Jesse L. Brown

Jesse LeRoy Brown left Hattiesburg for a Navy that had not planned on a Black aviator and then had one anyway. He completed flight training in 1948 and went to sea with Fighter Squadron 32. In the winter of 1950 he flew an F4U Corsair from USS Leyte over the Chosin country.

On December 4 his aircraft was hit and lost oil. He crash-landed on a mountainside. His wingman, Lt. (j.g.) Thomas J. Hudner Jr., put his own Corsair down beside the wreck and tried to free him. Brown was trapped and dying. A helicopter could not cut him out before dark. Hudner received the Medal of Honor for the attempt. The Navy lists a combat death. The wreck was not recovered.

That is killed in action with remains not returned — not a missing-in-action finding, and this register will not relabel it to thicken the MIA list. The documentation is a wingman's report, a rescue that failed in daylight, and a mountainside the service could not hold.

He was twenty-four. A later destroyer escort carried the name. This page is the first Black naval aviator the Navy qualified, and the afternoon the reservoir did not give him back.