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Thomas Jerome Hudner, a Medal of Honor recipient, passed away nov. 13, 2017, in Concord, Massachusetts, at the age of 93. Was born on Aug. 31, 1924, in Fall River, Massachusetts.
On the afternoon of Dec. 4, 1950, shortly after China had entered the Korean War, Thomas J. Hudner Jr., a lieutenant junior grade, was piloting one of six Navy Corsairs on a three-hour “roadrunner†mission near the Chosin Reservoir, in Korea’s northeast.
After 45 minutes aloft, at roughly 6,000 feet and five miles behind enemy lines, Lieutenant Hudner watched in horror as a plane operated by a squadron mate, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, was hit by small-arms fire. Losing pressure quickly and too low to bail out, Ensign Brown needed to land. Lieutenant Hudner, among others, directed him by radio to a clearing on a snow-covered mountainside, where his colleague crash-landed belly in.
Others in his formation were sure that Ensign Brown had been killed on impact; the mission leader summoned a helicopter to collect his body. But when Lieutenant Hudner lowered his altitude to make sure, he was amazed at what he spotted.
“I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I wasn’t seeing things,†he told Flight Journal in 2005. “The canopy slowly rolled back, and Jesse waved at us!â€
The Marine rescue helicopter would not reach the scene for a half-hour. In the meantime, Lieutenant Hudner, 26, saw that smoke was rising from under the cowling, or engine casing, of the downed plane, and that Ensign Brown, 24, appeared stuck inside. If the fire didn’t kill him, he feared, the cold would. He resolved instantly to go in to fetch him.
“I was not going to leave him down there for the Chinese,†he later said.
For what followed — he crash-landed his own plane, ran to Brown's side and attempted to wrestle him free from the wreck. While Brown's condition worsened by the minute, Hudner attempted in vain to put out the aircraft fire using snow and to pull Brown from the aircraft. In great pain, Brown began slipping in and out of consciousness. A rescue helicopter arrived around 15:00; its pilot and Hudner were unable to put out the engine fire with a fire extinguisher, and tried unsuccessfully to free Brown with an axe for 45 minutes. They even considered, at Brown's request, amputating his trapped leg. Brown lost consciousness shortly thereafter. The helicopter, which was unable to operate in the darkness, was forced to return to base at nightfall with Hudner, leaving Brown behind. Brown is believed to have died shortly thereafter of his injuries and exposure to the extreme cold.
Hudner begged superiors to allow him to return to the wreck to help extract Brown, but he was not allowed, as other officers feared an ambush of the vulnerable helicopters resulting in casualties. To prevent the body and the aircraft from falling into Chinese or North Korean hands, the U.S. Navy bombed the aircraft with napalm two days later. Brown was the first African-American U.S. Navy officer killed in the war.
For his actions Hudner collected the first Medal of Honor awarded during the Korean War.
But his feat was not purely a military one. It doubled as a civil-rights milestone.
When President Harry S. Truman integrated the armed forces two and a half years earlier, some expressed doubts that white and black soldiers would stand by one another in the heat of battle. But Ensign Brown’s race was immaterial to Lieutenant Hudner, and that was precisely the point.
“A lesson in the brotherhood of man,†a leading black weekly, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, wrote. One letter among many by black admirers said of Lieutenant Hudner — who had had no black classmates at the Naval Academy — “I never thought a white man would help out a black man like that.â€
Only later, after he had returned home, did Lieutenant Hudner learn that what he did that day in Korea could have gotten him court-martialed.
“The fact that it happened was not met with great joy by a lot of people,†he recalled in a 2013 interview. Hudner retired from the Navy as a captain in 1973.
recopilation of
nytimes.com
valleypatriot.com
wiki
On the afternoon of Dec. 4, 1950, shortly after China had entered the Korean War, Thomas J. Hudner Jr., a lieutenant junior grade, was piloting one of six Navy Corsairs on a three-hour “roadrunner†mission near the Chosin Reservoir, in Korea’s northeast.
After 45 minutes aloft, at roughly 6,000 feet and five miles behind enemy lines, Lieutenant Hudner watched in horror as a plane operated by a squadron mate, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, was hit by small-arms fire. Losing pressure quickly and too low to bail out, Ensign Brown needed to land. Lieutenant Hudner, among others, directed him by radio to a clearing on a snow-covered mountainside, where his colleague crash-landed belly in.
Others in his formation were sure that Ensign Brown had been killed on impact; the mission leader summoned a helicopter to collect his body. But when Lieutenant Hudner lowered his altitude to make sure, he was amazed at what he spotted.
“I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I wasn’t seeing things,†he told Flight Journal in 2005. “The canopy slowly rolled back, and Jesse waved at us!â€
The Marine rescue helicopter would not reach the scene for a half-hour. In the meantime, Lieutenant Hudner, 26, saw that smoke was rising from under the cowling, or engine casing, of the downed plane, and that Ensign Brown, 24, appeared stuck inside. If the fire didn’t kill him, he feared, the cold would. He resolved instantly to go in to fetch him.
“I was not going to leave him down there for the Chinese,†he later said.
For what followed — he crash-landed his own plane, ran to Brown's side and attempted to wrestle him free from the wreck. While Brown's condition worsened by the minute, Hudner attempted in vain to put out the aircraft fire using snow and to pull Brown from the aircraft. In great pain, Brown began slipping in and out of consciousness. A rescue helicopter arrived around 15:00; its pilot and Hudner were unable to put out the engine fire with a fire extinguisher, and tried unsuccessfully to free Brown with an axe for 45 minutes. They even considered, at Brown's request, amputating his trapped leg. Brown lost consciousness shortly thereafter. The helicopter, which was unable to operate in the darkness, was forced to return to base at nightfall with Hudner, leaving Brown behind. Brown is believed to have died shortly thereafter of his injuries and exposure to the extreme cold.
Hudner begged superiors to allow him to return to the wreck to help extract Brown, but he was not allowed, as other officers feared an ambush of the vulnerable helicopters resulting in casualties. To prevent the body and the aircraft from falling into Chinese or North Korean hands, the U.S. Navy bombed the aircraft with napalm two days later. Brown was the first African-American U.S. Navy officer killed in the war.
For his actions Hudner collected the first Medal of Honor awarded during the Korean War.
But his feat was not purely a military one. It doubled as a civil-rights milestone.
When President Harry S. Truman integrated the armed forces two and a half years earlier, some expressed doubts that white and black soldiers would stand by one another in the heat of battle. But Ensign Brown’s race was immaterial to Lieutenant Hudner, and that was precisely the point.
“A lesson in the brotherhood of man,†a leading black weekly, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, wrote. One letter among many by black admirers said of Lieutenant Hudner — who had had no black classmates at the Naval Academy — “I never thought a white man would help out a black man like that.â€
Only later, after he had returned home, did Lieutenant Hudner learn that what he did that day in Korea could have gotten him court-martialed.
“The fact that it happened was not met with great joy by a lot of people,†he recalled in a 2013 interview. Hudner retired from the Navy as a captain in 1973.
recopilation of
nytimes.com
valleypatriot.com
wiki