Commander George C Duncan survives crashing his F9F Panther on USS Midway on July 23rd 1951

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The Panther, the Navy's primary jet fighter and ground-attack plane, scored the first air kill by the US Navy in the Korean war, when on July 3rd, 1950, LT JG Leonard H. Plog of Naval Fighter Squadron 51, flying an F9F, shot down a Yak-9.

Powered by a Pratt & Whitney J48 turbojet engine with 7,000 pounds of thrust, the assigned aircraft - Bureau # 125228 - was hoisted aboard the USS Midway (CV-41) at Norfolk, Virginia, and carried out into the Atlantic Ocean. There, Duncan and his plane were catapulted, and trapped by, the carrier without any problems. On the second test flight, as Duncan was coming in for his trap landing, he was lined up to catch the third wire, strung across the carrier's flight deck. But, without any warning, the descending Panther caught an air pocket, and dipped below the flight deck. Duncan pulled back on the stick, then saw nothing but flames!

Duncan had managed to kick the nose of his plane upwards just as the plane smashed into the edge of the carrier's deck, splitting the jet in half. From behind the cockpit to the nose of the plane, the partial fuselage violently tumbled and rolled down the deck of the carrier, as the remaining chuck of the plane, and its fuel, ignited into a fireball and chased Duncan's cockpit down the deck.

The force of the impact popped the canopy off of Duncan's cockpit, as well as his helmet. But amazingly, he was still strapped into his seat, and alive. Skidding to a stop, deck hands on the flight deck rushed to Duncan's aid, and pulled him from the fiery remains of his jet, and rushed him to the sickbay. Duncan was burned by the fireball, and his ears were badly scorched, but he was otherwise unharmed by the crash.

Several months later, Duncan was back flying.