Via The Divine Sarah (posting at Insty), I see this little treasure:
More than 70 years after he took part in the longest dogfight in Navy history, scoring four aerial victories, Royce Williams might finally get the Medal of Honor.
Over the weekend, Congress released the text for the compromise National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill outlining spending plans and goals. This year, it is a record $901 billion. Nestled into the large defense appropriations bill is Sec. 591, which would upgrade Williams’ Navy Cross to the Medal of Honor for “acts of valor during the Korean War.”
Those acts involve taking on seven Soviet MiG-15s in a 35-minute dogfight almost singlehandedly, in a battle that was kept under wraps for years despite Williams’ achievements.
Read the whole article to get the full delicious flavor of the thing.
Yes, Royce Williams is a true American hero and yes, he deserves the MoH, bigly.
What impressed me almost as much was the fighter jet he flew at the time, the Grumman F9F-5 Panther:
If there’s a nicer-looking aircraft than that baby, I haven’t seen it yet. Sleek, torpedo-like yet compact… be still, my beating heart.
That Royce Williams overcame a whole bunch of supposedly more-advanced Commie MiG-15s in that beauty should come as no surprise, especially as the MiGs were pig-ugly in the way that only Commie-built things can look. (No pic, I don’t want to spoil this post.)
Let’s honor Royce Williams’s heroism, and let’s appreciate the gorgeous aircraft he performed it in.
Looking up the specs on the two planes, the MIG 15 did outclass the F9F in just about every performance category. It makes William’s achievement even more impressive.
In the bottom pik the tail end looks sort of like the F4F Phantom, perhaps a glimpse of things to come?
didn’t Williams achieve this during the Korean war? Absolutely remarkable achievement and he should be rewarded for his accomplishments
I personally find that the next generation of that same basic airframe, the F9F-6 “Cougar”, to be a sleeker-looking plane. I think that this fuselage combined with the swept-wing made it better-looking.
Funny that I hadn’t thought of these planes until I saw that post on Insty yesterday and had to immediately look up which version it was that he was flying and was amazed to find that it was the older, slower one. When he was RTB they found almost 300 holes in his aircraft from enemy fire.
Yeah, but the Cougar didn’t have those sexy wingtip tanks.
One has to wonder if the initial award was downgraded by superiors that were a little jealous of him and decided to not put him in for the Medal of Honor for what at the time was a Dick Bong level of achievement for his Medal of Honor. They knew he was flying the lesser, though still good, aircraft and obviously was a superlative fighter pilot using every tool in the box to accomplish something a lesser pilot wouldn’t have. Great that they finally acknowledge him as deserving of the Medal of Honor, the fighter community of that day and age probably acknowledged he had earned it then.
The problem with medal earned for his actions was that there was no official report of the dogfight, because the PTB did not want it known that he killed Russian, not North Korean pilots that day.
The Russians were training up their pilots using NK aircraft markings.
The whole truth didn’t come out until the Russians opened their archives ~ 1990. It was discovered then that six of the seven Russian pilots he engaged did not RTB, and his Silver Star was upgraded to a Navy Cross at that time.
It’s unfortunate that his MOH authorization is buried in a Congressional Defense spending bill, given he was 100 years old this past April, and the Dems will most likely haggle the bill to his death before it passes.
Typical REMF’ery. Was there an intrepid journolistiche in the back seat who would fearlessly reveal that the opposing pilots were Soviets? Only those who were actually there, and heard the intercepted radio transmissions knew that the pilots were not NK. So why not announce that one of our own had defeated the enemy? The blind ignorant, stupid idiocy of the attitude that we cannot tell the public what the enemy already knows is astounding. And perplexing.
Reminds me of the covert Cambodian campaigns in 1968-69. The US Army knew that it had US troops fighting in Cambodia. The US Navy knew and supported the Army. The US Air Force knew and bombed some areas heavily. The Cambodian government knew. The Khmer Rouge knew. The North Vietnamese army knew (the bombs were dropped on them!). The Soviets knew. The Chinese knew. The Thailand government knew.
Who did not know? The US voter and the rest of the world. It was a “”secret””. Totally nucking futs.
From the man himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tqHWH1bYb0