Dale Edwin Noyd (May 1, 1933 – January 11, 2007) was a decorated captain and fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force who gained worldwide attention when he became a conscientious objector to protest the Vietnam War.
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Noyd was born in Wenatchee, Washington. He attended Washington State University and was the only member of the 1955 Reserve Officers Training Corps at WSU to be offered a regular commission, as opposed to a reserve commission.
Noyd's superior R.O.T.C. record granted him the right to select his first base assignment. Noyd opted for the U.S. Air Force base at Woodbridge, England.
While serving in England, Noyd received a medal for landing a badly damaged F-100 Super Sabre fighter that was armed with a nuclear weapon.
Noyd later became an instructor at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Noyd began to regard the U.S. role in the Vietnam War as immoral and illegal. In 1966 he wrote an eight-page, single-spaced letter to Air Force supervisors asking to be allowed to resign or to be classed as a conscientious objector.
Noyd refused an assignment to train a pilot who would likely be sent to Vietnam and was court-martialed for disobeying the order.
Noyd's court-martial trial did not address his statements on the morality or legality of the Vietnam War, nor did it focus on his opposition to only one war as opposed to any military service.
Instead, the 10 officers judging his case allowed discussion of how Noyd's humanist beliefs might shape his character. The panel heard a theologian make a persuasive argument that risking one's life for a core belief constituted a religious act. That thesis was summarized by one prosecutor as "two religions butting heads against each other."
On March 9, 1968, the military court sentenced Noyd to one year in prison, rather than the maximum five years, and stripped him of his pension and military benefits.
Noyd taught psychology (with an emphasis on psychoanalysis) at Earlham College for 20 years. After resigning from academia, Noyd built a boat that he used to sail to Tahiti. He then settled in Hawaii and returned to Washington when his health deteriorated.
He died from complications of emphysema.
Noyd's son Erik told New York Times reporter Douglas Martin that his father kept two certificates on the wall of his study: the commendation he received for heroism, and his dishonorable discharge.