President Donald Trump intends to recognize 100-year-old veteran E. Royce Williams on Tuesday night by bestowing upon him the Medal of Honor for his conduct during a clandestine operation in the Korean War.
This would signify the inaugural occasion on which a president has conferred the medal, the U.S. military’s preeminent accolade for bravery in combat, during a State of the Union address.
Williams, a retired Navy captain, participated in the longest aerial engagement in U.S. Navy history, combating seven Soviet MiG fighter jets and downing four during a thirty-minute dogfight in 1952.
The Soviet participation was clandestine at the time, resulting in the event’s records being classified for decades. At the height of the Korean War, Williams and another American pilot were flying off the coast of the Korean Peninsula when they encountered seven Soviet miG-15 fighter jets. The Soviet aircraft commenced firing; he would later recollect, “Since they initiated the confrontation, I retaliated.”
Williams engaged one of the MiGs, while his American compatriot pursued it. Subsequently, while flying solo, he confronted the remaining aircraft, successfully downing three additional Soviet planes while navigating through what military reports later characterized as a barrage of hundreds of incoming rounds. In recent years, the U.S. military has released comprehensive accounts of the encounter, depicting it as one of the most intense aerial confrontations of the war.
“In the moment I was a fighter pilot doing my job,” Williams told news outlet Task & Purpose in a 2022 interview. “I was only shooting what I had.”
Williams turned his damaged plane back toward an American aircraft carrier after it was hit. He then guided the plane in for a high-speed landing. He later said that he had thought about ejecting, but he decided against it because the cold weather over the water made it too dangerous.
Williams says he was told to keep the fight in the air a secret. It was a rare and politically charged fight between American and Soviet forces at a time when the two Cold War enemies were trying to avoid open war. He never told anyone about it, not even his wife, for years.
It wasn’t until years after the Soviet Union fell that details about the operations came to light, thanks to the release of military histories and archival records. Three years ago, Williams got the Navy Cross, which is the highest award for bravery in combat that a Navy or Marine Corps member can get.
Republican Rep. Darell Issa from California, whose district includes Williams’s home in San Diego, pushed for the retired Navy pilot to get the Medal of Honor. Last year, lawmakers gave the president the power to give the award, getting rid of the long-standing rule that it had to be given within five years of the act of valor.
“The heroism and valor he demonstrated for more than 35 harrowing minutes almost 70 years ago in the skies over the North Pacific and the coast of North Korea unquestionably saved the lives of his fellow pilots, shipmates, and crew,” Issa wrote in a statement earlier this month.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt prefaced President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning, saying it will be “a great speech” that will focus on how he’s fulfilling his campaign pledges to the American people.
Leavitt said that the speech will also focus on those individual Americans who contributed mightily to the nation’s development over the centuries, with an eye toward celebrating the country’s 250th birthday on Independence Day in July.
“He’s going to share the stories of GREAT American heroes who exemplify bravery and the spirit of 1776,” Leavitt told the Fox News program. “And the president is, of course, going to tout his administration’s record-setting accomplishments over the past year while laying out an ambitious agenda to continue making the American dream more attainable for working-class people across the country.”
She added: “It’s gonna be a great speech. There will be some tear-jerking moments as there was last year, in addition to some moments of levity, and so we hope everyone will tune in.”
