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Fray Bentos: The WW1 British Alamo by WILL DABBS

No offense, but it seems like the British eat some stuff that just wasn’t meant to be eaten.

In 1865 a German chemist named Justus von Liebig started Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company in the UK. Liebig subsequently opened a factory in Uruguay to process beef extract products that were later sold under the trade name Oxo. One of their most popular offerings was tinned corned beef. The company marketed this stuff as Fray Bentos, so named after the Uruguayan town where the factory operated.

Fray Bentos maintains a vigorous following in the UK today. New! Improved! 33% more meat! Blech…

Fray Bentos corned beef was food for the Common Man. The company also produced glue in the same facility. Fray Bentos was delivered in one-pound tins that were easily portable. This made Fray Bentos ideal fodder for soldiers in the field. During the Boer War and later in World War 1 Fray Bentos was surprisingly popular among British Tommies. In fact, the term “Fray Bentos” made it into the informal military lexicon as a slang term for anything that was good. Now hold that thought.

The Setting

By 1917 World War 1 was in its fourth year. Strategic commanders on both sides were rabid to get the war moving again.

In July of 1917, the Allies launched the Battle of Passchendaele. This orgasmic bloodbath orbited around a campaign to wrest the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders from the entrenched Germans. Passchendaele lies on the easternmost ridge past Ypres, some five miles from the Bruges to Kortrijk railway. Seizing the Passchendaele Ridge would cut the main supply route for the German 4th Army and facilitate a continued Allied advance that was hoped might turn the tide of the war. The Battle of Passchendaele was a really big deal.

The elaborate trench systems that characterized WW1 battlefields made mobility all but impossible.

Launching a major campaign in Flanders in 1917 was not without controversy. The terrain was abysmal, particularly given the unusually heavy rains, and opinions were divided at the strategic level as to the wisdom of this grand plan. However, to the beleaguered troops on the ground little of that mattered. Their world was distilled down to a few yards of blood-soaked mud.

The Details

The male Mk IV tank carried the biggest punch. Its two 6-pounder cannon featured a 57mm bore diameter.

Tank F41 was a male Mark IV serial numbered 2329. While they enjoyed a common basic chassis, male and female Mk IV tanks differed in their primary armament. Male tanks sported a brace of 6-pounder cannon along with supporting machineguns. The female sort bristled with machineguns alone. The commander of F41 was Captain Donald Hickling Richardson. With the approval of his eight-man crew, CPT Richardson had christened their mount Fray Bentos. In combat, they all felt a bit like tinned meat.

SGT Robert Missen was one seriously bad man.

The crew of Fray Bentos was a cross-section of British culture. The second in command was 2LT George Hill, while the senior NCO was Sergeant Robert Missen. Lance Corporal Ernest Braedy was the only other Noncommissioned Officer. Gunners included William Morrey, Ernest Hayton, Frederick Arthurs, Percy Budd, and James Binley. At 0440 on August 22, 1917, these nine men left the line of departure with infantry support as part of an attack by the 61st Division near St. Julien. Their subsequent three-day ordeal became the stuff of legend.

The Fight

The British tanks advanced in good order but soon became bogged down by German action and the horrid terrain.

As Fray Bentos approached the Somme Farm they came under withering German machinegun fire. SGT Robert Missen, the gunner manning the port 6-pounder gun, silenced these Boche positions in short order. This was just the beginning of SGT Missen’s remarkable day.

Captured Mk IV tanks were actually put back into action by the Germans. Maintaining control of these advanced wonder weapons was, therefore, a priority on the 1917 European battlefield.

At around 0545 with 2LT Hill at the controls, Fray Bentos approached Objective Gallipoli, an arbitrary map reference included as part of the overall scheme of maneuver. A German machinegun slathered the tank with machinegun fire, and one round found its way through the driver’s slit. This 8mm Maxim bullet struck 2LT Hill in the neck and knocked him out of the driver’s seat. CPT Richardson immediately took his place, but the terrain was ghastly.

Trench warfare during WW1 was really about as bad as it gets. Wet, rotten, unimaginably dangerous, and horrifying, the ordeal of the trenches was a living nightmare.

It’s tough for the civilized mind to visualize what this place was like. Trenches, barbed wire, poison gas, machineguns, and death defined the World War 1 battlefields. The earth was churned into chaos by countless tens of thousands of rounds of artillery. The rains had transformed the soft Belgian dirt into a sticky, deadly quagmire. There were numerous anecdotes of infantry troops wandering off from the accepted tracks and simply being consumed by the mud. It was for this sordid world that the tanks had been developed in the first place.

Tanks during World War 1 were more like modest land ships than what we imagine modern tactical vehicles to be today.

The Mk IV tank was a 28-ton behemoth that spanned some 26 feet from front to back. These massive tanks sported half-inch steel armor and were driven by a 105 BHP Daimler-Foster 6-cylinder inline sleeve-valve 16-liter engine. The Mk IV carried 70 imperial gallons of petrol and had a top speed of 4 mph. Over rough terrain, its operational range was around 35 miles.

The interior of a Mk IV tank was a miserable place. This is a snap taken into one of the sponsons at the Tank Museum in Bovington, England. Note the Lewis gun at the top of the photo.

While the Mk IV was designed to get the British troops up and out of the trenches, life inside these early tanks was unimaginably horrible. The vehicles were cramped, miserable, and noisy. The Mk IV had no suspension, and direct fire from German artillery would burst a Mk IV like a grape. Even under peaceful circumstances, the buildup of fumes and carbon monoxide from the primitive gasoline engine would reliably sicken the crew. In combat, the interior of an operational Mk IV grew stifling hot and resembled hell.

Mk IV tanks were really designed to operate over flat ground. In the shell-torn moonscape of the typical World War 1 battlefield, they were extremely difficult to control.

Driving a Mk IV was not like operating a modern armored vehicle. These primitive tanks were all but unmanageable over truly rough terrain. While CPT Richardson struggled mightily with the controls, Fray Bentos slid inevitably sideways until it was well and truly ditched. With that, now deep behind German lines, Tank F41 became a pillbox.

The Ordeal

The ditching beam shown here would help drag a disabled Mk IV tank out of the mire. However, emplacing this device under fire was incredibly dangerous.

Soon after 2LT Hill was hit, gunners Budd and Morrey were hit as well. Mk IV tanks carried external ditching beams for just such eventualities. These heavy wooden timbers could be affixed to the tracks that spanned the entire periphery of the vehicle. Then by gunning the engine this beam would make its way around the tank and theoretically pull the heavy vehicle out of the quagmire. However, to affix the ditching beam one had to be outside the tank. With uncounted German soldiers surrounding the disabled vehicle at a range of some 30 yards, this was easier said than done. Regardless, SGT Robert Missen and LCPL Braedy tried it anyway.

The British 6-pounder gun was widely reproduced. The American version shown here in action in Italy during World War 2 was a 57mm beast known as the M1.

SGT Missen dove out of the tank on the starboard side, while LCPL Braedy performed the same maneuver to port. Braedy was cut to pieces immediately and died on the spot. Realizing his mission to be hopeless, SGT Missen returned to the tank. Both quick-firing 6-pounder cannons then went to work and effectively silenced the offending German machineguns.

The British Lewis gun was actually designed as a private venture by American Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis in 1911. The large tubular snout is a barrel shroud that surrounds a complex series of aluminum fins designed to keep the gun cool. In practice, all that bulky barrel stuff was essentially superfluous.

By 0700 the supporting British infantry had been forced to fall back, leaving Fray Bentos alone, disabled, and unsupported. The Germans smelled blood and moved in for the kill. The British crew responded with fire from their 6-pounder cannon and Lewis guns as well as individual rifles and pistols.

Though its pan magazine feed hindered the weapon in the sustained fire role, the Lewis gun was unusually portable and effective for its era.

Fray Bentos carried a basic load of 332 rounds for the two 6-pounder guns along with its three amply-supplied .303 Lewis guns. Individual weapons included SMLE (Short-Magazine Lee-Enfield) bolt-action rifles and Mk VI Webley revolvers. By the standards of the day, Fray Bentos was a formidable war machine. When they designed and equipped her nobody imagined that this isolated tank would have to stand alone and be disabled in combat for three days. However, that’s just what she did.

Things Get Worse

Over the course of some 60 hours, German infantry swarmed the disabled tank.

SGT Missen later related, “The Boche were in an old trench close in under the front of the tank and we could not get the Lewis onto them owing to the angle of the tank, but we shot them easily with a rifle out of the revolver flap in the cab.”

Voluntarily braving hostile fire outside the tank would have required some tremendous fortitude.

At this point the British presumed the tank to have been overrun and began firing on it as well. SGT Missen, a man with some truly epic stones, volunteered to exit the tank and brave the concentrated fire from both sides so as to, “Go back and warn the infantry not to shoot us as we should sooner or later have to clear out of the tank…I got out of the right sponson door and crawled back to the infantry.” By the time SGT Missen left on his suicide mission every member of the crew save Gunner Binley was badly wounded.

The crew of Fray Bentos did eventually get their own troops to stop firing on them.

The remaining crew flashed a white rag from one of the portholes on the British side of the tank. This action combined with SGT Missen’s miraculous trek across no-man’s land finally curtailed the British fire. Throughout it all the Germans attacked the disabled tank time and time again. This went on from the 22d, all day of the 23d, and well into the 24th of August. Throughout it all the valiant crew of Fray Bentos continued to fight back with every weapon at their disposal.

Epilogue

Despite their extraordinarily valiant effort, the crew of Fray Bentos was ultimately forced to abandon their machine. The Brits did effectively disable the tank’s weapons systems before leaving it.

By 9 pm on the third day, CPT Richardson concluded that further resistance was futile. Despite their cumulative grievous wounds the crew removed the firing locks from the 6-pounders to disable them and retrieved all three machineguns. Under the cover of darkness, CPT Richardson and his crew eventually made their way back to the positions of the 9th Battalion of the Black Watch. There they left their Lewis guns to be used by the Black Watch gunners.

Such an ordeal produced a bond among the crew of the Fray Bentos that defies understanding in the civilian world.

Ernest Braedy’s body was never recovered. Gunner Percy Budd was killed in action a year later in August of 1918 at age 22. The rest of the crew miraculously survived the war. The 60-hour ordeal of Fray Bentos saw them become the most highly decorated Allied tank crew of the war. Their extraordinary story of valor, devotion, and brotherhood served as inspiration for the epic 2014 David Ayer WW2 movie Fury.

The classic WW2 action epic Fury was based upon the WW1 story of Fray Bentos and her crew.
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All About Guns War

Vengeance is Mine: Jean de Selys Longchamps by WILL DABBS

Eve Gordon parachuted into occupied Europe while working for British intelligence during World War 2. She made a total of 112 military parachute jumps. I think she might have been the most extraordinary person I have ever known.

I once had the privilege of meeting an elderly British woman who had been tortured by the Gestapo. A British SOE (Special Operations Executive) operative during World War 2, she had been captured while serving undercover in occupied Europe. By the time they got her to Gestapo headquarters, they had already broken her legs.

This is Odette Sansom Hallowes, one of only 54 female SOE agents who operated in Europe during the war. She was captured, tortured, and imprisoned at Ravensbruck concentration camp.

What followed was tough to hear. At the time she was young, pretty, and a trained nurse. The Germans stripped her naked, tied her to a chair, and pulled her teeth. They tore strips of skin off of her back with pliers, betting each other cigarettes who could flay the longest. They put her in front of a big clock and then crushed each of her fingers using a hammer and steel plate—one finger every fifteen minutes on the dot. If she would divulge the names of the other underground members in her cell they promised they would stop.

Behold the absolute scum of the earth. These dapper-looking guys were a blight on the species.

Amidst the expansive pantheon of loathsome personalities to have slithered across the earth from the dawn of human history, the Nazis were among the worst. I was a soldier when I met this lady. As I listened enraptured to this grandmotherly woman describe in coldly dispassionate terms what these animals did to her, I wanted to go dig up their cold rotten corpses and urinate on them. How could anybody do such inhuman stuff?

Though the woke social justice warriors on the political Left are too dim to appreciate it, this is the reason such institutional depravity will never gain a solid foothold in America.

The truly amazing thing was that it wasn’t so terribly uncommon. Ours is a violent, cruel species. You take susceptible personalities and put them in positions of absolute power and it brings out the worst of our primal natures. That fact is actually the true impetus behind the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, but that’s a conversation for another day.

My SOE pal survived the war and lived a long happy life. Her fellow operative Violet Szabo, shown here, was not so fortunate. She died at Ravensbruck.

While the existence of such darkness has been a lamentably consistent component of the human experience from the very beginning, so also has been the light. My English friend was rescued by her Resistance buddies and obviously survived the war. Hers was ultimately a warm, happy, successful life. Those underground operators were in this case the avenging angels, bringing quick justice to a group of monsters who simply needed killing. On January 20, 1943, a Belgian aristocrat named Jean de Selys Longchamps performed a similar service. However, in his case, he used an airplane.

Portrait of a Patriot

Baron Jean Michel P.M.G. de Selys Longchamps was a professional warrior who took the Nazis’ sick institutionalized misbehavior quite personally.

Baron Jean Michel P.M.G. de Selys Longchamps was born on May 31, 1912, in Belgium. Longchamps was the grand-nephew of the Belgian King Leopold III. Raised in the Old World Belgian aristocracy, Longchamps pursued a career in the military as did most of his breeding. By the onset of WW2, he was a 28-year-old cavalry officer with the 1st Regiment des Guides, an elite light cavalry unit first mechanized in October of 1937. Like so many of the Western European military formations, Longchamps’ unit was swept up in the unstoppable hurricane that was blitzkrieg.

Longchamps was a survivor of Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk.

By late May 1940, Longchamps and the tattered remnants of his once-proud Belgian cavalry unit were pressed into the salient at Dunkirk. Most all of us have at least seen the Christopher Nolan movie of the same name. The Allies called it Operation Dynamo. Over the course of eight days, some 800 British military and civilian vessels evacuated 338,226 Allied troops across the channel and back to Britain. Among those 338,226 soldiers was Jean de Selys Longchamps. Roughly 40,000 troops of the French First Army sacrificed themselves in a delaying action to allow the evacuation to succeed.

The Next Phase

Longchamps spent a brief period as a POW. However, he was having none of that.

Driven by a white-hot rage, Longchamps pursued further opportunities to fight. He made his way back to the continent but was captured by the Vichy authorities and interned. Escaping from a French POW camp he again crossed the channel and volunteered for the RAF. Despite being too old, he forged the pertinent documents and was accepted for flight training. He subsequently transitioned into Hawker Typhoons.

At the controls of his Hawker Typhoon, Longchamps took the fight to the enemy.

While posted to No 609 Squadron, Longchamps regularly flew missions against German targets in occupied Europe. Throughout it all, he kept up with events back home in Belgium through his many contacts on the mainland. While serving with the RAF he received the heartbreaking news that his father had been tortured to death by the German security services. In response, Longchamps planned an elaborate operation to strike Gestapo headquarters in Brussels. His RAF commanders rejected the request, claiming it was too risky. On January 20, 1943, Jean de Selys Longchamps did it anyway.

The Operation

Longchamps planned his act of vengeance as an addendum to a scheduled ground attack mission.

Longchamps took off early that Wednesday morning alongside his wingman Flight Sergeant Andre Blanco on a mission to strike a railway junction near Ghent in Northern Belgium. Longchamps’ Typhoon fighter was packed with all the ordnance it could carry. He also took along an ample sack of small British and Belgian flags. The railway attack complete, Longchamps directed that Flight Sergeant Blanco return to base.

Longchamps took his powerful British fighter across familiar terrain to Brussels.

Flying solo and low-level to avoid German radar and air defenses, the Belgian pilot navigated his heavy fighter to Brussels. Longchamps knew the city by heart. He dropped down into the urban streets, following the Avenue De Nation to the Avenue Louise. His target was a prominent 12-story building the Gestapo had used as a headquarters since 1940.

The Hawker Typhoon was fast, powerful, and loud.

The Hawker Typhoon was powered by a Napier Sabre liquid-cooled sleeve-valve piston engine producing some 2,180 horsepower. With a maximum speed of 412 mph, the Typhoon made quite a lot of noise. When canalized through the tight thoroughfares of downtown Brussels the racket would have been penetrating. This noise brought the German officers at Gestapo headquarters out of their offices and to the windows facing the Avenue Louise.

The primary organic weaponry onboard the Typhoon consisted of four 20mm Hispano cannons.

The Typhoon weighed some 13,250 lbs fully loaded and was a legendarily stable gun platform. Jean de Selys Longchamps aligned his deadly airplane with the façade of the target building, centered the glowing pipper of his gunsight, and squeezed the trigger on his control stick. The four 20mm Hispano Mk II cannon mounted in his wings chewed into the building at an aggregate rate of nearly fifty rounds per second.

The Weapon

The Typhoon was really too heavy and sluggish to mix it up with the front-line Luftwaffe fighters of the day. However, it was pure death against tanks and similar terrestrial targets.

The Hawker Typhoon was heavy for a fighter. As a result, it struggled in one-on-one combat with Messerschmitts and Focke Wulfs. However, the Typhoon was an absolute tank of an airplane. It excelled at precision ground attack missions.

The RP-3 air-to-ground rocket would burst a German tank like a grape, especially when struck from the top aspect.

Fully loaded the Typhoon could carry eight RP-3 three-inch unguided air-to-ground rockets and two 500-pound bombs. The RP-3 could be fitted with either a 60-pound HE warhead or a 25-pound solid-shot armor-piercing load. RP-3-equipped Typhoons extracted a fearsome butcher’s bill against everything from German tanks to U-boats.

The Hispano Mk II 20mm cannon was a beast of a thing. This gun was used on Amtrak vehicles as well as deck mounts on warships for antiaircraft work.

The Typhoon’s primary armament was the Hispano Mk II 20mm autocannon. The British began WW2 arming their fighters with as many as eight rifle-caliber .303 Browning machineguns. This system offered simply breathtaking close-range firepower, but it yet remained fairly ineffective against armored aircraft at anything but intimate ranges.

The American Browning M3 cycled at more than 1,200 rpm but fired a substantially smaller projectile than did the Mk II 20mm.

We Americans did love our .50-caliber machineguns. The Browning M3 recoil-operated, belt-fed .50 armed most all US combat aircraft of WW2. However, with the advent of faster, more heavily-armored enemy planes, even the venerable fifty seemed a bit inadequate.

The armament of the P38 Lightning, in my opinion, the prettiest warplane of WW2, consisted of four M3 .50’s and a 20mm Hispano all clustered in the nose.

The answer was the Hispano-Suiza HS.404. Designed by Marc Birkigt in the 1930s, the original 20mm HS.404 weighed 108 pounds and was eight feet long. The British version of the HS.404 used on the Typhoon was the Hispano Mk V. This was a gas-operated, delayed-blowback design that cycled at around 725 rpm. The US variant was built by International Harvester, was slightly smaller and shorter, and was designated the 20mm M1 Automatic Gun.

The 20mm round was obviously considerably spunkier than was the standard .50-caliber shown underneath it. Its HE projectile offered a great deal more downrange horsepower.

All of these 20mm weapons fired roughly quarter-pound projectiles charged with a high explosive filler and detonated via a direct-action contact fuse. The most common Mk I round also included an incendiary component. There was a ball round and Armor-Piercing/Tracer version as well.

The Rest of the Story

The world was definitely better off with fewer of these guys.

Longchamps chewed the face of the Gestapo headquarters to pieces. His cannon fire was so precise that the surrounding buildings remained undamaged. In that single pass, he killed four high-ranking German officers and wounded dozens more. Among the dead were the station chief, a reprobate monster named Muller, and the local Chief of the SD, SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Alfred Thomas. Good riddance.

Longchamps dropped Belgian and British flags over the Royal Palace to offer hope and a tangible reminder that the Allies were coming.

On his egress, he sprinkled little British and Belgian flags across a variety of Belgian villages as well as the Royal Palace at Laeken. He also dropped a few over the garden of his niece, the Baroness De Villegas De Saint-Pierre. Half an hour after the attack in Brussels, Longchamps landed safely at his base at Manston in Kent, England. Both the Germans and his British superiors were livid.

While initially castigated by his superiors, Longchamps was ultimately decorated for his one-man act of vengeance.

The Nazis undertook the expected reprisals, further incurring the ire of an oppressed people uniformly buoyed by the audacity of the attack. Longchamps’ RAF commanders demoted him to Flight Officer and reassigned him to another squadron. However, when the true impact of his bold unconventional attack became known they awarded him the British Distinguished Flying Cross.

Though the German response was bloody, Longchamps’ flight offered hope to his enslaved countrymen.

Herman Bodson, a member of the Belgian resistance during the Second World War, recalled: “The day of the attack was a day of joy. That week, while the news was told around the country, was a week of joy.” It seems true vengeance, even a relatively little bit, was indeed fairly sweet.

The Nazis were undeniably vile. Note that the German soldiers depicted in this Russian painting are holding their MP40 submachine guns using the proper field manual technique.

Tragically, CPT Longchamps was killed seven months later on August 16, 1943, when his Typhoon, damaged on a combat mission over Ostend, crashed on landing at RAF Manston. He was an epic hero.

CPT Longchamps was an unrepentant patriot. He willingly gave his last full measure of devotion.
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Against All Odds – Killing MiGs in the Korean War with Naval Aviator Royce Williams (Part 1 of 2)

Testimony of Pilot #32

On Nov. 18, 1952, Royce Williams became the top-scoring carrier-based naval aviator and the top-scoring naval aviator in a Navy jet of the Korean War.

Secret hero of the Navy's greatest solo air battle is from Escondido. Will  he finally get his Medal of Honor? - The San Diego Union-Tribune

A signed print by prominent military aviation artist Stan Stokes displayed on a wall in the home of the veteran Royce Williams depicts a U.S. Navy F9F-5 Panther fighter jet, which was the plane Williams flew in a dogfight against seven Soviet MiG-15 fighters. (Charlie Neuman/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

On Nov. 18, 1952, during the Korean War, Navy Lt. Royce Williams, along with three other pilots from his fighter squadron, VF-781, launched from the USS Oriskany into the stormy skies over the Sea of Japan. There were more than 250,000 sorties flown by the Navy during that conflict, but the ensuing engagement would end in one of the great feats of aerial combat, yet it was covered up for decades due to the tense political environment of the Cold War.

Background

BY NOVEMBER 1952, the air and ground war in Korea had been raging for two years and five months. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) had committed hundreds of thousands of soldiers to help their North Korean allies.

Four Soviet air force fighter divisions  had been deployed to People’s Republic of China air bases near the mouth of the Yalu River on the western edge of the peninsula. Equipped with state-of-the-art sept wing MiG-15s, they were there to support the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) as well as the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Almost every day, Soviet MiGs engaged F-86 Sabers from USAF 4th, 18th and 51st Fighter Interceptor Wings over the mouth of the Yalu River on the west side of the Korean Peninsula. On the ground, the war had stalemated to a line almost identical to the current border between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea).

In the Yellow Sea, planes from Task Force 95 made up of Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy and U.S. Navy escort carriers flew interdiction and close air support sorties while their U.S., Royal Navy, Canadian Navy, and Australian Navy escorts provided naval gunfire support.

In the Sea of Japan, the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 77 roamed up and down the coast. Generally, its carriers and escorts launched close air support and interdiction strikes a from within 50 miles of the coast to cut off supplies to the PLA and what was left of the KPA. By 1952, the Navy was rotating the three Essex-class carriers it had in theater so two carriers were on station off the east coast of Korea with a third refitting/rearming in Japan.

 

The USS Oriskany (CV-34) as part of that Navy Task Force was striking at logistics centers in North Korea and on 18 November was off the northeast coast of North Korea about 50 miles east of Chongjin and less than 100 miles southwest of the Soviet air and naval bases at Vladivostok. Chongjin was a hub for roads and railroads from the PRC and Vladivostok in the Soviet Union that allowed supplies to flow to the KPA and the PLA.

The carrier and its Air Group 102 had been on station since October 1952.  Air Group 102’s pilots roamed northeastern North Korea on armed road reconnaissance missions during which they strafed convoys and trains as well as flying bombing missions to destroy bridges on the road and rail lines.

The Mission

On board Oriskany, the task force commander received a top-secret message indicating that MiGs were expected to fly south from Vladivostok and over Task Force 77. Standard U.S. Navy doctrine was then, and is today, to intercept any intruder before they reach their weapon launch envelop and escort them until they depart. The target on the 18th  was the city of Hoeryong, right along the Yalu River where the borders of China, North Korea, and what was then the Soviet Union met. This made the bombing missions a risky proposition, given the possibility of violating each nation’s airspace. The weather that day was terrible. On top of the heavy snowfall that blanketed Task Force 77’s ships, the air temperature was in the 20s and the water temperature was in the mid-thirties. Without an exposure suit in 30-degree water, a pilot has about two minutes or less to get into his raft before the cold immobilized his body. Once in his raft, he still could die from exposure.

Lt Royce Williams, on his second mission of the day, was tasked as part of a combat air patrol in a Grumman F9F-5 Panther. Williams, a Naval Reservist and three others from VF-781 manned their F9F-5s and launched at 1300.

“We started to rendezvous with each other as we climbed out of the clouds,” Williams recalled “And that’s when we heard from the combat information center that there were inbound bogeys from the north.” They had been detected on radar roughly 80 nautical miles north-northeast of the task force. There appeared to be seven Russian MiG-15 fighters that were heading toward them (probably) from a Soviet base in Vladivostok. Williams’ flight was soon vectored toward the  MiGs .

In this time frame, division leader Elwood reported his fuel pump warning light had come on. The Fighter Direction Officer (FDO) directed him to break off and report overhead Oriskany. Elwood passed flight lead to Williams as he and his wingman turned away and dived toward the clouds. Williams and his wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade John Middleton, were now a two plane section.

The F9Fs had broken out in the clear at 12,000 and were climbing past 16,000 feet when Williams spotted the enemies’ contrails, 45 miles from the carrier. He estimated the Soviet fighters to be above 30,000 feet higher. Williams kept climbing and radioed to the Oriskany that he had a “tallyho” on the MiGs which were split into a three plane and a four plane group. The CIC on board Oriskany radioed Williams not to engage when suddenly the MiGs opened fire with their 23mm and 37mm cannon. Both were diving on the two F9Fs from different directions.

With tracers streaming past his F9F-5, Williams replied as he made sure his cannon were armed and ready to fire. “We are already engaged!”

The attackers were indeed swept wing MiG-15s. Comparable to the U.S. Air Force F-86, the MiGs outclassed Williams’ Panther in speed, maneuverability, climb rate, and weapons range.

 

Note : At that time air-air engagements were generally confined to the western half of the Korean peninsula, where the Air Force’s F-86 Sabres would patrol the approaches from China known as “MiG Alley.” The location this far to the east was one indication that these MiGs were almost certainly launched from the Soviet Union.

While the Navy had scored some early kills against the MiGs, their mission had switched to one of mostly ground attack. Williams had trained as a fighter pilot since 1944, but the primary mission of the Panthers in Korea was air-to-ground engagements.

“I flipped on my gunsight and fired a burst to test my guns,” he recalled.

“We were just going through 26,000 feet when the MiGs split up and dove out of the contrail layer,” Williams remembered. “The first ones came at us from the right side in a four-plane formation and opened fire. I pulled into a hard climbing left turn and came around on the Number Four MiG. I fired a burst and hit him solidly in the rear fuselage. He went down smoking, and my wingman then followed him, leaving me alone.” Williams, now alone, faced six fighters, probably Soviet.

As the MiGs, now in two formations, climbed for altitude to make attacking dives, Williams found himself on the tail of one and downed a second aircraft. He now had to choose his shots carefully given that the Panther carried less ammunition than the MiGs.

“In the moment I was a fighter pilot doing my job,” said Williams. “I was only shooting what I had.”

The five remaining Soviet jets were now taking turns climbing and then making passes at Williams. He could only twist and turn the Panther to the limits of its abilities, engaging a Soviet jet when it passed in front of his sights or rapidly turning to face them head on. “I was engaged mentally at the time. A lot of it was awareness of where they were and how I had to maneuver to avoid them. They were taking turns. I decided if I concentrated on shooting them down, then I’d become an easy target. So, my initial goal was to look for defensive opportunities when they made mistakes,” he said. Williams fired at another MiG and it banked out of the fight. As that Soviet pilot’s wingman turned towards Williams, he fired a long burst as the two jets passed belly-to-belly, with the Soviet aircraft crashing into the sea.

The three remaining MiGs of the first group easily accelerated away from the Panther and climbed to position themselves for another firing run. Williams saw their left wings come up as they reversed course. “They had me cold on maneuverability and acceleration – the MiG was vastly superior on those counts to the F9F. The only thing I could do was out-turn them.” He managed to cut loose a burst of fire as the MiGs flashed past, but failed to score any hits. As the first three pulled away again, the other three joined in. Williams sweated as he reversed, jinked and rolled to get away from each firing run. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a MiG locked on his six o’clock. Pulling the stick back into his gut, he threw it against his right leg as he stomped right rudder and executed a very hard wings-vertical right turn with contrails spinning off his wingtip fuel tanks. The MiG flashed past his tail.

In the rush of adrenaline, the fight seemed like it had been going on for an hour. The enemy formations became ragged and Williams got several opportunities to track an individual MiG as the pilot bored in to attack. Some rounds seemed to hit, but he couldn’t follow up as he stomped rudder and slammed ailerons to keep his six o’clock clear. “I was firing at every MiG that passed within gun range as they came by.”

Turn. Turn again. Not a second spent straight and level. Fire a quick burst to throw off their aim. Turn some more. Then again.

“Finally, the leader and his wingman went off to the right and I went after the section leader of the plane I’d shot down. He pulled up into the sun and I lost him, then I saw the leader and his wingman come around for a diving attack. I turned into them and fired at the leader. He turned away and the wingman rolled down on me and we went past belly-to-belly as I raked him with a long burst. He caught fire and went down. The section leader then came around and I turned into him and fired at him practically pointblank and he went down. The (flight) leader then came around again and I fired and parts came off him as he dove away.”

Getting Home

Eventually, Williams ran out of ammunition, and cannon fire from a MiG took out control of his rudder and hydraulics. By that point, only one of the seven original Soviet planes was still in the air with him. He managed to escape by playing cat-and-mouse in the clouds with the MiG all the way back to the protection of the fleet

“As I maneuvered to avoid the wreckage, I porpoised to try and clear my tail. I was tracking another wounded MIG when I suddenly spotted one of the other two as he slid in on my six. He fired a burst with his 37mm cannon and hit me in the wing. The shell went into the engine area and messed up the hydraulic unit in the accessory section. I suddenly lost rudder and flaps and only had partial aileron control. The only thing that really worked were the elevators. I dove toward the cloud deck below at 13,000 feet, and he was 500 feet behind me and still shooting all the way down. It seemed like it was taking forever to drop that 10,000 feet! My wingman finally got back in the fight and came in on the MiG and he pulled away as I went into the clouds.”

Williams fought to control the Panther, hoping he could pull out of the dive. “I came out of the clouds at around 400 feet. I was way too low to eject – you had to be above 1,200 feet and in a climb to successfully eject from a Panther – so I was stuck with staying in the airplane, like it or not. I soon discovered it was uncontrollable below 170 knots, so I had to maintain high speed regardless.” which made the approach precarious considering the Panther’s normal landing speed was 105 knots, or roughly 120 miles per hour. As he passed over the fleet a few hundred feet above the freezing ocean, several escorting destroyers opened fire as he flashed past.

Aboard Oriskany, the deck was ordered cleared for what was obviously going to be a crash landing. “I told them I couldn’t fly slower than 170 knots and I could see the ship visibly speed up as she turned into the wind.” Williams set himself up on final approach; the carrier was taking spray over the bow as the stern rose and fell through a 20-foot arc. “I didn’t want to ditch, because I wasn’t sure I could make a successful ditching, and that water was cold enough I knew I wouldn’t last ten minutes even in my poopy suit.”

 

Flying a conventional turning approach to the back end of the carrier was not possible, given his lack of control. After learning of Williams’ predicament, the captain of the Oriskany turned the ship so the Panther could make a straight in approach. “The Oriskany’s captain headed the ship just away from the wind, which gave me the opportunity to come aboard.”  He kept the bucking Panther under control and continued the straight-in approach at 170 knots. With his canopy now open he flew a “Roger pass” to a three wire trap. “I caught the three wire and shut her down.”

After taking a moment to catch his breath, Williams climbed out of the riddled jet and was surprised he’d made it back when he saw the damage.

“They counted 263 holes in the airplane, mostly from 23mm hits and some 37mm hits, including the one in the wing that went into the engine accessory section. If it had been six inches forward, it would have hit the spar and blown my wing off. Eight inches to the rear and it would have blown up the engine. I had fired off all 760 rounds of 20mm I had aboard. I wouldn’t have had a chance if I hadn’t been armed with those cannons.” After the airedales pulled everything of value from F9F-5 BuNo 125459, the broken carcass was heaved overboard, where it disappeared into the dark sea.

 

In the fight of his life, Royce Williams had accomplished what no other American fighter pilot would ever accomplish: shoot down four MiG-15s in one fight. Given that the F9F-5 Panther was outclassed and outperformed on all points – speed, maneuverability and firepower – by the MiG-15, which was nearly 100mph faster and had a superior thrust-to-weight ratio, it was truly a performance for the record books. Williams’ air battle is now known as the longest dogfight in Naval history. Before that, the longest one was five minutes. Even in the most extreme circumstances, pilots know that if you can run, you run. And you only ever train for 3 on 1. To go 7 on 1 is beyond imagining.

“If I told you, I’d have to shoot ya”

It was then that the national security implications of the encounter began to take hold. While Soviet volunteers were known to be flying in Korea, Williams had engaged the actual Soviet Air Force.  There was real fear at the highest levels of the US government and UN command that such an “incident” could change the Korean “police action” into World War III. As far as the United States Navy was concerned, the fight had never happened.

It is now  known that the message to the USS Oriskany warning of the MiG flight came from a National Security Agency (NSA) team on board the heavy cruiser USS Toledo (CA-133), more than likely, the intelligence  from a communications intercept. At the time, the mere existence of the newly formed NSA was still considered Top Secret which earned it the moniker “No Such Agency.”

After ordering Williams to tell no one, Vice Admiral Robert P. Briscoe, Commander Naval Forces Far East, informed him the NSA team had proof from recorded radio transmissions that he had gotten at least three of the MiGs, while the fourth had crashed in Siberia. Unfortunately, the gun camera footage had been “edited” aboard Oriskany, leaving only a portion showing two MiGs hit solidly.

Naval commanders ordered a version of the mission created that became the official account as found in the Oriskany and Air Group 102 Action Reports, though it had little connection with the facts: Williams was credited with one kill and a probable/damaged while Lt (jg) John Middleton, wingman to division leader Elwood, who had never been anywhere near the fight, was credited with a kill on the basis that, at the end of the 35-minute fight, he had been vectored toward a descending MIG whose pilot had ejected when Middleton approached it and fired a burst from out of range. Both pilots were awarded the Silver Star for their “accomplishments.” Dave Rowlands, who never fired a shot in the entire fight, was awarded a probable and the Distinguished Flying Cross. The history books have told the story that way ever since.

Royce Williams remained silent about the event for nearly 50 years, flying 70 missions during the Korean War, commanding VF-33 and then, during the Vietnam War, flew 110 missions as commander, Carrier Wing 11 (CAG), retiring as a Captain.  The only official record of the engagement was Williams’ one confirmed kill and a Silver Star.

Four decades later, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, records began to emerge from Moscow confirming the engagement. Following the end of the Cold War in 1992, the Russians opened their records and revealed that Williams had indeed gotten four: Captain Belyakov, Captain Vandalov, Lt Pakhomkin and Lt Tarshinov of the VVS-PVO, the Air Defense Forces of the Red Air Force. Vandalov, Pakhomkin and Tarshinov were directly shot down in the fight, while flight leader Belyakov was badly shot up and was killed when he attempted to crash-land as soon as he was over Soviet territory. The dogfight was covered in a 2014 book by Russian historian Igor Seidov,  Red Devils Over the Yalu: A Chronicle of Soviet Aerial Operations in the Korean War.

On the USS Midway, now a museum ship in San Diego, as a tribute to Williams, there is an F9F Panther with the silhouettes of four MiGs on the side under the cockpit.

 

There’s now a long-simmering campaign for Williams to receive the Medal of Honor. Navy veteran Steve Lewandowski gathered signatures from nearly 100 Navy, Marine, and Army flag officers supporting the action, as well as resolutions from the American Legion and Distinguished Flying Cross Association. That effort has been pushed to Congress. Please See Part 2.

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Note: This post is based on multiple sources owing credit and thanks to Skip from the “The List,” Pam Kragen, Marc Liebman, Dario Leone, Max Hauptman, including The San Diego Union, and the websites  Militaryhistorynow.com and Task and Purpose.

Against All Odds – Killing MiGs in the Korean War with Naval Aviator Royce Williams (Part 2 of 2)

 

Testimony of Pilot #33

Will he finally receive the Medal of Honor?

 

In San Diego Harbor on the USS Midway, now a museum ship , Capt. Royce Williams (USN, Ret) stands next to  an F9F Panther with the silhouettes of four MiGs  under the cockpit. The aircraft and its markings are there as a tribute to the man who downed at least four Russian MiGs in an extraordinary 35+ minutes on one mission on  Nov. 18, 1952. 

For over half a century his achievement was classified; nobody knew what he did that day over the skies of Korea.  If you don’t know his story please see Part One.

Now retired he is one of the Korean War’s forgotten heroes. Royce Williams’ heroics in the Korean War flew under the radar for more than a half-century. Now,  after his heroic engagement with seven Soviet MiG 15s – kept secret for decades – the 97-year-old retired Navy captain could be in line for the Medal of Honor based  on a movement, sponsored by a U.S. Senator and several Navy flag officers.

Royce Williams accomplished what no other American fighter pilot would ever accomplish: shoot down four MiG-15s in one fight. Given that the F9F-5 Panther was outclassed and outperformed on all points by the MiG-15 – speed (nearly 100mph faster), superior thrust-to-weight ratio, maneuverability and firepower  – it was truly a performance for the record books.

 

This was the only time that a US Pilot in a US aircraft engaged Soviet pilots in Soviet aircraft during the Korean War, and was covered up for decades due to the tense political environment of the Cold War. The event was immediately declared Top Secret and Williams was directed by the Navy to not reveal the incident.

There were more than 250,000 sorties flown by the Navy during the Korean conflict, and classification or not the ensuing engagement would end in one of the great feats of aerial combat.

There is now an effort underway to see him awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.

******

There was real fear at the highest levels of the US government and UN command that such an “incident” could change the Korean “police action” into World War III.  The national security implications of the encounter began to take hold. While Soviet volunteers were known to be flying in Korea, Williams had engaged the actual Soviet Air Force. Furthermore, his flight had been made aware of the Soviet jets based on intelligence from a small detachment from the National Security Agency — then less than a year old — operating on one of the other ships in the task force. As far as the United States Navy was concerned, the fight had to have never happened.

After ordering Williams to tell no one, Vice Admiral Robert P. Briscoe, Commander Naval Forces Far East, did inform him the NSA team had proof from recorded radio transmissions that indeed he had gotten at least three of the MiGs, while the fourth had crashed in Siberia. Unfortunately, the gun camera footage had been “edited” aboard Oriskany, leaving only a portion showing two MiGs hit solidly.

Rather than acknowledge an air battle that might have had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Korean War, National Security Agency and Naval commanders ordered a version of the mission created that became the “official account” as found in the Oriskany and Air Group 102 Action Reports, though it had little connection with the facts.  Both planes’ gun camera footage was immediately taken by the intelligence officers and later, Williams learned, was passed along to the newly formed National Security Agency.

The dogfight scrubbed from its records and Williams sworn to secrecy for more than 50 years, when the nation awarded 146 Medals of Honor to U.S. servicemen for extraordinary valor in the Korean War, Williams didn’t make the list.

He was credited with one kill and a probable/damaged while Ltjg John Middleton was credited with a kill on the basis that, at the end of the 35-minute fight when  vectored back from Oriskany toward a descending MIG, the pilot had ejected when Middleton approached it and fired a burst from out of range. As the wingman to the division leader who had been forced to return to the Oriskany by mechanical problems he had never been anywhere near the real fight.  Both pilots were awarded the Silver Star for their “accomplishments.” Dave Rowlands, who never fired a shot in the entire fight, was awarded a probable and the Distinguished Flying Cross. The history books have told the story that way ever since.

Williams went on to fly a total of 70 missions during the Korean War, later flying F-8 Crusaders and commanded VF-33 and Carrier Wing 11.  He flew 110 missions during a Vietnam deployment as the “CAG,” retiring  as a Captain (O-6) in 1980.

The only official record of the engagement is Williams’ one confirmed kill and a Silver Star. His aerial heroics have been a legend for decades among pilots coming up through the Navy’s Top Gun school. But no trace of Williams’ daring flight on Nov. 18, 1952, exists in the U.S. military archives.

*****************

For decades, as noted, the entire incident itself remained shrouded in mystery but over the years, pieces of the story began to emerge. In 1992, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, records began to emerge from Moscow confirming the engagement. The Russians opened records that revealed that Williams had indeed gotten four kills: Captain Belyakov, Captain Vandalov, Lt Pakhomkin and Lt Tarshinov of the VVS-PVO, the Air Defense Forces of the Red Air Force. Vandalov, Pakhomkin and Tarshinov were directly shot down in the fight, while flight leader Belyakov was badly shot up and was killed when he attempted to crash-land as soon as he was over Soviet territory.

Other unconfirmed reports surfaced that the Soviet’s actually lost six airplanes in the encounter. A fifth crashed in Soviet territory as it was limping home. Another aircraft and pilot were listed as MIA because the plane never returned to its base. All six were members of Soviet Naval Aviation.

True to his word, Williams although long since retired, had refused to discuss the dogfight. He had never told anyone about the dogfight — not even his wife, Camilla, or his pilot brother until the Russians released the downed pilots names.

But while Williams thus became the top-scoring carrier-based naval aviator and the top-scoring naval aviator in a Navy jet in the Korean War, several attempts to set the record straight have failed. The problem persists on the grounds that there is no longer an American witness alive to verify Williams’ account, this despite the Russian publication of the names of the Soviet pilots who died in the fight.

The dogfight has now been covered in a 2014 book by Russian historian Igor Seidov, “Red Devils Over the Yalu: A Chronicle of Soviet Aerial Operations in the Korean War.”

He wrote that of the seven MiGs that left Vladivostik that morning, only one returned to base. Four were shot down by a single U.S. aircraft, one plane was shot up and crashed on its way back and the seventh plane was never found.

There’s now a long-simmering campaign for Williams to receive the Medal of Honor. But because the incident officially didn’t happen, finding the necessary documentation is still an uphill battle. Nominations for the Medal of Honor are required within three years of the event. Any later nomination requires Congressional action.

Over the past eight years, after reading Seidov’s book, retired Rear Adm. Doniphan “Don” Shelton of Del Mar has tried repeatedly to get the Navy and Department of Defense to award the medal to Williams, but by not involving Congress members early enough in the process to receive a congressionally awarded medal, Shelton’s efforts ultimately failed and last October Shelton passed away .

A newly assembled delegation’s effort, nicknamed “Operation Just Reward,” is now seen as the last chance to get the medal to Williams before he passes away.

Navy veteran Steve Lewandowski who assisted Shelton’s efforts for three years has gathered signatures supporting the action from nearly 100 Navy, Marine, and Army flag officers, as well as resolutions from the American Legion and Distinguished Flying Cross Association. All five members of the San Diego U.S. Congressional delegation have joined forces to not only bring Williams’ heroism to the public’s attention, but also to right what they see as a historic wrong. Congress members Darrell Issa, Scott Peters, Sara Jacobs, Juan Vargas and Mike Levin have prepared an amendment to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to include the Medal of Honor for Williams,

“To me and everyone who learns his story, Royce Williams is more than the Navy’s Top Gun pilot for all time,” said Rep. Issa who initially proposed a bill to award Williams the Medal of Honor last fall and sponsored the House NDAA amendment. “His courage under fire and service to our country in a time of war should be an inspiration for all Americans. While Royce seeks neither fame nor recognition, those of us who know him and know what he did won’t give up until our mission to honor him is a success.”

“Royce Williams is a hero like no other, and his uncommon valor and resolute courage in battle is a history everyone should know,” Issa continued. “His recognition with the Medal of Honor is overdue and we’re going to get it done.” But even with the support of the bipartisan delegation, the medal award is no sure thing. Lewandowski said there are still hurdles to overcome, as the Navy and Department of Defense have already twice rejected the application. He hopes the battle for the medal can now be fought in the court of public opinion and the bipartisan coalition’s support will turn the tide.

“This is it, ‘once more unto the breach.’ It’s a ragtag, zero-resources effort, but it’s the right thing to do. This old man needs to be recognized for this unbelievable dogfight, when quite frankly anyone else would’ve run the other way. He’s the real Top Gun,” said Lewandowski, who is past commander of American Legion Post 416 in Encinitas.

Now 97 and long retired, Williams lives in a scenic mountainside home in Escondido’s Hidden Meadows community. Spinal injuries from a long-ago plane crash in El Centro make it hard for Williams to maneuver around his home, but his memory of the 1952 dogfight remains as fresh today as it was seven decades ago. Asked how it would feel to be awarded the Medal of Honor now, Williams takes a few seconds to consider his answer.

“If it happened, I would be awed,” Williams said. “I wish my dad could know. It would mean even more to my friends to know that I finally received it.”

****************

The House has passed the version of the FY 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that includes the amendment authorizing the award of the highest military award for valor to Williams for the California resident’s courageous actions against such long odds on November 18, 1952.

The Senate version has yet to go through that chamber’s full amendment process.

 

Actions Speak Louder Than Medals – the Royce Williams Story – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RzrNkx4iQ 

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