China because like that's a significant portion of their revenue.
You know, absolutely bullshit. I I how did you How
did you know not? You got twenty three people on
the aircraft? How did you know not? You said it

(44:53):
was a god thing? But how did you know not
to pull?

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Said you were? You know, I just my guts. We
were in such a heavy dive. I was just like
I was looking out at the horizon. I'm like, I
got I got some ount to too, and I was
just thinking, you know, the air gets thicker the lower
you are, so you get more control of the aircraft.
When you're up high, the air spin, so aircraft are

(45:17):
more unstable. And I was just like, I got to
get down lower, right, I gotta get down lower. And
I don't I don't really, you know, it was just
I don't know what it was, but but I just
had this feeling of don't don't force it, you know,
just let this thing come out. You know, you're right
side up, you're coming out slow. But I took it
really slow. I mean, could I maybe pull you know,
if the tail wasn't damage, I could have probably got

(45:39):
out of that diet by thirteen twelve thousand feet. But
something is my gut just said, don't don't force it.
You got you got plenty of otitude.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
And I knew.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
I knew I was gonna have to go in. And
people like, well, could you make it back? I'm like,
good lord, this thing was a bad shit, I would
say the worst.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
So I was going to ask you, were you able
to talk to your command throughout all of this?

Speaker 1 (46:02):
We we yeah. They called back and it was it was.
It was. It was the middle of the night there,
and so it was just a watch standard in Hawaii
and this poor guy is getting a call and it
was on April. It was on April first, like, so,
so a few people are like, is this some stupid
April fool? Oh God, which I don't do Aprile Fuels

(46:24):
fool jokes. My all my family knows, don't do the
Aple fool joke.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
It's got to be some private or something, right, it
has to be some private like yeah, just the guy.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
He's taking this call, and he said, Tom, can you
can you hold for about five minutes? I need to
call again. We're like, we can't hold. We're a gunpoint here,
you know what I mean. We got to shut down.
So you know, I'm sure that you know that guy
had a rough day, to say the least getting that call, right,
but we got the information out, We let everybody know
we were alive, you know, and then and then had

(46:55):
to just destroy the radio.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Okay, so you told me also that your crew were
they were throwing radios out of the plane as you're crashing.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
The crypto gear. The crypto gear in the area. We
have metal suitcases, and they took an axe and they
punch a hole in it and throw it to the
body of the ocean. You know that you're never gonna find.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Well, and if you do, it'll be dissolved, all right,
But how the hell are they doing this when they're
I mean, because presume I don't have never been in
a situation like that.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Once I got the plane straight and level, you know
what I mean, it was still rough, but we were
we were upright. It was after we were out of
a dive, obviously, that they started doing this. We had
It was thirty five minutes from impact to whom we land.
That's crazy. It wasn't quick.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
How did you How did you land this thing?

Speaker 1 (47:37):
You know, we good crew. The plane held together. I
can't believe that thing held together. The damage it took,
the things, the truck. And you know, if people said, well,
what if it would have been a female pott? And
I had three females on board who did off. One
was one was my flight engineer, one was the navigator,

(47:58):
and one was the one of the heads of hell
on the back. And and uh, you know, I I
said female or not? I said, there's ninety percent of
the pilots. I know. It wouldn't have been strong enough
to hold it. The force it took. I mean I
back then, I benched like three eighty That's insane. I
was a truck, you know what I mean. And it
tore my shoulder apart holding it. I that much force

(48:22):
for that long. I mean, that's total adrenaline, right, you
know those strength sides too, you can do but but
you know, how long can the adrenaline last? Right? And
so you know, I obviously had my copilot helping me
hold it. It wasn't just me. Of initially it was,
but then and my co pilot's a big dude too,
so I mean it it was, it was. It was.

(48:43):
It was the right crew in the right place. And
and I and I don't say it lightly, I mean
God stepped in and I made some deals sitting sitting
in a Chinese person with the Good Lord, and I
think I've held to him.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
I I'm absolutely stunned by this. I mean, I remember
this happening, by the way, and I couldn't believe it then,
but to hear it personally from you now, it's just
it's I've never heard anything like this. And so you
get off the aircraft and there there are Chinese troops

(49:17):
with AK forty sevens. I mean there's AK forty sevens
or at the high ready are they are they? Are
they aimed? Are they aimed at you?

Speaker 1 (49:23):
A few of them were a few of them were.
And then they pulled them back. They and they their
commander came up. They were as scared that we were
there as we were, you know what I mean, they
set as either They're like, what the hell is going on? Right?
And so the commander came up that was there and
he spoke English, and he asked me if we were armed,
and I assured him there were no weapons, because weren't
allowed to have weapons. That's international law for reconnaissance aircraft.

(49:46):
We're not allowed to be armed. And so I assured
him we had no weapons. And then and then they didn't.
They weren't pointing at us anymore, but they were they
were clearly wanted us off. When we were in the airplane,
I left the engines run him so they couldn't come up. Right,
You're not going to walk up to an airplane of
the props, right right. And that was while we were
getting the calls out. But that was when they were
getting really nervous, and they were and I'm like, I

(50:06):
don't need some young shithead popping off and shooting shooting
one of us, right, you know, There's just there's no
point in it. And so, you know, then when it
was time we got to the airplane, I assured them
we weren't armed, and uh, you know, so they took
us in and put us in a bus. And then
it's so funny because I you know, you remember things

(50:28):
and you forget some stuff. But I thought we'd walk
somewhere and I found out later that we took a bus,
and you know, just little things when your mind's just
at a heightened sense, so to speak. And so you know,
in those interrogations, they'd read like an hour of how
horrible America is and how I'm going to jail the
rest of my life, and we could be you know,
they can't guarantee that we're going to make it out

(50:49):
of here a love and crap like that, you know,
and and so you kind of after days get you know,
get used to it, you know. So then they'd like
they take me back to a room and they'd let
me fall asleep, and then they startle me and wake
me back up right And after a few days you
get pretty fricking jumpy, you know what I'm talking about.
When you're in the field and you're exhausted, you know,
trigger happy, you get, so to speak, like anything startles you.

(51:11):
So I just guard that wore these taps on his
shoes and walk around my room and hawk loogi's and
sit them in the trash can and walk around and
on taps and just piss me off. And I remember,
like day six, I'm hallucinating. I'm playing cards with my
dead grandma talking to her openly, and and he woke

(51:32):
me up and like I said, they'd let me sleep
for like fifteen minutes and then you know, joltchit and
he woke me up. And I remember thinking because I
had my own room because I was isolated for my crew,
and I was like, there was a closet in this room,
and I was like, I'm going to go behind this
little bastard. I'm going to break his neck and I'm
going to hide him in that closet and I hope

(51:53):
they don't find him until I get out of here.
And that is when I scared myself because I was
ready to kill this guy and that would have not
been good, as we all know, you know what I mean.
And I was like, what and the fuck are you doing?
You need to get your shit together, and so I
just I prayed hours anytime I wasn't being interrogating. While
I was interrogate, i'd pray. And then when they talk

(52:13):
to you because you're losing your mind, instead of trying
to answer them with bullshit, I would start talking about
Kentucky Fried Chicken and could they go get us some food?
And I'd be willing to pay for it, you know
what I mean, I just totally Or I would talk
about they'd be like, what about your systems? And so
I'd start talking about the pedo tube, which is what
tells you how fast the airplane's going, you know. So

(52:34):
they'd start taking notes like they were getting some secret
crap and I'm told and you know, after a while,
I think they started to respect. I know they did
at the end because the two commanders, the two main interrogators,
came up and did picks with me once they were
releasing me, saying you clearly care about your people, right
because I wasn't. They would have to kill me. They
knew it. And so once you threaten somebody like they're saying,

(52:57):
you know, they would blow smoke and my face and
I hate cigarettes. I hate them. So that's one of
the things they do to keep me awake, because they
their guards would take breaks and just sit there and
smoke and blow smoke in my face. But they, you know,
they made these threats, and once you don't follow through
at those threats, then I knew it was a metal game,
and I own knew the right. You know, if you

(53:18):
say you're gonna take me away and put me in
a jail on your don't you say you're gonna you know,
you're gonna threaten to hit me. You're gonna do this
if I don't start talking and you don't do it. Well, now,
the advantage is mode, so to speak. So they tried
changing tactics and then I'll stop. Like day nine, so
the rest of the crew hadn't men interigatd They're just
boarding their rooms with a roommate, right, freak it out,

(53:40):
but at least not being interrogator. So they tried to
do it a crew interrogation. After we ate and we're
sitting there and I have my head, my other number
two officer, and then my senior enlisted guy, guy named
Nick Mellows, who is I was twenty six at that time.
He'd been in the Navy twenty eight years. He's a
Greek dude, larger than life. You would love this guy.

(54:05):
And they're reading all this stuff that they've been reading
to me every time they interrogate me, you know, and
Nick Mellows has a temper to say the least. Right,
He's a big Greek dude. He's bald headed, he talks
two inches from your face. Every other words, the F word,
but everybody loves it. I mean, he can insult the
hell out of you and you don't care. And so

(54:26):
he's getting pissed, right, He's starting to get mad. I'm like, oh,
I can't have him lose in his temper because if
he loses it, this could be bad. Right. So they're
reading this and he's starting to get physically angry. So
I We're sitting at a table. So I just reached
my right hand down and sitting next to me, and
I start rubbing his inner thigh and he's looking at

(54:48):
me like, what the hell? Do you know what I mean?
I started rubbing his give him a few grazers and
he chilled out. After that, he was like, what the hell.
We still laugh about that to this day. I had
to de escalate this situation.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
I can't what is going through your mind during those
eight days in captivity? I mean, how are you? I
mean you start, you know, tell me about the slow
deterioration of what that was like, because I know, you know,
you start strong and they're throwing all these threats at you.
But over time, yeah, you know, your sleep deprived, your

(55:22):
mind starts playing tricks on you. You start like likes
you said, you start like losing your mind.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
It's a mental it's a mental strength game. And it
was horrible, but it taught me everything I needed to
know about myself, if that makes sense, you know what
I mean. Yeah, it was intense. Did you ever has
twelve days? And it was a long time. I thought
we were gonna be there a lot long twelve days.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
It is a long time.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
That's it is a long time. I was telling I said,
they'll sit in a closet in the dark for six
hours and then come talk to me. You know, don't
even have to have anybody messing with you. Just go
sit in a closet for six hours. You can't sleep,
stay away, can just sit there?

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Do they Did you go through any like seer training
like we had?

Speaker 1 (55:58):
We had? Yeah, we that we all have to go
through SERI training and that was some of the best
I remember taking that training. And there, you know, they
put you out in the cold and we were we
almost got canceled in the middle of winter in Maine, Brunswick, Maine,
and they had a couple of guys that got hypothermia.
And then they capture you, right and they literally smack
the shit out of you. They put you in a box,

(56:19):
they interrogate you. You know, they do spress positions and
and uh and uh, I got hit pretty good. It
messed my job for a couple of years. A big
dude popped me and I mouthed off, I was being
a dipshit young idiot and uh, you know, so he
let me know who was in charge real quick. And
I remember the time going, this is just some bullshit

(56:41):
military harassment, what I mean. But the one thing they
did was they did I'm not going to get into
the techniques, but they do certain things where you screw
up and they're like they did something, and they said, okay,
you need to sign in here. So I signed in right,
and then later they showed me it was like a confession.

(57:01):
It was a piece of you know, it was folded
in a way that I didn't know, but it was
a science confession, right, And I'll never forget it because
it embarrassed the ship out of it. Mm hmm. I mean,
and uh, you know, it was one of I just
I just read John McCain's book before that, and so
this is all going on. I'm like, hey, this ain't
you're six, this ain't you're a and I always just
thought to myself, the blood's not going to go thin

(57:23):
on my watch because and and I have very mixed
feelings on John McCain politically, I'm not a fan. But
he had a he had a saying that that I
always remembered, and he said, it's all about when you
get home and you're looking at your buddy across the bar,
knowing you did it right. Does that make sense? Yes,

(57:46):
it's it's it's it's about being able to live with yourself.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
That's it makes complete sense to me. I mean all
that we were focused on, like all the politics and
the you know, the bullshit foreign policy stuff like when
you're in you know, boots on the ground in Afghanistan,
all that stuff goes away and the only thing that
matters is making sure that you don't let the person
next to you down.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
And so I can absolute pletely get it.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
And oh and for just so people are tracking see
your survival, evasion, resistance and escape correct like it's been
a long time.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Yeah, it's pow trap. They teach you how to try
to get away, and they teach you how to act
in the in the code of conduct. If you get caught.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Did you did you harken back to any of that training.
I mean sometimes sometimes I was going to say, sometimes
it just happens like unconsciously, you just.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Do yeah, and I and the and there. You know,
I would have I would protect my crew anyway. But
half that crew were special assigned folks that are brilliant
but not necessarily the same military training. Does that make sense. Yes, yes,
they're linguists, they're there, These are not These are not Marines.

(58:51):
I had a marine on board, but these are not
you know, you know what I'm saying. So I was
really careful. And the funny thing about it is usually
when I'm flying Vietnamese to send Americans in the back, right,
or you know, I ran I got some Persians on board. Right.
We only had one Asian person on this airplane, and
he was the inplight technician, so he was Filipino. They

(59:14):
were convinced he was Chinese. They kept screaming at him
in Chinese and he didn't speak a word of it.
So it was one of those the you know, the
diversity of the crew was there, but it wasn't there
was There were no Chinese people on board, so they
couldn't figure out who did what, and so that really
helped us and being able to just kind of keep

(59:34):
him at arms distance so they couldn't just focus on
the four Chinese guys or gals on the airplane and
start getting after him, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (59:40):
Yeah, oh god, that is that is crazy. So how
did you find out that it was over and you
were going to make it home?

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Like? How did that? How did that news break to you?
How are you told? They did a group They did
a group meeting. They read the whole thing that you're
you're a spy and you're a murderer and you're you know,
blah blah blah, and in the spirit of you know, goodwill,
you'll be released. And I was kind of like, don't
get your hopes up. This we don't know yet.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
And then.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
They did all the picks. You know. That was when
I knew and we might had interrogators that have been
putting the screws to me for twelve days came up
and were taking individual pictures with me. I was like, okay.
And so then we got out and we had probably
a I don't know, four mile drive to the airport.
So they put us in vans. They had a soldier

(01:00:31):
or a police officer every four feet on both sides
of the road the entire trip to the airport. We
pull up and they wouldn't let a US military aircraft
come get us. So it was a Continental jet. And
at the top of the at the top of the
ladder is my skipper, my commanding officer, Mike Paguilarulo Pegs,
who's like six foot five, mustache German dude. You know,

(01:00:53):
he's standing up there just grinning, and I'm like, oh,
And one of my favorite picks is the pick they took.
We all got our own seats on the airplane. Open
rose right, we're tired. The second I got the call
we were in international airspace. My body shut down, shut down.
There's a great pick that I love that I got
framed where my eyes, my face is just you know,

(01:01:15):
like I was finally safe and so you know, you
flip the defenses off and body needs some rest, to
say the least. They found me they were doing debrief.
I said I was going to the restroom. Apparently they
found me like four floors away, were rolling around this building.
I didn't know where the hell I even was, you know,

(01:01:36):
So it was it was a great day. And the
funny thing is, at the time, I didn't even know
if I'd ever be able to tell the story. I
didn't know if anybody knew. What we did was so
secret that I couldn't even tell people in the Navy
what I did, you know, So it was I knew
it was obviously public. When we landed in Glatman, there
was all these TV crews and I was like, okay,
life just changed. I was literally going to go apply

(01:01:58):
for the CIA, and you know, it was going to
make that transition, and that I knew was blown. So
at the pile was kind of like, shit, that was
kind of my career path here and now this now
I got to go talk to cameras, you know, and
what I'm and that was what amazed me. And then
September eleventh hit. You know, we did all this roll
Wind tour and there was all this attention and I

(01:02:21):
just I was back flying three weeks later. I made
him put me back into cocking because that was the
only thing that cleared my mind was getting back in
the air. And so I'm flying on an instructor, I'm
doing the you know, doing the speaking tour, that kind
of stuff. For the Navy, and you know it's probably
September eleventh, so I was the you know, the fifteen
minute guy, right. And then the weekend September ninth, I

(01:02:44):
got invited back to Nebraska. Nebraska was playing Notre Name
for the first time in thirty years or forty, you know,
And I got to do the coin toss in September ninth,
got to bring my crew out. It was one of
the best weekends of my life. Wow, to say the least,
it was so cool. If you're a Husker. What better.
I flew home and I'll remember my mom because I

(01:03:06):
was on the West Coast. My mom calling waking me up,
bawling and said, somebody hit the towers, and what are
you talking about? And I thought it was just bad weather.
You know. When I heard about the first one, I'm
turning on the TV watching it. The second I saw
the second one go in, I'd already spent over two
years in the Middle East collecting intel. I knew who
did it, I knew what it was. And I was

(01:03:27):
getting ready to transfer out of my squad and I
went into my skipper and I said, you I'm staying.
We're going to have to figure out OPSEC right, because
I was such a high viz guy, you know, sending
me over to the Middle East. There was they caught
a couple of crews filming me, you know, people filming me,
trying to monitor me, and I'm sure they wanted my
head on a platter and had been a great trophy
for him. But you know, flying those first missions in

(01:03:50):
tef Cant, I would have never forgiven myself. If I
wouldn't have been able to go, you know what I mean,
it would have haunted me the rest of my life.
And so I was. I flew over three hundred combat
hours two days to kick that off that line.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
I mean, that is it's stunning to me that after
what you went through in Chinese captivity, really, I mean,
there's no other way to say it, right, like, did
they did they? Did you get like a I guess
I don't think did you get like a prisoner of
war medal? Because they you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Know, they're there there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
There was talk of it and the politics said, because
this wasn't a it wasn't like a war, right, but it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Would qualify under it would would it would technically qualify
because of the duress we under. They changed it after Iran, right,
because we weren't at war with Iran, right, all those
people you know, But I didn't. I don't, I'm not,
I don't, I don't. Just don't give a ship about them.
It never could I have pursued it. Yeah, who cares? Well, right,

(01:04:52):
I'm here. Yes, we all made it back. We did have.
We did have one crewmate take his own life a
couple of years later, sad Deal. The Navy really left him.
He gave him some mental health issues. He had some issues,
and they literally because he was struggling mentally, they took
him and sent him to be a seer trainer, teach

(01:05:13):
pow training. What the hell, I don't know, right, he's
struggling with it. And that's the last place he sent
the guy and then he took his life. And his
name is Brandon Funk was a great guy, guy, brilliant.
I don't even know how many languages that kid spoke. God,
sad deal. But we got everybody home. And that's the point.

(01:05:33):
So the metals don't mean shit.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
No, they don't. They don't. And you learned that real
quickly when you get home. That all the metals in
the world.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
I'm just happy to be here ribbons, right, I'm just
happy to be here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
I mean because wait, so you you got the I like,
you got the Distinguished Flying Cross. That's a huge deal. Yes,
Like that's so. That's at the time I was, I
was the only person flying in the Navy that had Yeah,
so they just put it into perspective like the Army awards,
the Distinguished Service Cross, which is like what like Major

(01:06:06):
Winters got during World War Two? Uh, you know, that's
the second highest award for valor or second highest award
period in the whole country in the arm Is that
the same for the Navy, Like the only thing hire
is the Medal of Honor.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
It would be one no, it would not no, no,
it'd be one step below that, but it's still very high.
I mean, it was an honor to get it, like
the crew got air metals. I don't know, that was
kind of bullshit, but whatever. They wanted to give me
the Navy Cross, but it has it can only be
given during combat, and we weren't at war with China.

(01:06:39):
So that's why I was to the DFC, which is fine.
Like I said, I can't this.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Your story is unbelievable. I mean, do you do you
do you struggle with some of the I mean, I
can't imagine going through eight days of out of torture
and not waking up in the middle of the night
sometimes and be honest, you know, no, Yeah, and it's
gotten better.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
I mean you know that to turn four nine a
long time ago, and I've I've really, I've really I
these days for a lot of years. They I mean
they call Simon's angry Osborne, right, I mean, I was
definitely a guy, and then they called me sugar later
because they say I sugarcoat everything, which I do not.
But I've really, I've really chilled now. And there's and
and there's one. I you know, I realized you can

(01:07:20):
only control what you can control. So I'm a big
Marcus Aurelia stoic fan. That's helped me find peace. And
I just send every day at least a half hour
reading the Bible, and it's brought me so much peace.
I've always been a religious guy, don't get me wrong,
but later in life I was struggling so much with
the nightmares and that being pissed off about you know,

(01:07:43):
I still get a little jumpy. I definitely don't want
fireworks going off behind me. You know, there's some things
that aren't just gonna go away. But I've really found
a way to kind of I guess that's my way
of coping with it and just kind of letting go
and realizing all everything. I think losing that Senate race hell,
to me, that was a pretty big defeat for me.
When I lost, just kind of realized, you know what,

(01:08:06):
you're not You're not going to win everything you go after, right,
just just roll with it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
I mean, in any sane world. And I can't tell
you how many people that I've said this to on
this show that have tried to run for office that
that are freaking national heroes, and you you are one.
I know that you probably hate to hear that, but
I've never heard a story like yours. And you should
have walked into a damn Senate seat.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
But you know, like I know when I when I ran,
and I don't want to speak for you, Shane, but
when I ran, like I went into it like wanting
to make this country a better place, wanting to give
our kids a country that's rich with opportunity, the same
country that we grew up in, only better. And you
just realize how many terrible people on both sides of

(01:08:54):
the aisle are in are in politics, and it's it
really discouraged you when you get a look behind the
curtain and look, I don't I don't know. I don't
even want to get into Trump or how people feel
about Trump, but like what he he exposed that there
really is a swamp there and it exists. They're entrench

(01:09:16):
bureaucrats with very little life experience outside of the government.
And many of the elected officials.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
These people they.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
Love the title of being a member, of being a
representative or a senator. They think it's cool. They like
the authority that comes along with it in the power,
but they're not there to do a job. They're not
there to make the world a better place. And that
that is so concerning to me. And it's unfortunate that,

(01:09:45):
you know, I learned that just trying to serve my country,
just how dirty and despicable some of these people are.
And it sounds like you had a similar experience, and
it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
I did, I had, I did my last year, I
got I moved up to the Navy Yard because I
had to have a bunch of surgery. Is my shoulder,
my ankle, some other stuff. Right, So basically I was
on my way out. I decided to get out, you know,
being that well known in the military at that low
over rank, being new O three and you know, you've

(01:10:15):
literally got four stars calling you and asked me to
come to speek it just I stayed in. Most people
get out after something like that, right, they go out,
they write the book, they get out. They came to
me and said, will you write the book? The Navy did,
and I said, only if I can stay in. You know,
it was just a different I planned on staying in.
I realized it wasn't going to work. Right. Once I

(01:10:38):
was out of my command and out of the people
that knew me, I got just treated weird everywhere I went. Right.
You know, you know, you're six. Doesn't want a famous
O three underneath him. That's getting He's getting calls from
four stars seeing can it come this week and do it?
Just doesn't work. It's not conducive to the military. Yeah,
I could say this. My last year I was in
d C. So I I knew I was kind of

(01:11:00):
looking at politics a little bit. But I started getting
to know a few of the congressmen right, going going
to the Capitol Hill Club and yeah, yeah, I'll never
forget having drakes and table with it. I won't name names,
but I literally when they started telling my story to
a congressman who didn't know the story, which you know,

(01:11:23):
this is like two thousand and three, you know what
I mean, it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Was like, you're in Congress, it's your job. Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
I mean, you didn't hear about this, and that's fine,
but I'm kind of and he goes, wait, you're in
the Navy and you fly, and I said yeah, and
he goes, the Navy has airplanes and I just I stopped.
It's a congressman asking me he thought those were air
force planes landing on the character like a congressman, and
I went, holy shit, what's running our country? Exactly? And

(01:11:51):
I could tell you I'm only met a handful and
you know it that are worth a shit. The rest
of them, they're not good people. I don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
I I could not agree with you more. And like
the good people that I know, and they're they're there,
they're they're really crazy people. There's not many and they're
and they're really great, like uh and I love them dearly.
But they are not many. There are not many, And
I don't know what that says about the state of
our country or what it means with regards to where

(01:12:21):
we're headed. But like I said, in any sane world,
a guy like you walks into the House of Representatives
or walks into the Senate with no issues.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
It's just.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
It's a different it feels it feels like it's a
different time now. I don't know, I don't know, but
it does.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
It does. We're in a very very blarmant place in
our country's history right now, and I think it's you know,
weakness invites that. And I'm not a hawk, but I'm
not either. I'm not sure about our future. I am
not a hawk by any stretch. And I just I
don't like where we're going, where we're at. And you know,
you know this not not to political, but seeing what

(01:13:01):
we're doing to a former president, I don't care what
side of the eye, I completely agree with the bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
That's everybody, everybody, everybody, and everybody outside of yourself, everybody
outside of DC in New York City knows it's complete bullshit.
Or they're they're on the hard left and they don't
want to They don't want to. They they're just glad
they don't. They don't care the win at all costs
type folks. And there's some on the right to that

(01:13:27):
will do that type of stuff. But right now what
you're seeing is this isn't good for our country. And
and to your point about you've got some Republicans showing
their true colors, right, yes by calling it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Out absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
And it's like it's this is the number one thing
that when you talk to people when I was running campaigns,
they just want someone who's willing to fight for them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
That's the number one quality that they want. It doesn't
mean that you're going to agree with them on everything.
They just want somebody who's gonna be honest and somebody
who's going to fight. And you talked about not being
a hawk, and I think for me, having gone through
what I went through and direct combat with an enemy
of the United States and gone through what you went through,
it's hard to come out of that and want to

(01:14:10):
put others through it potentially, you know. And so that's
why I can't in good conscience embrace what they would
call today like a neo conservative hawkish mentality on foreign
policy and this idea that we should be fighting worse everywhere,
Like it's just like having been through what I've been through,

(01:14:31):
like we that should be a last resort, But it
doesn't seem like it's a last resort to many of
the leaders that we have in Washington. It's just that
they just want to go, go, go and figure out
the mission in the end state after And I just
can't get on board with something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
No, we've got no business get We've got our own
problems to take care of. I completely agree, and issues
that we're not addressing here, and we're going to get
our We're going to get ourselves in a real bad place.
And you know, we took the eye off of China
for twenty years in the hell. I know, it's like,
what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
I completely agree, I completely agree with you. And I
just feel like, man, I've already kept you for an
hour and fifteen minutes. I don't want to keep you anymore.
But you got to promise me that you come back
here and talk with me more. I mean, sure, I
hate I appreciate you having it was it was fun.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
I annoyed it, and you know, it's always it's always
good to have a good conversation with some like minded people.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
I mean, next time you're in Pittsburgh or I'm down
in Florida, wherever the hell are pass cross a beers
are on me because man, you deserve it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
I And so most of the time that I am
down on Florida on occasion.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Well, I you know, if I'm ever in Omaha, if
I'm ever in Nebraska, like I said, brinks on me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
But I'd love to meet yet.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Rwh Energy is is your company? Tell us what you're
up to now? And we've got lots of energy folks
who tune into this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Yeah, we're a Department of Energy energy services company. We're
one hundred percent disabled veteran owned, hire a lot of
you know, disabled vets, work with a lot of other
veteran firms at least, and we build microgrids and do
energy efficiency so help bring resiliency to people that need
power critically, you know, do like anything as simple as

(01:16:21):
like an LED upgrade for campuses and large commercial industrial
and so we bring the capital with it. It's it's
pretty cool. It's there's a website or IBUA energy dot
com and things are things are good, but we do
everything that makes economic sense. It's not just a green
energy sort of speak company. It's more of an energy

(01:16:42):
efficiency and resiliency company. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
I love it and also an extraordinarily important mission. Our
grid is so vulnerable in so many different ways. But
that's a conversation for another time. I feel like I
hope that you stay in the fight politically, even if
it's even if it's like not directly involved. But this
country needs people like you now more than ever. Shane,

(01:17:05):
And and thank you for giving us your time today.
Thank you coming.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
And I appreciate you having me. This is awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Anytime man, anytime. God bless you, and like God bless
your service man. Thanks brother, Wow, ladies and gentlemen. That
was Shane Osborne. I have been in some ridiculously terrible
life and desk situations before in my life, really really
bad spots. I've never heard a story like Shane's before.

(01:17:38):
So I hope you enjoyed the episode and the conversation.
Like I said to you, like I say to you
at the end of every episode, like we have some
amazing things coming. I'm so excited to share them with you.
This show isn't anything without you. The audience.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
It's for you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
We work hard every week to improve bit by bit
just to make a show better for you. So as always,
thank you all so much for watching. You know, subscribe
to wherever you listen to podcasts, Subscribe to my YouTube channel.
But we're really migrating over to Rumble right now because
YouTube like why spend all the time, money, investment and

(01:18:18):
building a YouTube channel when they can just suspend you at.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
The top of a hat.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
So we're migrating over to Rumble so you can watch
everything there. You get tons of exclusive content, So subscribe
to my channel Sean Parnell or Sean Parnell Battleground, both
of the same. Go to the website Official Seanparnell dot com.
We've got signed copies of all of my books on there,
from Out Level Toomb Man of War, All at War, One.

Speaker 1 (01:18:39):
True Patriot Left four Dead.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
They're all there, and we're also rolling out Battleground Apperil
So Official Seanparnell dot com. Check it out and anytime
you need anything for me, just write me on my
social media Instagram, Facebook, whatever. I typically respond. We get
lots of messages, but I try to respond to every
single one and then as always, God bless you all,
and God bless this exceptional nation that we live in.

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
Take care

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Battleground LIVE: Imprisoned, Interrogated, and Tortured by the Chinese | SHANE OSBORN

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Battleground LIVE: Imprisoned, Interrogated, and Tortured by the Chinese | SHANE OSBORN