knots—couldn’t escape her much faster pursuers. The torpedo boats opened fire with machine guns as a sub chaser began pounding the Pueblo with cannon salvos. Bucher ordered his men to get ready to destroy their top-secret equipment. A radio operator in Japan held out the possibility that Air Force F-105 fighter-bombers might be on their way to rescue them.

With the North Koreans blasting him and his men, Bucher stopped the vessel. The communists then told the U.S. captain to follow them toward Wonsan. Bucher did so, but crawled along at just four knots. When he stopped again, hoping to buy more time for his men to get rid of their secret materials, the gunboats again opened fire with cannon and machine guns. By now Bucher and ten otherAmericans were wounded, including a young sailor who hemorrhaged to death after a shell nearly severed one of his legs. A party of North Korean soldiers swarmed aboard. Bucher was pistol-whipped, karate-chopped, and kicked to the deck. The rest of the Americans were tied up and blindfolded. With night falling, a North Korean pilot steered the Pueblo to a dock in Wonsan.

Heightened Tensions

The outrageous attack on an American naval vessel in international waters during peacetime created a difficult dilemma for President Lyndon Johnson. With hundreds of U.S. soldiers perishing each month in Vietnam, the last thing Johnson wanted was a second land war in Asia. But with many Americans clamoring for revenge against North Korea, he was under heavy pressure to take some sort of action.

Meanwhile, tensions were