Korean war Top Gun pilot

 Insider:

This 'Top Gun' shot down 4 soviet jets in 30 minutes and kept it a secret for 50 years. He was just awarded the Navy Cross.

Royce Williams was awarded one of the highest awards for combat valor in the United States military on Friday for a mission that had been classified for more than 50 years, several outlets reported.

In 1952, Williams was a lieutenant Navy Pilot during the Korean war, NBC 7 reported. Operating an F9F Panther – the Navy's first jet fighter, Williams and three other aviators were sent on a combat air patrol in the Sea of Japan, about 100 miles off the North Korean coast, CNN reported.

The group came across seven Soviet jets heading toward them.

"They just didn't come out of Russia and engage us in any way before," Williams said in a 2021 interview with the American Veterans Center.

The group began to shoot at the soviet jets but after a while, Williams noticed that he was the only American left and he took on the soviet jets alone. Despite being outnumbered, shot down four of the jets before returning to safety, CNN reported.

"I was just like a machine," Williams now 97-year-old told NBC 7.

Williams told the American Veterans Center that he knew that the soviet jets were the best fighter jets at the time and that his jet was not meant for "aerial dogfights," but he was in one and did what he was trained to do. The incident lasted about half an hour.

The "top gun" was then sworn to secrecy about what happened because the US government decided to classify the operation, NBC 7 reported. Those records were eventually declassified about 20 years ago.
...

In a video message posted by KUSI, actor Tom Cruise, who played the pilot fighter Maverick in the Top Gun series congratulated Williams. Williams's dogfight with the soviets took place 10 years before Cruise was born.
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It is not clear why the government decided to classify the event, but it is pretty clear why Royce Williams was deserving of the medal ceremony.  

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