Why Lt. Royce Priest disobeyed a direct order twice during WW2 — and attempted the impossible by squeezing two men into a single-seat P-51 Mustang. This World War 2 story reveals how one pilot's unauthorized rescue behind enemy lines left General Doolittle facing an impossible decision.
August 18, 1944. Lieutenant Royce "Deacon" Priest, a young pilot of the 354th Fighter Squadron, watched his commanding officer's P-51 erupt in flames over occupied France after a hidden German flak battery ambushed their formation. Major Bert Marshall — the fastest ace in the 355th Fighter Group — was going down twenty miles behind enemy lines. Priest radioed his intention to land and pick him up. Marshall ordered him to abort and return to base. Every regulation said landing a single-seat fighter in enemy territory was suicide. Command called it impossible.
They were all wrong.
What Priest did that afternoon wasn't about following procedure. It was about refusing to abandon the man he had idolized since high school football days — in a way that contradicted every training manual ever written. He landed in a wheat field while German trucks converged on his position. He removed his parachute and s
