But the Korean War was something you hoped to survive and come back home.” “World War II captivated the attention of this country like no other war. “It was widely indifferent,” Jerry Coleman, a Yankee infielder who had also been called to serve in Korea, told USA Today. It was at this time that the country began to feel disillusioned with war, and since the conflict in Korea made no tangible effect on the American way of life, it has been referred to in hindsight as “forgotten.” The wound that World War II had left on American citizens was seven years old and still fresh – no one was eager to rush back onto the battlefield. In 1952, the United States was two years deep in the Korean War, and sorely in need of trained pilots. But unlike the unfortunate pilot at Willow Grove, Williams lived to tell the story. What he didn’t know at the time, was that in less than a year, he too would find himself in a burning F9F panther jet, barreling toward the ground. Then they dragged out a shoe with a foot in it. “But they couldn’t find the pilot he’d apparently ejected. “They’d found the canopy off to one side,” he said. But what he saw on that day in 1952 was something entirely out of his comfort zone. He looked up in the clear springtime sky to see a burning F-9 jet, zooming toward a nearby field.Īfter serving his country for three years during World War II, Williams had seen most everything. In his first of what would be 17 months of service in the Marines during the Korean War, Williams was in his bunk when he heard a startling “swish” sound overhead. Two weeks after belting a home run off Dizzy Trout in his final game at Fenway Park in the 1952 season, Ted Williams was stationed in Willow Grove Air Station in Willow Grove, Pa., no longer exulting over a ball that rocketed over a fence, but mourning a colleague whose plane had rocketed out of control.

Ted williams outboard serial numbers