Hi all,

I was very moved to read the story of Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner and decided I'd like to build a diorama showing Hudner trying to help Brown out of his downed F4U-4.

The account that I read, from a book called "Such Men As These", describes the crashed F4U as "bent about 20 degrees to the right, just in front of the cockpit" (from memory-I was looking at it last night) and describes a mass of wiring spilling out of the break.

But have a look at the F4U..."just in front of the cockpit" is at the centerpoint of where the fuselage meets the wings. It doesn't seem possible for the nose to "bend to the right" at that point and I looked at hundreds of photos of crashed Corsairs without seeing similar damage. If the plane's body broke, it seemed to break at the tail or the engine fell off its mount. In all pictures of crashed corsairs that I saw, the fuselage-wing joint was always intact. I'm having a very difficult time envisioning how a Corsair could bend to the right about 20 degrees just in front of the cockpit.

Now, Brown's leg was trapped in the cockpit by the bent fuselage, so it happened somehow. Does anyone have any ideas (or photos) of how a Corsair would break that way?

I met Tom Hudner in 2010 in Boston during my Navy CPO induction. The story was incredibly somber. The thought never crossed my mind to crash land my plane next to my buddies crash landed plane to rescue him behind enemy lines. Just an incredible event.

Here ya go:

http://s152.photobucket.com/user/guppy35/media-full//Hogcrash2.jpg.html
http://www.adamsplanes.com/images/Corsair_Markings/EE66_crash.jpg

I think it's the closest you can get from what was described. And of course, there's also this painting of those events. You can barely see Brown's plane, but it looks pretty close to the pictures above:

http://www.valorstudios.com/Images/Devotion/Thomas-Hudner-Corsair.jpg

Thanks! I think the EE66 picture is probably what I need. I've seen the painting, but it shows the tail up in the air and the description I read didn't describe it that way.

There's an Osprey book on F4 corsair units in Korea.
Read about that story, was just a summary of what happened.

Remember that a SAR helicopter turned up to help, with a fire axe..
Can't help but think if they had a bottle jack or something they might've been able to bend the airframe/seat enough to free Jesse.

Awesome images of crashed planes "Corktip 14". Black and white images looks real. not sure about the color image.