Military and civil rights hero of Korean War

Thomas Hudner Jr., then a 26-year-old Navy pilot with the rank of lieutenant junior grade, did not radio for permission on Dec. 4, 1950, when amid a battle in the Korean War he purposely crash-landed his plane into an enemy mountainside in an effort to rescue a downed squadron mate. He simply swept in, he said, to do what his comrade would surely have done for him.

His dying friend, Ensign Jesse Brown, 24, was the son ofMississippi sharecroppers and the first African-American naval aviator. Mr. Hudner, a future captain, was white, a New Englander from a well-to-do family and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

For their communion that day in the Korean snow, Mr. Hudner would receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award for valor, and both would be remembered as paragons of the newly integrated U.S. military forces. Mr. Hudner, 93, died Monday at his home in Concord, Mass. He had complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his son, Tom Hudner III.

President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military in 1948.

Mr. Hudner attributed his egalitarianism to his father, who, he told CNN, taught him that “a man will reveal his character through his actions, not his skin color.”

By late 1950, Mr. Hudner and Mr. Brown had been deployed to Korea, where the U.S. was fighting with South Korea against the communist North Koreans and Chinese. On Dec. 4, they joined a six-man flying team sent on a reconnaissance mission to support outnumbered American forces in the frigid Chosin Reservoir.

Suddenly, Mr. Brown’s plane was struck by enemy fire. “He hit with such intensity that there was no question in the minds of any of us that he had perished in that crash,” Mr. Hudner later said.

But to Mr. Hudner’s shock, he eyed Mr. Brown waving from the burning wreckage. Realizing a helicopter would not be able to rendezvous with him for 30 minutes or more, Mr. Hudner decided to fly to Mr. Brown’s rescue.

“He put his plane down skillfully in a deliberate wheels-up landing in the presence of enemy troops,” according to his medal citation.

He injured his back in the landing but was able to haul snow into Mr. Brown’s burning fuselage to stop the fire. Mr. Hudner failed to free Mr. Brown and radioed for backup. A helicopter pilot arrived with an ax and a fire extinguisher, but still they could not extricate him.

“The helicopter couldn’t fly at night. We talked about using a knife to cut off Jesse’s entrapped leg,” Mr. Hudner told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “But neither of us really could have done it. It was obvious Jesse was dying. He was beyond help at that point. We had to leave. We had no choice. I was devastated emotionally.”

Mr. Brown asked Mr. Hudner to tell his wife, Daisy, that he loved her. Mr. Brown stopped responding before Mr. Hudner and the other pilot decided to leave. Later, napalm was dropped on the crash site so that his body could not be dishonored by the enemy.

Mr. Hudner’s Medal of Honor, presented to him by Truman in April 1951 in the presence of Daisy Brown, was the first such award bestowed in the Korean War. Mr. Brown posthumously received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

His friendship with Mr. Brown became the subject of the book “Devotion” by historian Adam Makos.

A Navy frigate was named for Mr. Brown, and a guided-missile destroyer for Capt. Hudner.