He was a young man, just turned 27..Full of piss and vinegar. Afraid of no one or anything. Balls to the wall. A US Navy fighter pilot. And he had a job to do..When he took off from the carrier USS Oriskany into stormy skies over the Sea of Japan on Nov. 18, 1952, Lieut. E. Royce Williams had no idea his mission with three other pilots from VF-781 would make history..Classified history. It is only recently the story can be told..For starters, this was not the infamous “MiG Alley," so named because aerial combat was generally limited to the western half of the Korean peninsula, where the US Air Force (USAF’s) lethal F-86 Sabres would patrol the approaches from China..But he was not flying a Sabre. He and his squadron were flying Grumman F9F Panthers, an aircraft considered far inferior to Russian MiGs..It didn’t take long for things to heat up..“We started to rendezvous with each other as we climbed out of the clouds,” Williams told author Tanmay Kadam for The Eurasian Times..“And that’s when we heard from the combat information centre there were inbound bogeys from the north,” he said..The MiGs were apparently seeking retribution for a major airstrike earlier that day on an industrial complex in North Korea, just eight-km from the Soviet border..It was payback time..The bogeys were detected on radar roughly 80 nautical miles (148.16 km) in the north-northeast. There appeared to be seven Soviet MiG-15 fighters that had taken off from a Soviet base in Vladivostok..The attacking aircraft were indeed swept-wing MiG-15s, which surpassed the Panther in speed, maneuverability, climb rate and weapons range. Not the kind of cards you want to be dealt in an aerial dogfight.. MiGMiG .Of course, Murphy’s Law would strike..One of the USAF jets suffered a fuel pump problem and was forced to break off, bringing his wingman with him as an escort, leaving Williams and his wingman to defend the carrier against incoming MiGs..All seven of them..The two Panthers broke out in the clear at 12,000 feet, when Williams suddenly spotted the enemies’ contrails above. He figured the Soviet fighters were flying much higher..He kept ascending and radioed back to the Oriskany: “ The MiGs were in sight, and split into a three-plane and a four-plane group.”.The Oriskany radioed Williams not to engage. Well, so much for that..The MiGs came down like bats out of hell, opening fire with their 23mm and 37mm cannons. The battle was on!.“I was engaged mentally at the time,” Williams recounted..“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, I’d become an easy target. So, my initial goal was to look for defensive opportunities when they made mistakes,” he said..The four-plane formation attacked from the right and opened fire. Williams pulled into a hard climbing left turn, came around on the “Number Four MiG,” and fired a short burst at its rear fuselage..Bingo! The MiG went down smoking, and Williams’ wingman followed it, leaving him alone to face six remaining Soviet fighters. Six!. PanthersPanthers .As the two MiG formations climbed for altitude, Williams found himself on the tail of one and downed the second aircraft. After this, he had to be careful as the Panther carried less ammunition than the MiGs..The MiGs began taking turns climbing and making passes at Williams, who could only engage when a Soviet jet passed in front of him or engaged him head-on..Williams then fired at another MiG, forcing it to bank steeply out of the fight, leaving its wingman, who fired a long burst as the two jets passed close to each other, with the Soviet plane crashing into the sea..The three remaining MiGs of the other group easily accelerated away and gained altitude to dive for yet another firing run..Looking through his canopy windscreen, he saw them reverse course and fire a burst as they flashed past, luckily failing to score any hits..But suddenly, Williams saw a MiG on his tail. Bad news. But all was not lost..Williams made a tough wings-vertical right turn with contrails spinning off his wingtip fuel tanks, and the MiG flashed past. Danger averted..Eventually, the enemy formations broke apart, allowing Williams to track an individual MiG. Some rounds appeared to hit, but he could not follow up..“I was firing at every MiG that passed within gun range as they came by,” said Williams..Finally, the leader of the group and his wingman turned to the right, and Williams went after the section leader, who cleverly pulled up into the sun..After that, Williams 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 Williams turned into him and fired at him practically point-blank, and he also went down..The entire thing only last 35 minutes, but it would be the longest dogfight in US history..Williams ran out of ammunition, and MiG cannon fire took out 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 all the way back to the protection of the fleet. But the drama was not over..A white-knuckles carrier landing awaited..Aboard Oriskany, the deck was ordered cleared — he was coming in hot, very hot.. PantherPanther .“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 said..Eventually, the Oriskany’s captain turned the ship away from the wind, allowing Williams to make a straight-in 50/50 approach..After such an incredible dogfight, it’s amazing he still had the steel to hit the numbers. He nailed it!.On deck, there were 263 holes in Williams’ Panther. Sadly, it would be ignominiously pushed off the deck into the sea..While it was confirmed he had shot down three and possibly four MiGs, he was not to discuss the engagement with anyone, ever..The US Navy did not keep a record of it because the US was concerned that acknowledging the incident might drag the Soviets into the Korean War. There was bigger fish to fry..A couple weeks later Williams was invited to have a private meeting with President-elect Dwight Eisenhower in Seoul, South Korea..Williams said he shared a cocktail with Eisenhower, but they never discussed the dogfight since “officially, it never happened.”.Williams continued to serve in the Navy for an additional 23 years, flying 110 sorties during the Vietnam War..He retired in 1975 with a display case full of awards, including the Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and the Legion of Merit with combat “V.”.He kept the dogfight a secret from everyone, including his wife Camilla, until the early 2000s, when the Korean War archives were declassified..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..According to that book, of seven MiGs that left Vladivostok that morning, only one returned to base. Four were shot down by a single US aircraft, one plane was shot up and crashed on its way back and the seventh was never found..The engagement became one of the most incredible feats in aerial combat and arguably the longest aerial duel in US military history.. Dogfight paintingDogfight painting
