Six Decades Later, a Second Rescue Attempt
Associated Press
The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Boxer in June 1952 off the Korean coast.
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: July 29, 2013
BEIJING — As more than 100,000 Chinese soldiers swarmed far fewer
American Marines and soldiers in subzero temperatures on treacherous
terrain in one of the fiercest battles of the Korean War, two United
States Navy pilots took off from an aircraft carrier to provide cover
for their comrades on the ground.
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
Thomas J. Hudner Jr., a retired Navy pilot, with a
North Korean official in Pyongyang last week for the 60th anniversary of
the end the Korean War.
Associated Press
President Truman awarding Mr. Hudner the Medal of Honor for trying to save Mr. Brown
One of the airmen, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, was the son of an
African-American sharecropper from Mississippi. The other, Lt. Thomas J.
Hudner Jr., was the son of a white patrician merchant family from
Massachusetts.
An hour into the flight, Ensign Brown’s plane was hit by enemy fire,
forcing him to crash land on the side of a mountain at Chosin, north of
Pyongyang. Lieutenant Hudner brought his plane down nearby and found
Ensign Brown, but could not rescue him.
On Monday, nearly 63 years after the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Mr.
Hudner, 88, arrived in Beijing after a 10-day visit to North Korea aimed
at finding his friend’s remains.
The trip to North Korea coincided with the 60th anniversary of the end
of the Korean War, a milestone that the North Korean government has
tried to use for propaganda purposes.
Mr. Hudner’s trip was arranged by Chayon Kim, a Korean American who
organized the visit in April of Dennis Rodman, the former N.B.A. star
who became the first American to meet with the North’s young leader, Kim
Jung-un, since he took over from his father in 2011. The timing of Mr.
Hudner’s visit coincided with a massive military parade on Saturday.
Not wanting to be a North Korean prop and citing his frail legs, Mr.
Hudner said he avoided the parade and stayed away from the opening of a
military museum featuring the U.S.S. Pueblo, an American Navy ship
captured by North Korea in 1968.
Nonetheless, he said he made the trip to help bring closure not only to
himself but to Mr. Brown’s widow, Daisy Brown Thorne, 88. In the end,
though, his mission failed. It is the rainy season in the North, and the
North Koreans told him that almost daily downpours had washed away
roads and bridges and made access to the crash site, a five-hour drive
from Pyongyang, impossible.
“It was sort of a jolt to see how they were claiming this was a
victory,” Mr. Hudner said, as he and his traveling companion, Dick
Bonelli, 82, a Marine veteran from the battle of Chosin, relaxed at a
hotel here before returning to the United States on Tuesday. “We decided
not to go to the parade and to skip the museum and the U.S.S. Pueblo.
It still belongs to the United States.”
Mr. Hudner’s attempt to save Mr. Brown has resonated through American
military annals not only for its daring, but because of what it said
about race relations in the newly desegregated army.
The two men met two years after the official desegregation order.
“Shortly after I joined the squadron, I was changing into flight gear
and he came in and nodded ‘Hello,’ ” Mr. Hudner said of meeting Ensign
Brown in December 1949. “I introduced myself, but he made no gesture to
shake hands. I think he did not want to embarrass me and have me not
shake his hand. I think I forced my hand into his.”
Mr. Brown, the United States Navy’s first black aviator, had endured
scorn and prejudice during training from 1947 to 1948, said Adam Makos,
who is writing a book on the wartime friendship between the two pilots,
and who also visited Pyongyang with Mr. Hudner.
On the day of the fateful flight, Mr. Hudner said he took off with Mr.
Brown on his wing on Dec. 4, 1950. They were in a formation of six
Corsairs, single-propeller planes from World War II that are big enough
only for a pilot and are mounted with .50-caliber machine guns.
The pilots had been flying almost daily sorties, giving protection to
American soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Chinese soldiers
sent by Mao Zedong to fortify the weak North Korean army.
The Americans, surprised by the wave upon wave of Chinese soldiers, and
hindered by machine guns that did not work in the freezing weather, had
been ordered to withdraw.
They were within days of completing that operation when Mr. Hudner and
Mr. Brown flew with instructions to patrol roads for enemy troops.
About an hour after takeoff, Mr. Hudner saw white vapor from Mr. Brown’s
plane. “I pointed to a clearing on the mountain where Jesse could
land,” Mr. Hudner said. “He landed with such force, we were convinced he
perished. But we saw that Jesse opened the canopy of the cockpit, and
we knew he was alive.”
Mr. Hudner managed to land about 100 yards from Mr. Brown. Two feet of
snow covered the ground, the temperature was around zero, and they were
behind enemy lines.
“Jesse saw me coming and said in a calm voice: ‘Tom, we’ve got to figure a way of getting out of here.”
The downed pilot had taken off his gloves, apparently to unbuckle his
harness, but his hands were frozen stiff and he could not lever himself
out of the cockpit, Mr. Hudner said. Mr. Hudner clambered onto the wing
of Mr. Brown’s plane, but his boots, slick with ice and snow, slid and
he could not grab his friend.
Mr. Hudner went back to his plane and called for a rescue helicopter to
come with an ax and a fire extinguisher. “I was trying to console him
and assuring him help was on the way.” By the time an American
helicopter arrived Mr. Brown had grown weak. “He told me, ‘If anything
happens to me, tell my wife, Daisy, I love her.’ ”
The helicopter pilot told Mr. Hudner that darkness was coming, and they
had to leave. “I told Jesse we couldn’t get him out without more
equipment, and we were going to get more. He didn’t respond. I think he
died while we were talking to him.”
During his visit to Pyongyang, Mr. Hudner met twice with three North
Korean army officers to discuss the return of Mr. Brown’s remains from
the crash site. In the end, he was told that he should return in
September when the weather was more predictable.
The North Koreans wanted a representative of the United States Joint
P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command, the arm of the military that sends
recovery teams to old battlefields to retrieve the remains of American
soldiers, to come on the return trip, Mr. Hudner said. The command
ceased working with North Korea in 2005, in protest of the North’s
disputed nuclear program.
Mr. Hudner, who received a Medal of Honor for his actions, said it was
disappointing not to go to the crash site. “But we were gratified by the
encouragement” of the North Koreans to return, he said. “From what
we’ve seen, something positive will come out of getting the remains.”
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