Ace war pilot and former POW dies

Col. Harold E. Fischer, an ace fighter pilot whose high-profile captivity became a symbol of heightened tensions between the United States and China at the end of the Korean War, has died. He was 83.

Fischer lived in Las Vegas with his companion, Tsai Lan Gerth. He succumbed to complications from back surgery on April 30, Gerth said.

As a captain in the Air Force in April 1953, Fischer had shot down 10 MiGs in just 47 missions, making him an ace. As he shot down his 11th on the day he crashed his Sabre Jet north of the Yalu River in enemy territory, The New York Times reported Friday.

Fischer was discovered by Chinese soldiers and taken to a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. There he was at times kept in a solitary, stark cell and ordered not to move for long periods of time.

In recounting his conditions, Fischer said he knew it could have been worse.

"I feel I was lucky to be a prisoner of the Chinese," he said in an interview with Military History magazine. "They treat their prisoners the way they treat their troops, in the way they feed and house them. It was not the way the North Koreans did it."

With the exception of a brief escape, Fischer spent nearly two years in the prison before he and three other pilots -- Lt. Col. Edwin L. Heller, 1st Lt. Lyle W. Cameron and 1st Lt. Roland W. Parks -- were put on trial in Beijing on May 24, 1955, more than a year after the cease-fire had ended the war. They were found guilty of violating Chinese territory. Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.

A week later the men were set free. The case had been making headlines for months and the release was seen as an attempt to ease tension between communist China and the United States.

Fischer said he long regretted his false confession under the pressure of interrogation.

"I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life," he told Life magazine shortly after his release. "But let me say this: it was not really me -- not Harold E. Fischer Jr. -- who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty."

In 1997, after 42 years, he met the pilot who shot him down, Gen. Han Decai.

Then, in 2001, while Fischer and other F-86 pilots met with their Soviet MiG counterparts in Las Vegas, he told the Review-Journal that his POW experience "was like a bad marriage."

"You can't go any place. You can't carry on a conversation. You have no money to spend, and every move that you make is questioned," he said at a pilot's association reunion at the Monte Carlo.

Fischer was born in 1925 on a farm outside Lone Rock, Iowa. He is survived by his sons Kurt, Harold III and Clint; and a daughter, Dana Fischer.

He received the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Service Cross, among many other decorations.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal contributed to this report.