“You call this fun Mav?”
Well done Sir. Well done.
He should never have broken security, doesn’t matter how long ago it happened. His superior knew what he did and the rest of the people and the world do not need to know — it can only cause problems for the country.
Things are classified for a reason.
We worked on F9Fs when I was in Mech Fun in NAS Memphis.
People today would be surprised at how small this bird was.
Smaller than a Sabre jet.
The Russkies were flying Red Chinese MiGs & talking on the radio in pidgin Chinese. Our side knew this but if word leaked out that Soviets were fighting us directly, the American public would have demanded nuclear war (the USSR had no missiles).
This is an amazing story & this air hero deserves the Medal of Honor.
A good account:
“ Admiral Briscoe informed Williams that the new National Security Agency had a team aboard the cruiser USS Helena, which recorded all the Russian radio traffic leading up to and during the fight; they had been the unit that warned the fleet when the Russians decided to send aircraft into the combat area. There was no way that the fight could be publicized, since there was too much of a chance that the Russians would learn how they had been spotted.
At the highest levels of U.S. and U.N. command, there was real fear that such an “incident” between U.S. and Soviet forces could change the “police action” of Korea into World War III. Never mind that Air Force pilots were fighting hundreds of Russian “volunteers” flying MiG-15s with North Korean markings in “MiG Alley,” this was a fight that had directly pitted the two great Cold War adversaries against each other nose-to-nose. After cautioning Williams to tell no one about the fight, the admiral revealed to him that the NSA team had proof he had gotten at least three of the MiGs, and that the fourth had crash landed. “
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj1-pC7r7zMAhVI6CYKHe78BGIQFggoMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epnaao.com%2FPDF%2FFour-Down.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFdY8twG6XH3zQQaT1F6rjd954PFw&bvm=bv.121070826,d.eWE
There was a documentary about the Russian pilots and how many of ours they shot down. They way outnumbered our kills. But no one knew it. This man is a hero. Surprised he kept his secret so long.
Why? Virtually every achievement of our aviators throughout WW-I, II and beyond have been matters of record..........
“The aviation historians, the knowledgeable ones, will tell you without a blemish that this event by Royce was unmatched in the Korean War, was unmatched in the Vietnam War, unmatched ever since then. It stands alone all by itself as a really amazing situation,” Rear Admiral Doniphan B. Shelton (Ret.) said. “He was never recognized properly for what he did on this one day…We hope…he will be properly recognized sometime soon.”
Regarding the question of whether or not he should have spoken about this event, even after more than 60 years, I'm going to make some assumptions here based on information contained in the article:
1) The article states that his achievement "was kept top secret for more than 50 years." It is now 63 years since this event took place, so at some point prior to this, the incident was declassified.
2.)There is a retired Rear Admiral stating that his actions that day should now be properly recognized, so apparently the Admiral feels there is no longer a security classification issue involved here.
Curious, to note something like this had been classified to that level, and held for so long. USN was engaged at that point in a struggle for resources with USAF, and the publicity over this would have helped their cause.
A large number of USAF recce missions went north of the line in that period, and the crews were never allowed to divulge what they had done. Mass declassification came only in the 1990s.
CAPT Williams’ encounter went down at a time when the performance characteristics of USN fighter aircraft were not that wonderful; whether CAPT Williams knew this is another question. And whether it would have mattered is yet another question: fighter pilots have more than their share of ego, and faith in their abilities, justified or not. Got to give him the nod, for courage.
Of course, he could simply have gotten lucky.
Ping
He is truly a class act.