Joseph Kernan, Vietnam P.O.W. and Indiana Governor, Dies at 74

Joseph Kernan, a naval aviator who served nearly a year as a prisoner of war after he was shot down over North Vietnam in 1972, then returned to Indiana to become a popular mayor, lieutenant governor and governor, died on Wednesday in South Bend, Ind. He was 74.

A spokesman, Lou Pierce, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

The son of a World War II naval aviator, Mr. Kernan joined the Navy in 1969 after graduating the year before with a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Notre Dame.

After training as a flight officer and in reconnaissance, he was deployed to Southeast Asia aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in February 1972. On May 7, of that year, his RA-5C Vigilante, a supersonic attack spy plane on a mission to record damage from an earlier bombing, was downed by enemy antiaircraft fire.

About a month later, the Navy informed Lieutenant Kernan’s family that a search and rescue mission had found no evidence of a crash, but that other sources had reported that two parachutes had descended into a populated area of Thanh Hoa.