The year that Ted Williams won baseball’s triple crown, he was drafted into the military. “The Splendid Splinter” joined the Naval Reserve on May 22, 1942. Opting out of a safe assignment just playing baseball for Navy teams, Ted entered pilot training. After earning his wing of gold, he was commissioned in the Marine Corps Reserve as a 2nd Lt. and served as an instructor pilot for the remainder of the war. In 1952, while still in the Majors, he was called back to active duty and was sent to fight in the Korean War. Now a Captain, he flew the Grumman F9F Panther in a total of 39 combat missions during the war. On one of these missions, his jet was hit and he was told to bail out. Rather, he flew the crippled plane, with hydraulic and electrical issues, to an airfield in South Korea. He made a wheels up landing and walked away unscathed, and flew the next day. He returned to the Red Sox in 1953 and eventually retired in 1960.
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