Thomas J. Hudner passes

The sad news has reached us that Thomas J Hudner, Jr has passed at the age of 93. He was awarded the Medal of honor during the Korean War when he tried to rescue a fellow pilot, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, when Brown’s aircraft succumbed to enemy fire while they were covering the withdrawal of troops from the Chosin Reservoir. Hudner’s citation;

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a pilot in Fighter Squadron 32, while attempting to rescue a squadron mate whose plane struck by antiaircraft fire and trailing smoke, was forced down behind enemy lines. Quickly maneuvering to circle the downed pilot and protect him from enemy troops infesting the area, Lt. (J.G.) Hudner risked his life to save the injured flier who was trapped alive in the burning wreckage. Fully aware of the extreme danger in landing on the rough mountainous terrain and the scant hope of escape or survival in subzero temperature, he put his plane down skillfully in a deliberate wheels-up landing in the presence of enemy troops. With his bare hands, he packed the fuselage with snow to keep the flames away from the pilot and struggled to pull him free. Unsuccessful in this, he returned to his crashed aircraft and radioed other airborne planes, requesting that a helicopter be dispatched with an ax and fire extinguisher. He then remained on the spot despite the continuing danger from enemy action and, with the assistance of the rescue pilot, renewed a desperate but unavailing battle against time, cold, and flames. Lt. (J.G.) Hudner’s exceptionally valiant action and selfless devotion to a shipmate sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

Ensign Brown was the first Black naval aviator and Boston.com fills in some of the details left out of the citation;

On seeing that Brown was alive after his crash landing, Hudner tightened his harness, jettisoned all excess weight, and landed, wheels up, within 100 yards of the wreck in two feet of snow. He found Brown conscious and calm, bareheaded, his fingers frozen, unable to reach his fallen gloves and helmet.

“We’ve got to figure out how to get out of here,” Brown told him.

Hudner removed the woolen watch cap he had carried in his flight suit, placed it over Brown’s head and wrapped Brown’s hands in an extra scarf. Then he looked into the cockpit. The ensign’s right knee was crushed and jammed between the fuselage and the control panel.

With only one hand available — he needed the other to hold on to the plane — Hudner could not extricate him. He radioed the incoming helicopter to bring an ax and a fire extinguisher. The trapped man, he later recalled, “was very stoic.”

“He was motionless and slowly dying,” he said.

Hudner packed snow around the smoking canopy to keep any flames away. But the hatchet the helicopter pilot brought just bounced off the unyielding metal, and amputation was not an option: The rescuers could not get deep enough inside the cockpit.

“If anything happens, tell Daisy I love her,” Brown told Hudner, referring to his wife. With nightfall rapidly approaching, the helicopter had to leave. Hudner promised Brown that he would return soon with better equipment.

“It was a baldfaced lie,” he said later; he knew he could never get back in time. By the time Hudner had left him, in fact, Brown might have already died.

Brown’s squadron mates later returned to the site, drenched the body with napalm and set it ablaze to prevent it from being desecrated.

Brown posthumously received a Distinguished Flying Cross.

The New York Times calls the attempted rescue a “civil rights milestone” since the whole thing played out just two years after Truman desegregated the military.

Category: We Remember