After 50 Years of Silence, Korean War Pilot Shares His Top-Secret Mission

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports, and from business to history, and everything in between, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. Between the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, U.S. Navy Captain Royce Williams flew over two hundred and twenty missions. The following story was classified as top secret because if the word got out that the Russians were now engaging our troops in the Korean War, World War III could have easily broken out. For more than fifty years, Captain Williams didn’t tell a soul, not even his wife. Nobody knew what this twenty-seven-year-old South Dakotan did that day over the skies of Korea.

00:01:00
Speaker 2: Now, yes, born more or less to the Fosse clan of South Dakota, which is rather famous. My mother was one of thirteen. My dad, who was a mail carrier on motorcycle. He was in World War I and then settled near where he was born in a South Dakota town called Wilmot. Very patriotic upbringing. He was large in the local Legion, commander of the unit at times, and I grew up engaged in the community. I took on scouting as a serious matter and was the community’s first Eagle Sky. But I turned out to be an awfully good farmer, and though my brother and sisters pretty much worked for my dad in the grocery business, I worked for a lot of family. It was a lot of uncles and their farms, and then when I moved to Minnesota, I was sort of on demand and farming, and I worked for my uncle at a resort. Mother didn’t worry much about me. She came out one time because we weren’t back as expected, and she found out that we had been in the trestle of a railroad track, and the train was coming, and we ducked down below the rails and underneath in the wood supporting the bridge, and we were safe. But mothers don’t like those sort of things. I was full-time engaged and very athletic. I played in all sports and lettered in all of them, and I was taller. Of that, I’ve lost five and a half inches with the compression of my back, but that is manageable, and every life’s good. I had my first flight when I was four years old in a Ford Tri-Motor out of a pasture in South Dakota, along with my grandma—her first flight too—when she was eighty and interested in aviation. From that time on, my brother likewise, and when I was about seven or eight, two years older, we made a pact. The famous aviators in those days were Lindy Lindbergh in Roscoe. Well, his name is Lynn. If I’d call him Lindy, he’d call me Roscoe. Later on, when I was signed duty on the USS Independence, Roscoe Turner came aboard as a VIP, and I was his guide. That takes us to World War II. My brother, about two years older than me, and I were roller skating in front of his grocery shower, and he came out and said, “Boys, come in and listen to this!” And it was FDR on the radio proclaiming the attack on Pearl Harbor. We all got very serious and were thinking thereafter how we were going to participate. My dad likewise thought he ought to jump in, but they wouldn’t take him, but he sent his two sons. Everybody in America was full-time engaged in some way or other in support of their country in World War II, and little kids were saving the foil from gum, and in the slightest little thing like shoestrings or whatever, everything was going into a war effort, and that made them special and changed their life. I was sixteen, and I joined the local Minnesota Guard. The Guard was called up, and I had two cousins in it. They went to Morocco and both were killed. I didn’t go because I was sixteen, and I went up to Camp Ripley for training in northern Minnesota. Let me finish high school, and when I turned seventeen, I was eligible for Naval Aviation and applied and was accepted and sent down to Corpus Christi, Texas. I didn’t get any actual combat in World War II. I flew the airplanes, and we were instructed to keep an eye out because we were flying over areas of the ocean where Terman submarines were operating. But I was pretty much hit. My brother finished a little bit ahead of me, chose the Marine Corps for his aviation, was in on the Okinawa combat for our area, and I went through a full career pretty much same as I did. He got more carrier landings than most any other Marine I know, and I was in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. And I relieved him in his final station on Admiral McCain’s staff at sink Pack and Hawaii, and he retired the next day. Talk to him a couple of days ago. He’s almost ninety.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: Seven. And you’re listening to the voice of Captain Royce Williams, and my goodness, it hearkens back to a different day in this country. The story of Captain Royce Williams continues here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue here with Our American Stories. And let’s continue now with Captain Royce Williams in his own words about his own life.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: I made patrols in 1952, a second tour in the South Pacific on the Princeton. We were shadowing the ship that the Admiral was on, and we were all slated to go around the world. We hit a typhoon off kam, and one squadron lost eight airplanes on one flight, and we were sent back to the States, and they continued on the around-the-world cruise. Well, I got selected for Regular Navy, and having only a high school background, I was sent to the University of Minnesota for eighteen months to get a two-year degree. I got a four-year degree and still had another quarter due me, so they sent me to postgraduate school. And coming out of there, the Korean War was underway, and I went to a fighter squadron out of Miramar in the fall of ’52, and I was flyting F9F-5, which was the new model of the Panther, and our mission was primarily closer support and reconnaissance. Were targets were trains, train tracks, trucks, bridges, tunnels, and we were not getting to some of the prime targets with manufacturing far to the north. So, in late November, that Force seventy-seven and others decided to put together a task force of three carriers and associated ships, probably numbering twenty-some. And in the press of night, we headed on up off Changing, which is one of the major northern cities of North Korea. And that morning, I was on the first combat flight that attacked Horiong. Well, when I came back from that flight, I was told that “take a quick snack and come back.” “You’re on the Combat Air Patrol next.” So we thought it was going to be not too exciting. But we took off in a snowstorm, a blizzard; five-hundred-feet ceiling; formed as a division of aircraft under the clouds; climbed through to on top, which was twelve thousand feet. Well, while we were in the clouds, we got a message from our controller in the Combat Information Center saying that there were bogies—unidentified aircraft—inbound, headed toward the task force eighty-some miles north of us. So, when we arrived on top of the clouds, I could see to the north—contrails. They were very high. About the time, the flight lead had a light indicating he had a warning regarding his fuel pump, and he was instructed to detach with his wingmen and remain over the task force. And I proceeded with my wingmen, instructed to intercept. There were seven contrails, and as they came over us, I could see that they were MiG-15s. I didn’t know what country. I assumed probably Russia because we weren’t very far from their territory, but as assigned, I pursued them, climbing in their direction. As they turned, they headed back, and in my assumption, I thought they were going home. But when I got to twenty-six thousand feet, they split into a group of four airplanes going to the right and three to the left and descending. And when they dropped below the contrail level, I couldn’t see them anymore and reported that to Combat Information Center on the Eriskane, and they had also lost contact with them. A being a smaller target, the radar no longer picked them up, so we didn’t know where they were or what they were doing. So I was instructed to turn around and come back and establish a barricade at twenty-six thousand feet between the last contact of the MiGs and the task force. Well, it was while in that turn the four that turned off to the right came in and met me from a ten o’clock position relative to the clock and where I was flying, and they were all shooting. So I didn’t pick them up until they were thought they were in range, and I turned hard into them, and as they passed by, I was within range and tracking their number four airplane. The one that was closest to me, the farthest behind the lead, and fired a short burst, and he dropped out of formation. I reported to the Information Center that I thought I’d just hit one, and they said, “Do not engage!” And I said, “We are engaged!” They said, “Go get them!” The three remaining pulled up hard and showed me how classy an airplane they were flying, as they could really outmaneuver, high-climb, and zoomed to about two thousand feet above me. And they had split to her. The guy who just loow his wingman was coming in, and I was going to track him, but he was in the sun, and I kind of lost him. And I saw the other two, who already turned into me, coming back, so I changed my aim point and was tracking the lead, and he fired at me. And I thought he was a little out of range, but he was coming in fast, so I fired, and I may have hit him because he turned away. And then his wingman came in, and I changed my point of aim onto him, and he was firing away, and I was shooting at him a rather long burst, and then he quit. But he continued flying towards me and flew directly underneath me, and I would assume that he was probably hit, the pilot. And while this was happening, the other three came in from the other direction. So, depending on what happened to these that I hit or didn’t hit, uh, I may be up there with six. My wingman wasn’t with me anymore, because when I hit the first guy and he dropped out, uh, my wingman trailed him, tracked him on down to where thought he was going in the ocean, and I don’t know what he did from that time on, but I didn’t see him again. Well, it was now mightily engaged. These guys were no longer formation. They were, uh, singles, operating as a single fighter trying to shoot me down. And I wasn’t trying to do anything fancy. I was countering their attacks. And then, as they pulled off, they would pull abruptly up so high, uh, that I couldn’t, uh, track him anymore. They weren’t a target. They were just getting positioned to come back in and let the next guy have his turn. Well, one time, a guy failed to do that pull-up, and he kind of slid in front of me. And while he was in close, I fired and hit him, and it was almost as though he stopped, and his airplane pieces were coming off him, and I had to turn abruptly to avoid running into him. So let’s lasted about a half…

00:17:37
Speaker 1: hour. And you’ve been listening to Captain Royce Williams in his own words, which we love to do here on this show. When we come back, we’re going to continue with the remarkable story of Captain Royce Williams here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Captain Royce Williams. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

00:18:19
Speaker 2: So this lasted about a half hour. And toward the end of this thing, I was on the tail of one of them, and he stopped maneuvering and was slowing down and losing altitude, and I was out of ammunition. So I turned around, and I saw a MiG was coming in on my tail, and I turned real hard into him. And I’d say it was a lucky shot, but he hit me with a thirty-seven-millimeter right in the wing. Butt had exploded in the accessory section of the engine, destroying all of the hydraulics, and a lot of the electrical severed the cable to the rudder. The guy settled right in behind me at perfect shooting range. But I had my elevator working, and I would jam the stick forward and then I would pull it back, and this would be pretty high-G zooms. And I was always had one hundred percent power of the whole fight, and so I had pretty good control for this maneuver that really saved my life. I dove into the clouds and lost sight of him, and so I knew I was in bad shape, and I thought about ejecting. But this is wintertime, and the ocean is extremely cold. And now I’m wearing an immersion suit that probably would have extended my survival to maybe twenty minutes, and there was no time for me to be rescued, so that would have been it. My commanding officer of the squadron had taken off and with a division four airplanes to go up and relieve me. On takeoff, he saw me coming into the task force area under the clouds and being shot at by the destroyers. They didn’t know who I was, and they were at general quarters, ready to fight and cleared to shoot if they had an unidentified, and they were concern, so they shot. And he called off the dog, saying, “He’s friendly.” I was talking to a group of people in Pensacola, the first time I ever talked about this at all, many years later. And one of the gentlemen afterwards came back and said, “I was one of the guys shooting at you.” “I was under destroyer,” and he said. I said, “You didn’t hit me, don’t worry.” I saved the adrenaline for after my landing, and then I did get a flush of that once I realized what I’d been through. The plane captain, who kind of owned that airplane, got a grease pencil and went around, circled all the perforations, and counted two hundred and sixty-three. So I did meet the captain, and they congratulated me for whatever I did, and said he thought I had just earned the Navy Cross. I had a meeting with the senior admiral in the Western Pacific, who told me that we were covered by the operation of new capability called NSA. And this being their first venture, had a team on the Helena, which was right off the coast of Vladivostok where the base was located that these bigs came from. And their censors told them that I got at least three. And I was told that this is after we got into port and Yokosuka, and told to never tell anybody, ever. And so I spent maybe fifty some years or something like that. We’re never told a soul. They told me there was a lot of surmising by other people, and they were concerned about maybe World War three’s going to get out of hand. I was told that because we had this new capability of NSA, we didn’t want him to know about it, and if I were to come out with all this information that it would be more than I, as a single fighter pilot, than there would actually have gleaned by myself. At some point, I received word that the President-elect was on his way out and had requested to meet with me. And so the President came over to me and then took me by the elbow over to a big, overstuffed leather chair, placed me in it. The little shove sat on the arm and said, “Before we get down to business, we ought to have a drink, don’t you think?” “Well?” I concurred. I said, “Yes, sir.” And he says, “Well, we have bourbon, Wisconsin, water, and soda. What do you have, my son? John’s the bartender.” “Well, bourbon and water, please.” He said, “We have awfully good scotch.” I said, “Well, sir, before the bourbon and water… And then we have awfully good scotch.” I said, “Well, sir, really, bourbon and water.” “Lieutenant, we’ve got the world’s fine scotch.” “Mr. President, I’d drink bourbon,” and odd John, “give him a bourbon and water.” So he did, and then we chatted, and we didn’t talk directly anything about the Russians. We talked about his new position as President, and, uh, that I, uh, Indicatid was a career man. And he said, “We’ll make me your boss,” and, uh, “we’ll have a lot to do with the equipment he use.” And so we sort of discussed fighting equipment and how much better the MiG happened to be in performance, and that sort of thing. Awful. Accompanying him was everybody who was anybody in the command structure in the Korean War. So he’d asked me a question, and one of I wanted to engage, so they would talk about it, and then he kind of me. And then another general will come in and say his piece, and then he and Lieutenant, “what were you going to sing?” And the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, F. Omar Bradley. So I was proud of the company I was in. I got other awards and other wars, and other holes in my airplane hit by SAM missile when Day barely just knocked off a chunk of my tail. So life went on, and I engaged fully. And.