USS Thomas Hudner

Commissioned in 2018, the Thomas Hudner honors Lieutenant (j.g.) Thomas J. Hudner Jr., who in December 1950 deliberately crash-landed his aircraft on a North Korean mountainside to try to reach his wingman, Ensign Jesse L. Brown—the Navy's first African American aviator—after Brown was shot down and trapped in his cockpit. The rescue attempt could not save Brown, but Hudner's selflessness and the friendship between the two men became one of the most powerful stories of the Korean War. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.