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I read that back in 2013 Thomas Hudson was heading back to North Korea to try and find the crash site of Jesse Brown's F4U Corsair. He evidently went to North Korean but they told him to come back at a later date. Has the site ever been found?

Steve

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I read that back in 2013 Thomas Hudson was heading back to North Korea to try and find the crash site of Jesse Brown's F4U Corsair. He evidently went to North Korean but they told him to come back at a later date. Has the site ever been found?

Steve

In a word - No - at least not by American POW/MIA investigators. That's not not to say the crash site hasn't probably been picked over and scavenged at some point over the years by the North Koreans. In a country as small and totalitarian as North Korea, it's hard to imagine a crash site that held the remains of two "Yankee Imperialist Aggressor" warbirds would be left undisturbed for 60+ years. There's a military museum in Pyongyang that has the remains of several crashed F4Us on display - not sure if either of them is Brown's or Hudner's but I doubt it. As I recall the members of the squadron (VF-32) came back a day or two later and hit the crash site with napalm to give Brown a "Viking's funeral" and not leave anything of use for the enemy. http://www.pbase.com/bmcmorrow/image/116368233

Of note, my Dad first learned the story of Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner first hand from another member of that Corsair flight, then LT George Hudson, who orbited overhead the crash site and watched the drama unfold. Dad and Hudson later flew S2F Trackers together and the older pilot shared the story over a cold beer at a packed O Club bar in Japan in 1959.

-Scoobs

Edited by scoobs
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