Staff Sergeant Henry E. Erwin, a radio operator in a B-29 leading an attack on Koriyama, Japan, on 12 April 1945, saved his aircraft and crew after a faulty phosphoresce smoke bomb exploded in the launching chute, shot back into the plane, struck him in the face, blinded him, and filled the aircraft with smoke; despite terrible burns and without regard for his own safety, he carried the burning bomb through the smoke-filled plane and threw it out the copilot's window, allowing the pilot to recover at 300 feet. First Lieutenant William R. Lawley, Jr., serving as pilot of a B-17 on a bombardment mission over enemy-occupied continental Europe on 20 February 1944, kept his severely crippled plane in the air after fighter attacks, the death of his copilot, serious wounds to himself, multiple engine fires, damaged controls, and wounded crew; after learning that two crewmembers were too badly hurt to bail out, he chose to remain with the aircraft, evaded further attacks, refused first aid until he collapsed, then resumed control and brought the plane to a successful crash landing on a small fighter base on the English coast. Private First Class Alford L. McLaughlin, serving as a machine gunner with Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced), in Korea on the night of 4-5 September 1952, helped hold a strategic combat outpost far ahead of the main line of resistance by directing its defense and maintaining devastating fire against repeated battalion-strength attacks; though painfully wounded and blistered by the heat of his weapons, he alternated between two machine guns, a carbine, and hand grenades, encouraged his comrades under fire, and was directly instrumental in preventing the outpost from falling to a numerically superior enemy force.