When the F9F Panthers “Swallowed Up” Soviet MiG-15s
American planes and the Soviet planes turn towards each other. The four Americans burst through the cloud cover at 12,000 feet, when Williams gets another message, this time from his flight leader. “Terminal engine trouble, I must return to the carrier.” “Copy. I’ll take it from here.” As his Flight Leader and his wingman turn away, Williams looks up to see contrails.
Seven of them. It’s just Williams and his wingman, Lieutenant ‘Dave’ Rowlands, left to take on what the Americans still think are 7 Korean jets. The two Americans are the only ones standing between the enemy and the American ships. Beliakov orders the groups to split into 2 and dive upon the enemy. The nimble MIGs roll and dive.
Williams and Rowlands are at 26,000 feet when they see the MiGs split, but they lose sight of them as the contrails disappear. Suddenly impacts clatter on Williams’ fuselage and tracers zip by his canopy. They’re coming from the right! Williams and Rowlands break into evasive maneuvers rolling and turning as the first MiG roars by them.
A second MiG attacks as more clacks and bangs reverberating through Williams’s airframe as the speeding fighter litters them with lead. It flies past but it’s replaced by yet another MiG pouncing on the vulnerable Panthers. The American Panthers have good roll, but they are completely outclassed by the MiGs in air-to-air combat.
A fourth MiG comes in hot. He opens fire upon the Panthers, raking them with 23 and 37mm shells. But the Americans are already turning to the left as the last MiG flies by. Williams slides in behind it, pulling it into his crosshairs. And he opens fire. Inside the MIG Senior Lieutenant Pakhomkin feels the impact of a hit as alarms blare in the cockpit.
“I’ve been hit!” He turns back and sees smoke pouring from his plane and two Americans on his tail. He dives and runs. Dave Rowlands sees the opportunity and dives after the enemy fighter, leaving Williams alone to watch the three remaining MiGs pulling away. And as they do Williams notices that their wings are emblazoned not with blue and red circles and a red star of North Korea, but with the bare red star of the Soviet Union.
“Cap Control, these MiGs are Soviets!” At the same time, the National Security Agency contacts the American fleet. The American spy agency has listened in to the Soviets’ transmissions. “Do not engage! This could start World War III!” Williams receives a message and responds. “I’m already engaged!” He sees the three MiGs effortlessly scream almost vertically, then turn and come in for another attack run.
The Soviet jets are faster and they’re already in a hot fight. Despite the risk of wider conflict, Williams has no choice but to rise to meet them. In the MiGs Beliakov is in the lead. The American is coming to meet them on his own. And the MIGs are in a dive. It’s head to head. The three planes go roaring past the American, firing all the way.
But, incredibly, no hits are scored on either side. Williams now tries to get more altitude, when a stream of tracers comes flying in from the opposite direction. It’s the other three MiGs, which means that six MiGs are now fighting with Williams. He breaks and rolls and dives. Enemy planes are incredibly close as he rolls and turns trying to escape from the fire of the Soviets.
The attacks are relentless. Four MiGs fly past in formation and Williams gets behind them. Inside the MIG the Soviet pilot feels dread as he turns back to see the Panther on his tail. The Soviet pilot’s training kicks in and he immediately pulls upwards towards the sun, leaving the rest of his flight to pull away to the right.
Williams follows the target and is instantly blinded. He can’t take aim and so gives up the chase, turning away from the sun. But the moment he does he is met by two MiGs flying down straight towards him. There is no time to dodge. Williams instead turns straight towards them, challenging them again to a head-on joust.
He opens fire, and the lead MiG, piloted by Captain Nikolai Beliakov, turns away, but his wingman, Senior Lieutenant Aleksandr Vandaev, takes on the challenge. “Okay, Yankee, let’s dance!” The MiG opens fire. Tracers pour out of both machines, crossing over each other in the air. The American pilot watches the enemy shells drop and pass underneath him.
He cannot see it, but his own shells are also falling short of the enemy. But they hold their triggers down as they come closer. A 20mm shell strikes straight into the MiG’s cockpit, hitting Vandaev and killing him instantly. Williams sees the MiG stop firing as it flies upside down underneath him. Another MiG flies past and Williams on pure reflexes fires another blast and takes out his third MiG of the day.
In the lead MiG, Beliakov watches as two other MiGs are shot down, including his wingman, and he turns back to avenge his fallen comrades. But Williams sees him coming. He turns for another head-to-head battle. There is only a short exchange of fire as chunks are blown off the MiG. Williams dodges the debris as the 2 planes pass.
He looks back at his enemy and sees it diving away, out of the fight. The American turns hard to chase, but as he does, a MiG screams in behind and lands a hit on the Panther. He has been hit before, but this time the way his plane lurches and the sound of the hits makes him understand that he is in deep trouble.
A 37mm round strikes his wing and punches clean through and into the engine compartment. The impact wrecks the hydraulic systems. In an instant his rudder, flaps, and half of his ailerons are gone. Williams looks back as the MiG stays behind him riddling his Panther with lead. He immediately attempts to roll, but his stomach sinks as the aircraft responds unbearably, terrifyingly slowly.
More cracks reverberate through the fuselage as he wills his aircraft to escape. The Panther wobbles as he does, the lack of rudder making the aircraft terribly unstable. Williams is forced to be careful with his inputs or else lose control altogether. And throughout the MiG has no problem following the limping Panther.
But the American still has his elevator, so he does the only thing he can: he pulls up and then pushes down, riding a wave motion to try and get some distance between him and his enemy before he can reach clouds, which are still 10,000 feet below him. Bullets continue to strike his fuselage. Any one impact could be the last.
His luck is running out: he is not going to make it. But then… “Cap! On your left!” His wingman appears out of the blue and comes soaring in, opening fire at the one remaining MiG, forcing it to pull off the chase. Now, inside the safety of the cloud, Williams pulls up, leveling off at 400 feet in altitude.
He has just survived a grueling six versus one dogfight that lasted over half an hour at full throttle… But how is he going to land? He tries to get a feel for his wounded machine. His flight controls don’t respond properly and he finds he can’t slow under 170 knots without his plane becoming uncontrollable, as it is an incredibly high speed for a carrier landing.
He looks down at the churning sea and knows ejection is no option. He would only survive 20 minutes in the cold water at most, not enough time to get a helicopter to rescue him. He needs to land. “Coming in for a landing, maneuverability severely compromised, minimum speed 170 knots.” The Commanding Officer of aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, Captain Courtney Shands, orders to prepare for a crash landing.
170 knots is fast, but fortunately there is a full-on storm with powerful winds, so with the ship going directly into the wind, Shands orders to get the maximum they can out of the engines. In the air, Williams’s heart is racing. Everything he does on the plane feels floaty and imprecise as he teeters on the edge of control.
He musters all his skill and spots the aircraft carrier and lowers his landing gear. The added drag affects the Panther’s aerodynamics and he starts immediately veering off course. Williams wrestles with the controls, but struggles to bring it back in line. “I’m going to miss it.” Shands looks out with his binoculars.
Williams is misaligned and not getting back on the flight path. He knows he won’t survive a go-around. He needs to land now, and if he can’t align with the carrier, then the carrier must align with him. “Tell him to keep going! Heading 196, now!” The whole aircraft carrier starts turning. Captain Shands keeps his eyes on Williams, ordering course corrections as the barely controllable Panther barrels in towards the flight deck.
He is still crooked, but time is running out. The American pilot is forced to commit to final approach while his runway still turns before him. 500 yards. 250 yards. 100 yards. 50 yards. This is it. Royce Williams in his Panther Jet slams the aircraft down at 200 miles per hour. Miraculously, the third cable grabs and he is lurched forward as the wounded bird is brought to an abrupt stop.
He has done it. After half an hour of grueling battle against 7 enemies, his F9F Panther suffered 263 holes across its fuselage and so much wing damage it’s a miracle it didn’t snap off. It was then that the cover-up started. In a huge effort to calm the fires of a potential catastrophic conflict between two nuclear superpowers, both sides exchanged harsh diplomatic notes, but the incident was not made public by either side with all records connected to it classified.
Gun footage was edited to remove Soviet roundels, any reference in the transcripts of that day referring to Soviet fighters were just changed to “enemy”. Williams was awarded the Silver Star for his part in the action. He continued his service, retiring in 1980, never telling a soul what happened until fifty years later, when the documents about that fight became declassified.
When the story went public in Russia, the Russians conceded to three planes being lost, having been ambushed by the Americans. The US government upgraded Williams’s Silver Star to a Navy Cross in 2022. And in 2026 there is news that he may even be getting the Medal of Honor. Captain Royce Williams is still alive today and 100 years old, and we very much hope that he enjoys this film.
For another great modern air battle, check out this film on when MiG-29s ambushed Eagles in Iraq.