Fullbore Friday

the secrets we keep

Elmer Royce Williams, Captain, USN (Ret.).

Every Naval officer should know his name, but few do. He was born in 1925, and he is still with us.

What a story.

Imagine you are just your standard-issue U.S. Navy fleet Lieutenant in your late 20s. You missed the big war, but you are ear deep in the next one, the Korean War.

You know, on paper at least, you are flying a plane outclassed by your opponent. Doesn’t matter.

Then one day you find yourself facing not just a better aircraft—but outnumbered by them. To make it even worse, you find out after the merge that you are not facing the JV team, but the varsity.

Before it is all said and done, you finish what has been called, "one of the greatest feats in aviation history", but there is a twist.

The dogfight was scrubbed from U.S. Navy and National Security Agency records, and Williams was sworn to secrecy about the incident—so much so that he never told anyone about it, not even his wife nor his pilot brother, until the Korean War records were declassified in 2002.

A year after the dogfight, you were given a Silver Star on the down-low.

No one is allowed to know about it until half a century later. You complete a full Navy career, including two tours flying combat missions over Vietnam followed by at sea command and then retirement as a Captain.

But, once word got out…

There has been a years-long campaign to award Williams the Medal of Honor for his exploit. In 2014, retired Rear Admiral Doniphan Shelton became aware of Williams’s feat, and he tried unsuccessfully for years to get the Navy or Department of Defense to recommend him for the medal. He said that Williams’s heroism was “unmatched either in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or since then”.^[11] On 14 July 2022, a bipartisan group of five congressmembers persuaded the House of Representatives to approve an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act which would waive the statute of limitations for a potential Medal of Honor for Williams. The amendment and bill were approved for the House version of the bill, which were then forwarded to the United States Senate, which removed the provision in conference.^[12][7][13] In 2021, one veteran who helped Shelton with his quest believed that there was still only a 75 percent chance of the medal being awarded; the key problem is that the dogfight is not recorded in official U.S. records.^[3]

In December 2022 Williams was awarded the Navy Cross as an upgrade of the Silver Star the Navy awarded him in 1953.^[14] The award was approved by U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, who said, “Having reviewed the findings of now numerous investigations related to the case of Capt. Royce Williams, I have determined this case to be special and extraordinary. His actions clearly distinguished himself during a high-risk mission and deserve proper recognition.”^[15]

Get a fresh cup of coffee, close the door, and turn up the volume.

Fullbore.