A wounded F9F Panther roared through the cold November skies over Korea, its engine straining against heavy damage.
Lieutenant Royce Williams fought to keep the aircraft steady, pushing full throttle toward USS Oriskany, which lay ahead, its deck pitched and swaying in the tumultuous sea.
Below, the escorting destroyer—unaware of his situation—opened fire. Tracers tore through the air, narrowly missing before the ship’s crew realized the sputtering aircraft was one of their own.
The winds whipped around Williams as the Panther’s controls became sluggish, unresponsive.
With the carrier now at general quarters, Williams radioed in: his approach was off by 15 degrees, and his speed was dangerously high—200 miles per hour, nearly 100 faster than normal.
The captain of Oriskany ordered a course change, trying to line up with the Panther’s increasingly erratic descent. Still, with the deck shifting beneath his crippled fighter, in the next moments, Lieutenant Williams would either pull off the impossible or join the frozen depths below.
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Join Dark Skies as we explore the world of aviation with cinematic short documentaries featuring the biggest and fastest airplanes ever built, top-secret military projects, and classified missions with hidden untold true stories. Including US, German, and Soviet warplanes, along with aircraft developments that took place during World War I, World War 2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf War, and special operations mission in between.
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