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History:
Royce Williams

Royce Williams grew up in Wilmot, South Dakota. He and his brother both aspired to fly, and both enlisted after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Williams remained in the Navy while attending college in Minnesota, and qualified as a naval aviator at Pensacola in August 1945.

He learned to fly the F9F-5 Panther jet and was assigned to active duty in the Korean War, where he flew 70 missions.

In 1952, then-Lieutenant Williams was serving with VF-781 aboard the USS Oriskany as part of Task Force 77.

On 18 November 1952, on his second mission of the day, while on combat air patrol near Hoeryong, North Korea, his group of four pilots spotted seven MiG-15s overhead.

The other three pilots had to return to the carrier and the MiGs began to fire on Williams, putting him into a one-man dogfight with seven MiG-15s that lasted 35 minutes. It is believed to be the longest dogfight in U.S. Navy history.

 Commanders on his carrier ordered him away, but Williams had to tell them that he was already fighting for his life.

 He shot down four of the MiGs and likely hit two others. By the end of the 35-minute period, only one of the MiGs was still in the air with him, and he managed to escape back to his carrier, out of ammunition and having lost his hydraulics. He was uninjured, but 263 holes were counted in his Panther jet. While reported by others that he never saw the plane again as it was pushed into the sea, aircraft logs for BuNo 125459 show the aircraft flew until 1959 and was stricken on May 31 while attached to NAS Kingsville.

Photos by: ollielebananiaCFSP

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