Ted Williams stands as perhaps the greatest hitter in all of baseball history. But his service as an aviator in two wars—including a harrowing crash landing he barely escaped—became a defining part of his legacy, proving he was more than just a warrior on the field.

While few professional athletes drafted into military service ever saw active duty, Williams served in both World War II and the Korean War, flying nearly 40 combat missions for the U.S. Marines in the latter conflict. “He flew dive-bombing missions over enemy lines…while the enemy threw everything they could against him,” writes Bill Nowlin, author of Ted Williams at War. “In all, Williams lost most of five baseball seasons as a hitter—prime years—while serving.”

Williams had been three years into his historic 19-season career with the Boston Red Sox when he was drafted in January 1942 at the age of 23. He had finished the 1941 season with a sky-high batting average of .406—the last Major League Baseball player to ever hit over .400. That year, he also led the league in home runs (37), runs (135), slugging average (.735) and on-base percentage (.551), according to the Baseball Almanac.

His legendary reflexes and eyesight made him a natural pilot. While he never saw combat during World War II, he excelled in flight school, earned his wings and then served as an instructor on the F4U Corsair until the war ended. Recalled to active duty in 1952 for the Korean War, he was assigned to Marine Attack Squadron 311. He flew 39 combat missions in the F9F Panther—more than half as the wingman of Major John Glenn, the future astronaut.

Williams' third mission on February 16, 1953, almost became his last. During a bombing run on a North Korean rail complex, his aircraft sustained heavy damage from ground fire, the slugger recalled in his memoir My Turn at Bat. His engine started trailing smoke, which all too often preceded an internal explosion. His radio had died. Nearby pilots signaled for him to bail out, but Williams elected to bring the aircraft back to base.

With his hydraulics shot out and his flaps and landing gear inoperable, he brought the Panther in on its belly. “For more than a mile I skidded, ripping and tearing up the runway, sparks flying,” he wrote. “I pressed the brakes so hard I almost broke my ankle.” When the aircraft finally stopped, the canopy wouldn’t open, Williams wrote, so he hit the emergency ejector and dove from the cockpit just before the plane burst into flames.

Despite that harrowing experience, Williams was in the cockpit the very next day flying his fourth combat mission. His plane took fire on several other occasions, but never as badly as during that third mission. (He later earned three Air Medals and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other honors.) The Marines released him on August 13, 1953; three days later, he started playing for the Red Sox again, hitting a home run in his first game back.

What would Williams’ lifetime statistics have looked like without losing nearly five seasons to military service? Hard to know. Even with the disruption, his career soared: He led the Sox to the American League pennant his first season back in 1946 and went on the become a legendary Hall of Famer with a lifetime batting average of .344 and a career total of 521 home runs. One of only two players to win the Batting Triple Crown twice, he played on American League All-Star teams 19 times.

“I liked flying. It was the second-best thing that ever happened to me,” Williams once told reporters, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “If I hadn’t had baseball to come back to, I might have gone on as a Marine pilot.”