President Trump is planning to honor a 100-year-old veteran Tuesday night by awarding E. Royce Williams the Medal of Honor for his actions in a secret mission during the Korean War, sources with knowledge of the matter told CBS News.
This would mark the first time that a president has awarded the medal, the U.S. military’s highest honor for valor in combat, during a State of the Union address.
White House spokespeople didn’t respond to requests for comment. The plan, which has not previously been reported, could change.
Williams, a retired Navy captain, was part of the longest aerial engagement in U.S. Navy history when he fought seven Soviet MiG fighter jets, shooting down four, during a half-hour dogfight in 1952.
Soviet involvement was top secret at the time, so the records of the event were classified for decades. At the height of the Korean War, Williams and another American pilot were flying off the coast of the Korean Peninsula when they encountered seven Soviet miG-15 fighter jets. The Soviet aircraft opened fire, he would later recall: “Since they started the fight, he said, “I shot back.”
Williams struck one of the MiGs, and his fellow American pilot pursued it. Then, flying alone, he engaged the remaining aircraft, downing three more Soviet planes while maneuvering through what military accounts later described as hundreds of rounds of incoming fire. In recent years, the U.S. military has published detailed descriptions of the encounter, portraying it as one of the most intense aerial engagements of the war.
“In the moment I was a fighter pilot doing my job,” Williams told news outlet Task & Purpose in a 2022 interview. “I was only shooting what I had.”
After his aircraft was struck, Williams turned back toward an American aircraft carrier, guiding the damaged plane in for a landing at high speed. He later said he had considered ejecting but concluded that the frigid conditions over the water made such a decision perilous.
Williams has said that he was instructed to keep the airborne clash a secret — a rare and politically fraught confrontation between American and Soviet forces at a moment when the two Cold War adversaries were intent on avoiding open war. For decades, he spoke of it to no one, not even his wife.
Details of the operations surfaced only years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as archival records and military histories were made public. Three years ago, Williams was awarded the Navy Cross, the highest combat award that can be given to a service member of either the Navy or Marine Corps for valor in combat.
Republican Rep. Darell Issa of California, whose San Diego-area district includes Williams home, pressed for the retired Navy pilot to receive the Medal of Honor. Last year, lawmakers authorized the president to bestow the decoration, waiving the longstanding requirement that it be awarded within five years of the act of valor.
“The heroism and valor he demonstrated for more than 35 harrowing minutes almost 70 years ago in the skies over the North Pacific and the coast of North Korea unquestionably saved the lives of his fellow pilots, shipmates, and crew,” Issa wrote in a statement earlier this month.
Mr. Trump called Williams earlier this month.
The timing of the medal presentation is notable as Mr. Trump is set to award the Medal of Honor to a veteran recognized for killing Russian pilots decades ago, on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago —a conflict now shadowed by negotiations in which Kyiv has faced pressure to consider ceding territory seized by Moscow.
