American Valor Quarterly Issue 2 - Spring 2008 | Page 23

Jesse and I were conducting an armed reconnaissance mission in
support of the men fighting at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir on
December 4, 1950, when he called and said he had lost oil
pressure—probably from ground fire which had pierced his oil
line. He crashed on the side of a mountain and, because of the
intensity of the crash, his plane buckled at the cockpit so the
fuselage was bent at a 20 to 25 degree angle, and smoke billowed
out from under the cowling. There was no doubt in the minds
of those of us flying overhead that he had perished in the crash.
So the flight leader left us and climbed to a higher altitude to get
better communications and call for a rescue helicopter to retrieve
Jesse from the wreckage.
While he was gone, however, Jesse had opened the canopy of
the cockpit and waved to us, to let us know that he was alive. But
for some reason he didn’t get out of the airplane. We received
word from the flight leader that the rescue helicopter was on its
way, but would take at least a half-hour before he could get
there. I felt that because of the smoke, the plane could burst into
flames before the helicopter could get there, and the fire would
overtake Jesse. So I decided to land as close as I could and pull
him out of the cockpit, and wait for the rescue helicopter. I was
able to land, since it wasn’t as if I was crashing into the side of a
mountain, but more of a slight upslope with about two feet of
snow covering the ground. It was cold, probably about zero
degrees that day, but it got down to about 35 below at night in
the elevations around 3,000 feet above sea level. When I got to
Jesse’s plane, I could see that he wasn’t able to get out due to the
way the fuselage was bent—it had pinned him into the cockpit so
that his knee was jammed between the side of the coc