The story of that doomed deployment and the unlikely friendship it sparked is at the center of Devotion – a new theatrical release starring Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell. “I felt, yes, there was a chance that I wouldn’t. “Had I been on the ground, I think I would’ve had enough faith in my shipmates for somebody to do something,” Hudner said before his death in 2017.
Hudner was left physically and emotionally bruised.įor his valor Hudner received the Medal of Honor, the US military’s most exalted decoration, from President Truman on the White House lawn in April 1951 – with Brown’s widow, Daisy, just behind them. Brown lost consciousness shortly thereafter two days later, a squadron returned to pepper the crash site with napalm to keep Brown’s body and aircraft from falling into enemy hands. But in the end Hudner, after calming a fire on Brown’s plane and hacking away at his cockpit with an ax for 45 minutes in the subzero weather, couldn’t free Brown from his aircraft, was ordered into a rescue helicopter before night fell (and visibility with it). When his wingman, Tom Hudner, saw Brown struggling to come unpinned from his cockpit afterward, he defied orders and intentionally crash-landed his plane nearby to help Brown. While supporting UN ground forces engaged in the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950, Brown suffered artillery damage to his F4U Corsair aircraft and crash-landed in a remote mountain valley.
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