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The Rescue of Bat 21 Paperback – Illustrated, July 15, 2014
by Darrel D. Whitcomb (Author)
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When his
electronic warfare plane--call sign Bat 21--was shot down on 2 April 1972,
fifty-three-year-old Air Force navigator Iceal "Gene" Hambleton
parachuted into the middle of a North Vietnamese invasion force and set off the
biggest and most controversial air rescue effort of the Vietnam War. Now, after
twenty-five years of official secrecy, the story of that dangerous and costly
rescue is revealed for the first time by a decorated Air Force pilot and
Vietnam veteran. Involving personnel from all services, including the Coast
Guard, the unorthodox rescue operation claimed the lives of eleven soldiers and
airmen, destroyed or damaged several aircraft, and put hundreds of airmen, a
secret commando unit, and a South Vietnamese infantry division at risk. The
book also examines the thorny debates arising from an operation that balanced
one man's life against mounting U.S. and South Vietnamese casualties and
material losses, the operation's impact on one of the most critical battles of
the war, and the role played by search and rescue as America disengaged from
that war.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This Medal of Honor recipient crashed his plane on
purpose to get to his downed wingman
What he did that day had never been attempted
before, and has never been repeated since.
BY JAMES CLARK | PUBLISHED MAY 8, 2021 8:37 AM
It might seem like an April Fool’s
joke: The Navy commissioned its newest destroyer on April 1 and named it after
a man who deliberately crash-landed a perfectly good aircraft behind enemy
lines. But the man who lent his name to the USS Thomas Hudner had a damn good
reason, perhaps the best of reasons.
Editor’s
note: This article was originally published on April 11, 2017.
It was Dec. 4, 1950, during the
Korean War, and Navy Lt. Thomas Hudner was flying an armed reconnaissance
mission in his F4U Corsair over the Chosin Reservoir. The battle raging in the
reservoir basin pitted nearly 100,000 Chinese troops against 15,000 United
States Marines and soldiers. Cut off and surrounded, the Americans on the
ground depended on the support of combat pilots like Hudner and his wingman,
Ens. Jesse Brown.
Brown, a seasoned pilot and the
Navy’s first African American aviator, was the son of a sharecropper who grew
up in a Mississippi shack with no electricity or central heating. Hudner, who
is white, was born into an affluent New England family. Their backgrounds were
completely different, yet the two men forged a deep bond at a time when the
military, and the nation, was deeply divided along racial lines. Theirs was an
incredible friendship that would be brutally tested that day.
The pilots were scouting enemy
positions when Brown took ground fire, which pierced an oil line.
From the cockpit of his Corsair,
Hudner heard Brown calmly announce: “Losing power. My engine is seizing up.”
Too low to bail out, Brown had no
choice but to crash-land his plane in a clearing on the side of a snow-covered
mountain. The impact crumpled his plane, bending the fuselage 30 degrees. Amid
the plumes of snow kicked up in the crash, smoke began rising from the crash
site.
Related: MOH
recipient ‘Pappy’ Boyington was a brawler, drinker, and legendary fighter ace
U.S. Navy Ens. Jesse Brown. (Photo courtesy of Adam Makos)
As Hudner circled above, he
noticed the canopy of the scuttled aircraft was open, and there was Brown,
waving to indicate he was still alive. But he didn’t leave the cockpit, even as
fire and smoke rose from the aircraft.
What Hudner did not know then —
even if he had, it’s unlikely he’d have done anything different — was that
Brown was trapped inside the downed plane. When Brown crashed, the aircraft’s
twisting and bending pinned his leg down in the cockpit. Miles behind enemy
lines, with the nearest rescue helicopter 30 minutes away, Hudner made a
decision: He wasn’t going to stay in the air while Brown was trapped on the
ground.
“When I
realized that Jesse’s airplane may burst into flame before it could get there,
I made a decision to make a wheels up landing,” Hudner told the Congressional Medal of
Honor Society in an interview, explaining that he was going to “crash
close enough to [Brown’s] airplane to get there, pull him out of the cockpit,
and wait for the helicopter to come.”
In the moments after Brown
crashed, Hudner radioed the remaining Corsairs, saying simply: “I’m going in.”
The other pilots didn’t know what he’d meant until he showed them.
Bringing
his aircraft around, Hudner deliberately crash-landed on the side of the
mountain. It was a daring and selfless decision, but also an incredible feat of
airmanship, explains Adam Makos, author of 2015’s “Devotion,” a
detailed account of Hudner and Brown’s lives, military service, and friendship.
Both pilots’ survival after their crashes spoke highly of their training as
carrier pilots, Makos says.
“What Tom did that day had never
been attempted before, and has never been repeated since,” Makos told Task
& Purpose. “In fact, before Tom made it back to his aircraft carrier, the
captain had already wired a message to the fleet that ‘there has been no finer
act of unselfish heroism in military history.’ It’s considered by many to be
one of the bravest acts in the history of warfare.”
U.S. Navy Lt. Thomas Hudner. (Photo courtesy of Adam Makos)
On at least three separate occasions
during World War II, pilots landed behind enemy lines to rescue a downed
wingman, Makos says. Once, in Romania, a P-38 pilot plucked up his wingman, and
the two men had to share the cramped one-person cockpit on the flight to
safety. In Germany, a P-51 pilot rescued his wingman in the same fashion, and
in the Pacific, a SBD Dive Bomber pulled off the same feat.
But until that day in Korea,
nobody had ever crash-landed on purpose, placing himself in an untenable
position: on the side of a mountain, in deep snow and sub-zero temperatures,
with the nearest ground forces miles away and preparing to withdraw in the
opposite direction.
There were only three functioning
helicopters at the nearest friendly base, and they had thousands of frostbitten
Marines to evacuate.
“When Tom did that, the thought
that a helicopter was really going to come and get him, it was more of a wish.
Almost a delusion,” Makos says. “That’s not why he did it though. He saw Jesse
Brown in need. He saw his friend about to burn to death in the most horrific
way.”
As Hudner made his way to Brown’s
aircraft and clambered atop the wreckage, his friend and wingman was slipping
in and out of consciousness. Hudner could do little on his own — he lacked any
tools to free Brown from the plane.
Miraculously, a helicopter was
dispatched to aid the two aviators, and it arrived 30 minutes later. But time
was running out. Fuel was leaking from the wreckage, and Brown’s health was
deteriorating. Marine 1st Lt. Charles Ward made his way from the helicopter to
the crash site, but try as they might, he and Hudner couldn’t get Brown free of
the wreckage. The fire extinguisher stopped working in the extreme cold, and
the axe bounced uselessly off the fuselage, hardly making a dent.
As the sun began to set and
temperatures continued to plummet, Hudner was faced with a terrible decision.
The helos were not equipped to fly at night. Hudner could either stay with
Brown, or he could go back and try to return again in the morning.
“It would
have been suicide to stay. Jesse had been wavering in and out of
consciousness,” Hudner said in a Congressional Medal of
Honor Society interview. “I made the decision to go with Charlie.”
By the
time Hudner left, Brown had succumbed to his injuries and the cold. Before he
lost consciousness, Brown made a simple request. He wanted Hudner to give a message to his
wife: “Just tell Daisy how much I love her.”
After Hudner arrived back on the
carrier, it was deemed too dangerous to recover Brown’s body, and on Dec. 7,
1950, seven planes were dispatched to drop napalm on the two downed aircraft.
“Jesse died a warrior’s death, in
a funeral pyre,” Hudner said in the Medal of Honor Society interview.
On April
13, 1951, Hudner was presented the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.
Hudner kept his promise to Brown — and along with his shipmates, he took up a
collection for Jesse’s daughter, who was 2 at the time. The crew raised the
equivalent of $24,000 today for her college fund, according
to CNN.
Years later, Hudner’s and Brown’s
story of sacrifice, heroism, and friendship endures.
The Navy’s USS Thomas Hudner. (Courtesy photo by Michael C.
Nutter, General Dynamics, Bath Iron Works)
Hudner
retired from the Navy in 1973, but in 2013, he returned to that same mountain
to search for Brown’s plane and attempt to recover his remains. And this year
he attended the April commissioning of his namesake Burke-class destroyer. In
time, Hudner — now 92 — hopes another vessel will be commissioned bearing
Brown’s name, so the two can sail together, he told Navy Times.
More than half a century after
President Harry S. Truman integrated the military in 1948, Hudner and Brown’s
legacy is evident, explains Makos:
“These two men, Jesse was a
pioneer, and Tom was a hero, but together they helped pave the way for the
military we have today.”
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