While the Left spent the Cold War spinning America as a warmongering government bent on provoking Communists and triggering a nuclear war with the USSR (and things have changed little in the propaganda wars since), in reality, the United States did everything possible to avoid confrontations.

And when they happened, tried to bury them out of sight. (Hell, a popular president was killed by a Communist who defected to the Soviet Union and tried to defect to Cuba, and our elites and their useful idiots spent three generations blaming anyone and everyone else except the USSR and the Communists.)

So this is a fascinating story and the only reason it’s being amplified now is that there are tensions with Russia today.

On November 18, 1952, Royce Williams was flying the F9F Panther – the US Navy’s first jet fighter – on a mission during the Korean War.

He took off from the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, which was operating with three other carriers in a task force in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, 100 miles off the coast of North Korea….

As the four US Navy jets flew their patrol, the group’s leader suffered mechanical problems and with his wingman, headed back to the task force off the coast.

That left Williams and his wingman alone on the mission.

Then, to their surprise, seven Soviet MiG-15 fighter jets were identified heading toward the US task force…

commanders in the task force ordered the two US Navy jets to put themselves between the MiGs and the US warships.

While doing this, four of the Soviet MiGs turned toward Williams and opened fire, he recalled.

He said he fired on the tail MiG, which then dropped out of the four-plane Soviet formation, with Williams’ wingman following the Soviet jet down.

At that point, US commanders on the carrier ordered him not to engage the Soviets, he said.

“I said, ‘I am engaged,’” Williams recalled in the interview…

Williams said he also knew that because the Soviet jets were faster than his, if he tried to break off they’d catch and kill him.

“At that time the MiG-15 was the best fighter airplane in the world,” faster and able to climb and dive quicker than the American jets, he said in the interview.

His plane was suited to air-to-ground combat, not aerial dogfights, he said.

But now he was in one, with not just one, but six Soviet jets as the other three MiGs that broke off earlier returned.

What ensued was more than a half-hour of aerial combat, with Williams constantly turning and weaving – the one area where the F9F could compete with the Soviet aircraft – to not let the superior MiGs get their guns fixed on him.

It’s a hell of a story that was quickly hushed up.

“Following the battle, Williams was personally interviewed by several high-ranking Navy admirals, the Secretary of Defense, and also the President, after which he was instructed to not talk about his engagement as officials feared the incident might cause a devastating increase of tensions between the US and Soviet Union, and possibly ignite World War Three,” the website says.

The records of Williams’ dogfight were promptly classified by US officials and he was sworn to secrecy, meaning it would take more than five decades before his victories could be fully recognized.

In 1953, Williams was awarded a Silver Star, but the citation made no reference to Soviet aircraft, just “enemy” ones. And it only mentioned three kills. The fourth was not known until Russian records were released in the 1990s, the website says.

So it was not until 2002, when the records were declassified, that Williams could even tell those closest to him.

“When he was finally contacted by the government and told his mission was declassified, the first person Williams said he told was his wife.”

Meanwhile, Joe Biden keeps classified documents in his garage.

Royce Williams kept his heroics a secret from his wife for 50 years. Joe Biden treated classified information like old copies of Sports Illustrated.