Hying for "DEVOTION"

Behind the scenes with the pilots who brought the story of Ensign Jesse Brown & LTJG Thomas Hudner to life, Artic cold invaded Jesse Brown’s cockpit as he desperately looked for a place to land his F4U-4 Corsair in the snow-covered mountains of North Korea, near the Chosin Reservoir.

- JAN TEGLER

IT WAS EARLY DECEMBER 1950. More than 120,000 Chinese troops had crossed into North Korea and encircled 30,000 troops from the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Division, the U.S. Army’s 7th and 3rd Infantry Divisions, and U.N. forces around the reservoir with the goal of annihilating them.

Brown was America’s first Black naval aviator and the first to fly combat missions. He and his VF-32 wingman LTJG Tom Hudner had taken off from the aircraft carrier USS Leyte CV-32) in the Sea of Japan to provide low-level close-air support for the Americans trying to break out of the encirclement.

A golden bullet” fired by Chinese troops pierced a fuel line in the big Pratt Whitney R-2800 radial just in front of Brown, damaging it so severely the engine quit. He had to crash-land.

 Seventy years later, Mike Oliver, pilot and general manager of the terrific Erickson Aircraft Collection in Madras, Oregon, dropped inexorably downward toward the snowcovered Cascade Mountains until the propeller tips of his F4U-7 were feet above icy pine trees. The shot was, I get shot down." Oliver recalls. Tm smoking, looking for a place to land. I turn base to final, find a place out there in the mountains, roll the canopy back and put the flaps down. I had a camera mount on the tail, so it’s showing that different view. I was sinking, sinking, sinking all the way down to the trees. That was a moment where as a pilot, I couldn't imagine landing in the mountains of North Korea when there are people trying to kill you, let alone the terrain.”