May 21, 2025 • 38 mins
The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, also called the Triple Nickles, were the first Black paratroopers in the U.S. military, and their story is connected to the desegregation of the military after World War II.
Research:
- 555th Parachute Infantry. “Malvin L. Brown.” http://triplenickle.com/malvinbrown.htm
- Aney, Warren. “Triple Nickles -- 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion.” Oregon Encyclopedia. https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/555th_parachute_infantry_triple_nickle_batallion/
- Associated Press. “Air Force Starts Probe Into Troop Bombing.” The Miami Herald. 9/18/1948. https://www.newspapers.com/image/617847549/
- Associated Press. “Army Lists Dead in Bomb Blast.” The Tampa Times. 9/18/1948. https://www.newspapers.com/image/326171714/
- Biggs, Bradley. “The Triple Nickles: America’s First All-Black Paratroop Unit.” Hamden, Conn. Archon Books. 1986.
- Bradsher, Greg and Sylvia Naylor. “Firefly Project and the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion (‘Smoke Jumpers’).” National Archives. 2/10/2015. https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2015/02/10/the-555th-smoke-jumpers/
- Cieslak, Thomas. “Equal in All Ways to All Paratroopers - The Origin of the ‘Triple Nickles’.” U.S. Army. 5/27/2019. https://www.army.mil/article/222374/equal_in_all_ways_to_all_paratroopers_the_origin_of_the_triple_Nickles
- Crumley, Todd and Aaron Arthur. “The Triple Nickles and Operation Firefly.” National Archives. 2/5/2020. https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2020/02/05/the-triple-Nickles-and-operation-firefly/
- Curran, Jonathan. “The 555TH Parachute Infantry Company ‘Triple Nickles.’” U.S. Army National Museum. https://www.thenmusa.org/articles/triple-Nickles/
- Ferguson, Paul-Thomas. “African American Service and Racial Integration in the U.S. Military.” U.S. Army. 2/23/2021. Via archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20240327034226/https://www.army.mil/article/243604/african_american_service_and_racial_integration_in_the_u_s_military
- Forest Service Aviation & Fire Management. “History of Smokejumping.” August 1, 1980
- Gidlund, Carl. “African-American Smokejumpers Help Celebrate Smokey’s 50th.” Fire management notes / U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 1993. https://archive.org/details/CAT77680365067/
- Morris, Walter. “Base Plate.” Triplenickle.com. http://triplenickle.com/waltermorris.htm
- Queen, Jennifer. “The Triple Nickles: A 75-Year Legacy.” USD Forest Service. 2/28/2020. Via archive.org. https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/triple-Nickles-75-year-legacy
- The Forest History Society. “U.S. Forest Service Smokejumpers.” Via Archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20170316132550/https://foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/Fire/Smokejumpers/Smokejumpers.aspx
- USDA Forest Service. “Operation Firefly & the 555th.” https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/fire/smokejumpers/missoula/history/operation-firefly
- Weeks, Linton. “How Black Smokejumpers Helped Save The American West.” NPR History Dept. 1/22/2015. https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/01/22/376973981/how-black-smokejumpers-helped-save-the-american-west
- Williams, Robert F. “The "Triple Nickles": Jim Crow Was an Elite Black Airborne Battalion's Toughest Foe.” History News Network. 9/6/2020. https://www.hnn.us/article/the-triple-Nickles-jim-crow-was-an-elite-black-air
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today's episode is a list of request It's from Josiah.
Josiah has sent us so many topic ideas, So Josiah,
I want to say, I'm so sorry that we only
very rarely respond to your emails. But after getting this
particular one with this suggestion in it, I went through
the inbox and I made sure that I had made
(00:39):
note of every suggestion that you have sent to us,
because you've sent us a lot of really great ones.
Today's is the five fifty fifth Parachute Infantry Battalion, also
called the Triple Nichols. They were the first black paratroopers
in the US military, and their story is also connected
to the desegregation of the military after World War II.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Black soldiers' participation in the United States military goes back
to before the Revolutionary War, and initially most units were
not racially segregated. One exception was the first Rhode Island Regiment.
More than half of its number were black or indigenous,
and there were segregated units within that regiment. Beyond that,
(01:23):
during the Revolutionary War, thousands of people of African descent
served in the Continental Army, in state militias or at sea,
mostly in integrated units. After George Washington became Commander in
Chief of the Continental Army, he tried to bar people
of African descent from enlistment, but he reversed that decision
(01:44):
a couple of months later. But then after the Revolutionary War,
Congress passed the Federal Militia Act, which Washington signed into
law in seventeen ninety two. This Act applied to white
men only, so it essentially excluded black people from service,
with a few exceptions. Black people continued to be excluded
(02:06):
from military service in the US until the Civil War,
when the Confiscation Act authorized the use of formerly enslaved
people as soldiers in the United States Army. These soldiers
generally served in segregated units. We talked more about this
in our episode on Contraband Camps, which we ran as
a Saturday Classic on February eighteenth, twenty twenty three. Prior
(02:30):
hosts of the show also talked about the Massachusetts fifty fourth,
which was the second all black regiment established in the
U s Army, and we ran that as a Saturday
Classic on February second, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
After the end of the Civil War, the US Army
was reorganized into a peacetime service, and this reorganization included
the establishment of all black infantry and cavalry units that
came to be known as the Buffalo Soldiers. About the
Buffalo Soldiers in more detail in the Iron Riders episode
(03:04):
that came out on July third, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So by the start of World War One, racial segregation
had been the standard in the US military for decades.
More than three hundred eighty thousand black Americans served in
the Army during World War One, and overwhelmingly the ones
who were sent overseas were assigned to tasks involving manual labor,
like working as stevedores and digging latrines. One exception was
(03:29):
the Harlem hell Fighters, and we ran our episode on
them as a Saturday Classic on June thirteenth, twenty twenty.
As we talked about in that episode, these soldiers served
with valor and then returned home to find that they
still faced the same racism and discrimination as they had before,
Purportedly fighting to make the world safe for democracy. As
(03:51):
World War.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
II was approaching, the situation for black soldiers in the
US military was largely the same as it had been
in World War One, and that was in spite of
ongoing advocacy on the part of black service members and veterans,
as well as civil rights leaders and organizations. The Selective
Service Act that established the World War II Draft specified
(04:14):
that the training and selection of men would have no
discrimination by race or color, but there were still racial
disparities and who was actually selected for service and what
roles those people were assigned. The Army also started using
an intelligence test called the Army General Classification Test, and
(04:37):
there were measurable differences between the typical scores of white
and black recruits, with the black recruits generally scoring lower.
Some military officials did recognize that these disparities stemmed from
social and economic factors and not from the innate intelligence
of people of different races, but these disparities still reinforced
(05:01):
a lot of negative biases about black soldiers and what
they were capable of doing.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
There was also an overall perception within military leadership and
the executive branch of government that white soldiers as a
whole would not accept an integrated army. A lot of
the military bases where soldiers went through training were located
in the South, so there were well founded concerns that
these communities would not accept integrated military units in their
(05:29):
midst So the military continued to maintain segregation moving into
World War II, under the idea that to do otherwise
would damage the nation's military readiness. On the eve of war.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Some steps were being made to try to address at
least some of the most discriminatory aspects of a segregated military.
On October ninth, nineteen forty, the White House issued a
statement outlining the War Department's policy, which would be some
maintain racially segregated units, but also using black soldiers quote
(06:05):
on a fair and equal basis with their white peers.
So while units were still racially segregated, and that segregation
was inherently discriminatory, there were supposed to be more types
of units being established for black soldiers so that they
would no longer be so disproportionately working only in the
(06:27):
least desirable roles. This policy also specified that black soldiers
would be recruited in equal numbers that aligned with their
proportion of the population of the United States. None of
this really did anything about the inherently discriminatory aspects of segregation,
but at least in theory, it meant that black soldiers
(06:48):
would no longer be primarily assigned to things like manual labor.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
From nineteen forty to nineteen forty two, William Henry Hasty
Junior served as a civilian aid to Secretary of War
Henry Lewis Stimpson and advised on these issues. Hasty was
the first black person to be appointed as a federal
District Court judge. He conducted a survey in nineteen forty
one that documented multiple ways in which the US military
(07:14):
was falling short of that nineteen forty policy announcement. Black
people were not being inducted into the military at a
rate that was proportional to their population. There had been
some new units established for black servicemen, such as the
Tuskegee Airmen, which prior hosts of the show covered in
two thousand and nine, but black soldiers were still disproportionately
(07:37):
serving in certain roles, including the Quartermaster Corps and doing
things like building infrastructure in the Corps of Engineers. In
his report, Hasty noted quote the traditional mores of the
South have been widely accepted and adopted by the Army
as the basis of policy and practice affecting the Negro soldier.
(08:00):
He recommended a number of ways for black soldiers to
become a more integral part of the army, including that
the Army should, somewhere within the service, actually begin the
process of integrating. By August of nineteen forty two, these
patterns of discrimination were clearly still ongoing, and the Secretary
(08:21):
of War established an Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies,
chaired by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. This
committee was focused on addressing what it saw as problems
with discipline, morale, and military readiness among black soldiers and
how to address them. Most of the people involved with
(08:41):
this committee were white military leaders. One exception was Brigadier
General Benjamin O. Davis, who had served in one of
the Buffalo Soldier's regiments and had also become a Tuskegee airman.
He was the first black general in the US Army.
A lot of his recommendations were really in line with
ones that Hasty had made previously, including proposing quote, the
(09:05):
breaking down of the so called Jim Crow practices within
the War Department and on the military reservations and the
securing of the cooperation of the communities near the reservations.
To that end, Basically, Davis and Hasty both recognized that
a lot of what was happening that the army saw
(09:26):
as problems with morale, readiness and discipline traced directly back
to black soldiers growing up targeted by racism, without the
same access to education or resources that the white recruits
generally had, and then being expected to work in an
inherently discriminatory environment, sometimes under the command of outwardly racist officers,
(09:50):
all while also living on bases that were surrounded by
civilian communities that were rife with racism and racist violence.
In December of nineteen forty two, this committee made a
number of recommendations, none of which really involved the kind
of systemic dismantling of racist organizational structures and attitudes that
(10:11):
both Davis and Hasty had spoken about. Hasty actually resigned
from this work in nineteen forty three due to the
lack of progress. These recommendations included the creation of some
new all black units, including combat engineer units and ambulance battalions,
and new harbor defense units to reduce the number of
Black soldiers assigned to anti aircraft units.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So the black harbor defense units never happened, partly because
of difficulty finding communities where those units would be stations
that would not also object to their presence there, and
because the perceived threat to coastal communities in North America
diminished over the course of the war. Some new combat
(10:55):
engineer units were established, but most of them eventually became concer,
instruction or general service units. The army also did establish
twelve new motor ambulance companies in nineteen forty three, and
then two more followed later.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
The recommendation that played a part in today's episode was
the creation of a black parachute battalion quote for the
purposes of enhancing the morale and a spree decorps of
the Negro people. Paratroopers were and are considered some of
the most elite members of the military. They literally jump
out of airplanes, often carrying heavy loads of gear, ready
(11:33):
to face whatever it is they find when they land.
Qualification requirements were strict and training was grueling, so the
idea followed that black soldiers in this role would become
a point of Pride.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the creation of a black
parachute battalion in April of nineteen forty three, and we'll
have more on that after a sponsor break. One type
of unit that black soldiers were being assigned to in
(12:10):
the US Army during World War Two was service companies.
Service companies handled a lot of the non combat work
that needed to be done for a combat unit to function,
like maintaining equipment, processing the mail, and keeping track of supplies.
The exact duties of these service companies could really vary
(12:32):
based on what kind of unit they were attached to
and where that unit was located. Fort Benning in Columbus,
Georgia was home to the Parachute School where the paratroopers
went through their training, and the Parachute Service Company was
largely dedicated to guard duty. Fort Benning is also home
(12:52):
to the Infantry Officer Candidate School. Sergeant Walter Morris had
washed out of that school with only a week left
to go. He had been told to spend three months
in one of the service companies at the fort before
trying again, and he chose the Parachute Service Company once
he got there. A number of problems were obvious to him.
(13:15):
This all black unit was on duty from four pm
until eight am, and during that time there really was
not much to do. The whole base was segregated, including
black soldiers being excluded from the movie theater and the
post exchange. A PX, German and Italian prisoners of war
had access to services and facilities on the base that
(13:38):
Black servicemen were excluded from. So the morale was low
and the men were ferry bored.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Drawing on what he'd learned in Officer candidate school, Morris
put together a plan to try to improve morale among
the service corps, and he got it approved by the
company commander. This plan included the black soldiers doing the
same fitness and training regimen that the paratrooper candidates were
doing basically everything except practice jumps from towers and airplanes,
(14:08):
so they'd be using the training fields and equipment rather
than just guarding them overnight, and this gave the men
more of a sense of purpose and cohesion and their
morale did start to improve.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
General Ridgley Gaither, the commandant of the Airborne School, observed
all of this as it was happening, and eventually he
informed Morris that the Army was establishing a test platoon
to see if black soldiers could perform as paratroopers. Gaither
personally selected Morris as a potential candidate for this platoon,
(14:40):
and Morris ultimately became a second lieutenant and helped recruit
the test platoon's other members.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
This test platoon was created as the Company A five
hundred and fifty fifth Parachute Infantry Battalion. The platoon took
the name Triple Nichols from that numerical designation of five
five five, and since a Nicholas five cents, it also
had a connection to Buffalo Nichols. Many of the companies
enlisted men were recruited from the ninety second Infantry Division
(15:09):
Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Wachuca, Arizona. These men were selected
very carefully because, in addition to the morale and esprie
de corps that we mentioned before the break, the Army
was basically testing whether black men were suitable to serve
as paratroopers before committing to selecting and training more of them.
(15:33):
After being selected for the test platoon, nineteen men went
through a four phase training process at the Airborne School.
Phase A started with extremely grueling exercise that went on
for long stretches at a time. It was basically intended
to wash out anyone who wouldn't be able to handle
the riggers of the rest of the training or the
(15:54):
riggers of life as a paratrooper, and to do it
as quickly as possible. They also attended lecture on how
to protect themselves during a jump, and they did wind
tunnel exercises to practice controlling a parachute.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Phase B built on what they'd learned the previous week,
and it added hand to hand combat and jump training.
At this point, the jump training mainly involved mock jumps
from a fifty foot tower without a parachute while wearing
a harness.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Phase C moved on to simulated jumps with a parachute,
which many of the men considered to be more of
a mental and emotional challenge than actually jumping from an
airplane would be. Later on, these took place from a
two hundred and fifty foot tower at the Airborne School,
and then in the fourth week, Phase D took them
(16:45):
into actual airplanes to make real jumps with a parachute.
After they'd successfully completed all four phases, the men would
earn their jump wings. Ultimately, on February eighteenth, nineteen forty
four black paratroopers graduated from this first round of training.
Six black officers graduated from their training on March fourth,
(17:08):
so there were twenty two men in total in the
test platoon. Based on the memoir of Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs,
who was the first black officer accepted into the Triple Nickels,
their training was extremely difficult and the white officers and
enlisted men who conducted that training were very hard on them,
(17:30):
but they did not get a sense that there were
racial undertones to this. It was the same training at
the same pace that the white paratroopers went through, and
at least in the context of their paratrooper training, Biggs
felt like they had gotten the same treatment that the
white soldiers would have. The test platoon was still housed
(17:51):
with the Service Company on base, but after earning their
jump wings, they reported feeling more camaraderie with the white
soldiers at Fort Benning than they did before. There was
sort of a perception that a paratrooper was a paratrooper
regardless of skin color, although the five point fifty five's
black officers and NCOs still were not welcome in their
(18:11):
respective clubs, and the situation off base had not changed
at all. Columbus Georgia is in a fairly rural part
of the state near the Alabama state line, and black
soldiers often faced racism and harassment from white civilians and
from the Columbus police when they were off base.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Based on the success of this first round of training,
the Army started the process of turning this twenty two
man test platoon into a full parachute infantry company. That
happened in the summer of nineteen forty four. The Triple
Nichols were moved to Camp McCall, North Carolina, which had
an airfield. Camp McCall was also segregated, but black troops
(18:54):
there did have access to a separate section of the
movie theater, and the officers were allowed access to their clubs.
The Triple Nichols also organized a football team for recreation
at Camp McCall, and they played a number of games
against teams from historically black colleges and universities.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
As the company expanded, the Triple Nickels underwent additional training
at Camp McCall. This lasted for five months, during which
more men were being recruited and put through jump school.
Their number grew to one hundred and fifty five enlisted
men and ten officers, under the command of Captain James Porter,
sometimes called the father of the five five to five.
(19:35):
Some of that training at Camp McCall was particularly unpleasant,
like one hot afternoon when they went up in a
plane that was simulating evasive maneuvers right after they had
been served a heavy, greasy lunch.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
As their training progressed, many of the men started to
think they might be deployed to Europe, especially as their
additional training started to focus on combat. The Army was
still reluctant to send Black troops into combat, but by
this point in the war, a lot of paratroopers had
been killed or injured in Europe, so reinforcements were needed.
(20:13):
Among other things, the D Day Invasion in June of
nineteen forty four had started with paratroopers from the eighty
second and one hundred and first Airborne Divisions being dropped
behind enemy lines, and they had faced really heavy losses.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
But almost a year later, the war in Europe was
coming to an end. On April twenty first, nineteen forty five,
when they were four weeks into an eight week combat
readiness program, the Triple Nicols got a different order. It
was to report to Pendleton Field in Pendleton, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
This was not because they were going to be deployed
from there to the Pacific, where the war against Japan
was still ongoing. It was because they were going to
fight fires. And we will have more on that after
another sponsor break. On May fifth, nineteen forty five, the
(21:11):
Reverend Archie Mitchell and his wife Elise were taking a
group of children on a church outing in Bly, Oregon.
Elise and some of the children spotted something on the
ground and it exploded. Elise was killed, along with five
children between the ages of eleven and fourteen. It turned
out this device was a bomb that had been sent
(21:34):
to the United States from Japan via balloon. The US
Navy had started to find balloons and parts of balloons
the previous November, and hundreds more were sighted in the
following months. We talked about these balloon bombs in our
episode on the balloons of World War II. On March sixth,
twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
By coincidence, May fifth was also the day the Triple
Nickel left Camp McCall for Pendleton, Oregon. They traveled most
of the way by rail, and it took them six
days to get there. For their first couple of weeks
at Pendleton Air Base, they mostly focused on their physical
fitness and conditioning because the base was being reactivated for
this purpose and their equipment and supplies had not arrived yet.
(22:20):
The effort to find and defuse these Japanese balloon bombs
and to fight any fires that the bombs caused was
known as Operation Firefly. It involved roughly twenty seven hundred
military personnel working in conjunction with the US Forest Service.
The Triple Nichols formed a three hundred man smoke jumping
(22:43):
unit during Operation Firefly. Smoke jumping, or sending firefighters into
an area by parachute, was a fairly new development in
the United States. Like the development of paratroopers. It had
grown out of the combination of parachutes, which have been
around in their modern formed since the late eighteenth century,
and practical aircraft, which have been around since the early
(23:05):
twentieth century. The first uses of aircraft and firefighting in
western North America started with aerial photography and equipment drops.
In the nineteen twenties, various people proposed the idea of
transporting firefighters to an area by parachute in the nineteen
twenties and thirties, but initially most people thought this was
way too dangerous to be practical. That started to change
(23:29):
with the development of more maneuverable parachutes in the mid
to late nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
In nineteen thirty nine, the Forest Service started working with
Eagle Parachute Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and most of the
first smoke jumpers that were part of this project were
employed by the company rather than by the government. They
carried out about sixty experimental jumps, and eventually some Forest
Service employees embarked on jumps as well. The first actual
(23:59):
jump umps for fire and rescue missions rather than tests
and training, started in nineteen forty, but it really wasn't
until nineteen forty four that smoke jumping started to be
seen as a realistic, practical way to fight forest fires,
and one that saved more money than it cost. The
Triple Nickels time as smoke jumpers was only partly about
(24:22):
the Japanese balloon bombs, although when they got this assignment
those were seen as a huge potential threat, especially since
summer was approaching beyond the balloon bombs. The Forest Service
was facing a huge labor shortage due to the war.
Before the arrival of the Triple Nickels, the number of
firefighters in the West had been bolstered by conscientious objectors
(24:44):
who were assigned to alternative service, including from pacifist religious
denominations like the Religious Society of Friends also known as
the Quakers. The goal for the Triple Nickels was for
them to be able to parachute into a fire area,
assess what was going on there, and keep any fires
contained until reinforcements arrived, often by mule train, because the
(25:08):
area was so remote and so far away from roads.
If they found a balloon bomb, they would cordon off
the area and diffuse it. So the Triple Nickels training
included both firefighting and fire containment techniques and bomb disposal.
To do this work, they also had to learn new
strategies for parachuting, using a different type of parachute than
(25:31):
they had learned to use in the Army. They were
taught by Frank Dairy, who was a distributor for Eagle
Parachute Company on the West Coast and who had developed
a steerable parachute called the dairy chute that the Forest
Service was using. Their uniforms and equipment also changed, including
swapping their steel military helmets for football helmets with mesh
(25:51):
screens to help protect their faces from cinders and debris.
The Triple Nickels military parachute training had focused on landing
in fields and other open areas, but as smoke jumpers,
they were typically landing in wooded areas. Instead, they would
literally aim for the trees. This was intentional. Places that
(26:15):
were clear of trees were often just too rugged and
mountainous to be traversed, or if they looked open from above,
they might really be full of downed timbers that were
hazardous to try to land on or navigate through once
you were on the ground. Members of the five point
fifty fifth talked about really having to fight against their
(26:37):
original training to intentionally aim for those trees instead of
aiming for open ground. Aiming for wooded areas also meant
that they had to learn how to get themselves out
of the trees after landing. To do this, they used
fifty feet of nylon rope that they carried with them
during their jumps.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
From May twenty second to June sixth, members of the
Forest Service train the Triple Nickles on how to use
the Forest Service as maps and on techniques for fire suppression. Then,
from June eighth to fifteenth, the Ninth Service Command trained
them on bomb disposal. Their training jumps started on June eighteenth,
and they answered their first fire call just three days later. Ultimately,
(27:22):
they were split into two groups, with six officers and
ninety four enlisted men sent to Chico Army Airfield in Chico,
California to cover the southwest, while the rest of the
men remained at Pendleton Airfield to cover the northwest.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Over the nineteen forty five fire season, the Triple Nickels
carried out more than twelve hundred jumps to help control
thirty six fires and dispose of several Japanese bombs. Sometimes
their work took them to Canada, where they helped keep
fires from spreading southward into the United States. Over that
(27:56):
summer of nineteen forty five, they developed a reputation for dedication, flexibility, adaptability,
and professionalism.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
More than thirty of them were injured during this work,
some of them seriously. As one example, on one jump,
one of the men fractured his spine while landing and
had to remain in the field while the rest of
the team worked. When it was time to hike out,
he refused their help because everyone else was tired and
they were also low on food and water, so he
(28:25):
hiked out under his own power, trying to keep his
back straight the whole time, and he did this for
more than eighteen miles. The Triple Nickels had only one
fatality during their time as smoke jumpers. Medic Malvin L.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Brown landed in a tree during a jump on August sixth.
As he was lowering himself down, something went wrong and
he fell into a rocky creek bed below. He was
most likely killed instantly.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
By the late summer of nineteen forty five, it was
clear that the Japanese balloon bombs were no longer a threat.
It would later become known that the last ones had
been launched in April of that year, so on September second,
the Western Defense Command started winding down the balloon defense project.
In October, the Triple Nichols returned to Camp McCall, and
(29:16):
then that December they became part of the thirteenth Airborne
Division and they moved to Fort Bragg. When the thirteenth
Airborne was inactivated, the Triple Nichols became part of the
eighty second Airborne under Major General James M. Gavin.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Fort Bragg was still racially segregated, and initially the Triple
Nichols were living in the worst housing available on the base,
but Gavin insisted that the Triple Nichols be integrated with
the rest of the eighty second Airborne, including insisting that
they march with the eighty second Airborne as part of
(29:51):
the New York City Victory Parade on January fourteenth, nineteen
forty six.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
The five point fifty fifth was formally deactivated on December
fifteenth night, eighteen forty seven, at which point its remaining
paratroopers became part of the third Battalion, five oh fifth
Airborne Infantry, eighty second Airborne. One of them, Charles Stevens,
was later quoted as saying, quote, everybody was crying. I
think we were crying for two different reasons. We were
(30:17):
glad the segregation was leaving the army, and we were
sad we were losing our Triple Nickel colors. Advocacy for
a racially integrated military had been ongoing during and after
World War Two, another advisory board had been convened, called
the Board for Utilization of Negro Manpower or the Gillam
(30:40):
Board for its chair, Lieutenant General Alvin Cullum Gillum Junior.
This board issued a report that once again recommended desegregation
of the military. President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order
ninety nine eighty one on July twenty sixth, nineteen forty eight,
which banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national
(31:04):
origin in the US military. This effectively banned segregation throughout
the military.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Although it took years for that to actually be put
into practice across all of the divisions, and obviously it
also did not solve racism within the army, but the
eighty second Airborne had been integrated months before the order
was even issued.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Not long after the executive Order, some of the men
who had been part of the Triple Nickels experienced a tragedy.
Multiple units from different branches of the military were preparing
for large scale maneuvers known as Operation Combine three on
September sixteenth, nineteen forty eight, at Egglin Field on the
Florida Panhandle, very near where I grew up. The five
(31:50):
oh fifth Airborne Infantry and the seven eighty fifth Tank
Battalion were on maneuvers on the ground while Air Force
B twenty nine bombers were conducting a firepower we heard
some of the bombers missed their mark and dropped their
bombs onto the troops on the ground. Five men were
killed and twenty nine were injured, and with the exception
of one white officer, all of them were black. All
(32:14):
of the pilots involved were white. In his memoir, Lieutenant
Colonel Bradley Biggs contended that this was largely covered up
and that the pilots and navigators involved were not held accountable,
and that would not have been the case had their
races been reversed.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Operation Firefly had largely been a secret while it was
going on. The military had tried to keep word from
spreading about the Japanese balloon bombs for fear that the
public would panic if they knew about them, so people
had not even been warned about the potential dangers until
after that tragedy in Bly, Oregon. That meant that the
(32:51):
Triple Nichols really did not get as much news coverage
or recognition for their work at the time the Tuskeee
Airmen for Examp were a lot more widely covered and
more widely known.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
That's still largely true today, but it started to change
a little bit in more recent years. In nineteen ninety four,
the Triple Nickels were part of a celebration of Smokey
Bear's fiftieth birthday. Pendleton Airfield is now home to the
Oregon National Guards Pendleton Aviation Support Facility, and the conference
room there is named for the five fifty fifth Parachute
(33:25):
Infantry Battalion. There are historical markers dedicated to them at
the Sisku Smoke Jumper Museum in Cave Junction, Oregon and
in Pendleton, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
In addition to Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs's book, which is
called the Triple Nickels America's First All Black Paratroope Unit,
there's also a book called Courage Has No Color, The
True Story of the Triple Nickels, America's First Black Paratroopers,
by Tanya Lee Stone. This book is intended for ages
ten and up, and it won the NAACP Image Award
(33:57):
for Outstanding Literary Work Youth and Team in twenty fourteen.
UH and that's the triple Nichols.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Do you also have listener mail?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
I do also have listener mail, and this listener mail
came with a subject line that really delighted me. It's
from Katie and the subject line of the email is
out of hand. Viking Unearthed hoksh and Katie wrote, Dear
Holly and Tracy, listening to your latest Unearthed podcast, I
(34:28):
was wondering if you had mentioned a Viking artifact that
was unearthed here in Sweden this past March. You did not,
so you may not have heard this hilarious story. In March,
a rare Viking age neck ring was discovered at a
construction site. It was in very good condition and had
a very rare design, so experts were all excited about
(34:51):
the find and it made headlines all over the country. However,
they were a bit over eager to share the discovery
and did not conduct the test to determine the authenticity
of the find. It turns out some of the construction
workers had planted an elaborate fake made of wire and
spray paint and buried it in the mud to fool
(35:12):
some land surveyors. They were fooled, and to get to
the Viking experts who were also fooled and sent out
a press release very quickly. It took about twenty four
hours for the story to unravel. It seems like the
construction workers thought the joke would be figured out very quickly.
The experts were embarrassed but took it well. I'm sure
(35:34):
every artifact will have rigorous testing done before any press
releases are sent out in the future. The construction workers
were informed that they could reclaim the necklace from the authorities,
but to my knowledge, no one ever claimed it. I've
added some links. I do not know if this will
count as unearthed, but it was a good story. The
email goes on to say, on the topic of spite houses,
(35:56):
there is a castle that was owned by a successful
general Scoglocester Castle, and I did not look much further
into that, but the email continues he built an elaborate
castle right next to the home of his father. The
size difference is very noticeable. I do not remember the
full story, but it was definitely to spite his father.
(36:17):
See the attached image. I don't currently have pets, so
my pet tax is some cherry blossoms from outside my house.
Keep up the good work, Katie, Katie, I love this story.
I did not see any of this about this quote
discovery as I was working on Unearthed. The particular links
(36:42):
that were included in the email with more information on
the story are not links that I typically look at
as part of on Earth. There have been times, though,
where over the course of researching on Earth, I will
see a similar maybe not exactly this story, maybe not
a hoax, but I will see something play out that
involves un announcement about something, and then questions raised about
(37:04):
that announcement, and then maybe the initial announcement being retracted.
That does happen sometimes, and so one of sort of
my perpetual low grade fears about Unearthed, since we do
them quarterly, is that it's possible that towards the very
end of the quarter there could be something that's announced
(37:26):
that isn't revealed as being inauthentic until after we have
already recorded the Unearthed that it's part of. These cherry
blossom pictures are very beautiful.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Listen. I will always take a flower picture, very excited
about that. I stop and so many times and take
pictures of random flowers while I'm out walking. One of
them is a close up of the cherry like one
limb of the cherry blossoms with the rest of the
tree in the background. And then yes, there is a
(38:02):
picture of this Spie House castle. The castle is many, many,
many times.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Larger than the structure that it was apparently built next to.
So thank you so much for this email, Katie. It
really tickled me this whole story. If you'd like to
send us a note about this or any other podcast
where its History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you
can't subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or
(38:32):
anywhere else you'd like to listen to podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Today's episode is a list of request It's from Josiah.
Josiah has sent us so many topic ideas, So Josiah,
I want to say, I'm so sorry that we only
very rarely respond to your emails. But after getting this
particular one with this suggestion in it, I went through
the inbox and I made sure that I had made
(00:39):
note of every suggestion that you have sent to us,
because you've sent us a lot of really great ones.
Today's is the five fifty fifth Parachute Infantry Battalion, also
called the Triple Nichols. They were the first black paratroopers
in the US military, and their story is also connected
to the desegregation of the military after World War II.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Black soldiers' participation in the United States military goes back
to before the Revolutionary War, and initially most units were
not racially segregated. One exception was the first Rhode Island Regiment.
More than half of its number were black or indigenous,
and there were segregated units within that regiment. Beyond that,
(01:23):
during the Revolutionary War, thousands of people of African descent
served in the Continental Army, in state militias or at sea,
mostly in integrated units. After George Washington became Commander in
Chief of the Continental Army, he tried to bar people
of African descent from enlistment, but he reversed that decision
(01:44):
a couple of months later. But then after the Revolutionary War,
Congress passed the Federal Militia Act, which Washington signed into
law in seventeen ninety two. This Act applied to white
men only, so it essentially excluded black people from service,
with a few exceptions. Black people continued to be excluded
(02:06):
from military service in the US until the Civil War,
when the Confiscation Act authorized the use of formerly enslaved
people as soldiers in the United States Army. These soldiers
generally served in segregated units. We talked more about this
in our episode on Contraband Camps, which we ran as
a Saturday Classic on February eighteenth, twenty twenty three. Prior
(02:30):
hosts of the show also talked about the Massachusetts fifty fourth,
which was the second all black regiment established in the
U s Army, and we ran that as a Saturday
Classic on February second, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
After the end of the Civil War, the US Army
was reorganized into a peacetime service, and this reorganization included
the establishment of all black infantry and cavalry units that
came to be known as the Buffalo Soldiers. About the
Buffalo Soldiers in more detail in the Iron Riders episode
(03:04):
that came out on July third, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So by the start of World War One, racial segregation
had been the standard in the US military for decades.
More than three hundred eighty thousand black Americans served in
the Army during World War One, and overwhelmingly the ones
who were sent overseas were assigned to tasks involving manual labor,
like working as stevedores and digging latrines. One exception was
(03:29):
the Harlem hell Fighters, and we ran our episode on
them as a Saturday Classic on June thirteenth, twenty twenty.
As we talked about in that episode, these soldiers served
with valor and then returned home to find that they
still faced the same racism and discrimination as they had before,
Purportedly fighting to make the world safe for democracy. As
(03:51):
World War.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
II was approaching, the situation for black soldiers in the
US military was largely the same as it had been
in World War One, and that was in spite of
ongoing advocacy on the part of black service members and veterans,
as well as civil rights leaders and organizations. The Selective
Service Act that established the World War II Draft specified
(04:14):
that the training and selection of men would have no
discrimination by race or color, but there were still racial
disparities and who was actually selected for service and what
roles those people were assigned. The Army also started using
an intelligence test called the Army General Classification Test, and
(04:37):
there were measurable differences between the typical scores of white
and black recruits, with the black recruits generally scoring lower.
Some military officials did recognize that these disparities stemmed from
social and economic factors and not from the innate intelligence
of people of different races, but these disparities still reinforced
(05:01):
a lot of negative biases about black soldiers and what
they were capable of doing.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
There was also an overall perception within military leadership and
the executive branch of government that white soldiers as a
whole would not accept an integrated army. A lot of
the military bases where soldiers went through training were located
in the South, so there were well founded concerns that
these communities would not accept integrated military units in their
(05:29):
midst So the military continued to maintain segregation moving into
World War II, under the idea that to do otherwise
would damage the nation's military readiness. On the eve of war.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Some steps were being made to try to address at
least some of the most discriminatory aspects of a segregated military.
On October ninth, nineteen forty, the White House issued a
statement outlining the War Department's policy, which would be some
maintain racially segregated units, but also using black soldiers quote
(06:05):
on a fair and equal basis with their white peers.
So while units were still racially segregated, and that segregation
was inherently discriminatory, there were supposed to be more types
of units being established for black soldiers so that they
would no longer be so disproportionately working only in the
(06:27):
least desirable roles. This policy also specified that black soldiers
would be recruited in equal numbers that aligned with their
proportion of the population of the United States. None of
this really did anything about the inherently discriminatory aspects of segregation,
but at least in theory, it meant that black soldiers
(06:48):
would no longer be primarily assigned to things like manual labor.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
From nineteen forty to nineteen forty two, William Henry Hasty
Junior served as a civilian aid to Secretary of War
Henry Lewis Stimpson and advised on these issues. Hasty was
the first black person to be appointed as a federal
District Court judge. He conducted a survey in nineteen forty
one that documented multiple ways in which the US military
(07:14):
was falling short of that nineteen forty policy announcement. Black
people were not being inducted into the military at a
rate that was proportional to their population. There had been
some new units established for black servicemen, such as the
Tuskegee Airmen, which prior hosts of the show covered in
two thousand and nine, but black soldiers were still disproportionately
(07:37):
serving in certain roles, including the Quartermaster Corps and doing
things like building infrastructure in the Corps of Engineers. In
his report, Hasty noted quote the traditional mores of the
South have been widely accepted and adopted by the Army
as the basis of policy and practice affecting the Negro soldier.
(08:00):
He recommended a number of ways for black soldiers to
become a more integral part of the army, including that
the Army should, somewhere within the service, actually begin the
process of integrating. By August of nineteen forty two, these
patterns of discrimination were clearly still ongoing, and the Secretary
(08:21):
of War established an Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies,
chaired by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. This
committee was focused on addressing what it saw as problems
with discipline, morale, and military readiness among black soldiers and
how to address them. Most of the people involved with
(08:41):
this committee were white military leaders. One exception was Brigadier
General Benjamin O. Davis, who had served in one of
the Buffalo Soldier's regiments and had also become a Tuskegee airman.
He was the first black general in the US Army.
A lot of his recommendations were really in line with
ones that Hasty had made previously, including proposing quote, the
(09:05):
breaking down of the so called Jim Crow practices within
the War Department and on the military reservations and the
securing of the cooperation of the communities near the reservations.
To that end, Basically, Davis and Hasty both recognized that
a lot of what was happening that the army saw
(09:26):
as problems with morale, readiness and discipline traced directly back
to black soldiers growing up targeted by racism, without the
same access to education or resources that the white recruits
generally had, and then being expected to work in an
inherently discriminatory environment, sometimes under the command of outwardly racist officers,
(09:50):
all while also living on bases that were surrounded by
civilian communities that were rife with racism and racist violence.
In December of nineteen forty two, this committee made a
number of recommendations, none of which really involved the kind
of systemic dismantling of racist organizational structures and attitudes that
(10:11):
both Davis and Hasty had spoken about. Hasty actually resigned
from this work in nineteen forty three due to the
lack of progress. These recommendations included the creation of some
new all black units, including combat engineer units and ambulance battalions,
and new harbor defense units to reduce the number of
Black soldiers assigned to anti aircraft units.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So the black harbor defense units never happened, partly because
of difficulty finding communities where those units would be stations
that would not also object to their presence there, and
because the perceived threat to coastal communities in North America
diminished over the course of the war. Some new combat
(10:55):
engineer units were established, but most of them eventually became concer,
instruction or general service units. The army also did establish
twelve new motor ambulance companies in nineteen forty three, and
then two more followed later.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
The recommendation that played a part in today's episode was
the creation of a black parachute battalion quote for the
purposes of enhancing the morale and a spree decorps of
the Negro people. Paratroopers were and are considered some of
the most elite members of the military. They literally jump
out of airplanes, often carrying heavy loads of gear, ready
(11:33):
to face whatever it is they find when they land.
Qualification requirements were strict and training was grueling, so the
idea followed that black soldiers in this role would become
a point of Pride.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the creation of a black
parachute battalion in April of nineteen forty three, and we'll
have more on that after a sponsor break. One type
of unit that black soldiers were being assigned to in
(12:10):
the US Army during World War Two was service companies.
Service companies handled a lot of the non combat work
that needed to be done for a combat unit to function,
like maintaining equipment, processing the mail, and keeping track of supplies.
The exact duties of these service companies could really vary
(12:32):
based on what kind of unit they were attached to
and where that unit was located. Fort Benning in Columbus,
Georgia was home to the Parachute School where the paratroopers
went through their training, and the Parachute Service Company was
largely dedicated to guard duty. Fort Benning is also home
(12:52):
to the Infantry Officer Candidate School. Sergeant Walter Morris had
washed out of that school with only a week left
to go. He had been told to spend three months
in one of the service companies at the fort before
trying again, and he chose the Parachute Service Company once
he got there. A number of problems were obvious to him.
(13:15):
This all black unit was on duty from four pm
until eight am, and during that time there really was
not much to do. The whole base was segregated, including
black soldiers being excluded from the movie theater and the
post exchange. A PX, German and Italian prisoners of war
had access to services and facilities on the base that
(13:38):
Black servicemen were excluded from. So the morale was low
and the men were ferry bored.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Drawing on what he'd learned in Officer candidate school, Morris
put together a plan to try to improve morale among
the service corps, and he got it approved by the
company commander. This plan included the black soldiers doing the
same fitness and training regimen that the paratrooper candidates were
doing basically everything except practice jumps from towers and airplanes,
(14:08):
so they'd be using the training fields and equipment rather
than just guarding them overnight, and this gave the men
more of a sense of purpose and cohesion and their
morale did start to improve.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
General Ridgley Gaither, the commandant of the Airborne School, observed
all of this as it was happening, and eventually he
informed Morris that the Army was establishing a test platoon
to see if black soldiers could perform as paratroopers. Gaither
personally selected Morris as a potential candidate for this platoon,
(14:40):
and Morris ultimately became a second lieutenant and helped recruit
the test platoon's other members.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
This test platoon was created as the Company A five
hundred and fifty fifth Parachute Infantry Battalion. The platoon took
the name Triple Nichols from that numerical designation of five
five five, and since a Nicholas five cents, it also
had a connection to Buffalo Nichols. Many of the companies
enlisted men were recruited from the ninety second Infantry Division
(15:09):
Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Wachuca, Arizona. These men were selected
very carefully because, in addition to the morale and esprie
de corps that we mentioned before the break, the Army
was basically testing whether black men were suitable to serve
as paratroopers before committing to selecting and training more of them.
(15:33):
After being selected for the test platoon, nineteen men went
through a four phase training process at the Airborne School.
Phase A started with extremely grueling exercise that went on
for long stretches at a time. It was basically intended
to wash out anyone who wouldn't be able to handle
the riggers of the rest of the training or the
(15:54):
riggers of life as a paratrooper, and to do it
as quickly as possible. They also attended lecture on how
to protect themselves during a jump, and they did wind
tunnel exercises to practice controlling a parachute.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Phase B built on what they'd learned the previous week,
and it added hand to hand combat and jump training.
At this point, the jump training mainly involved mock jumps
from a fifty foot tower without a parachute while wearing
a harness.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Phase C moved on to simulated jumps with a parachute,
which many of the men considered to be more of
a mental and emotional challenge than actually jumping from an
airplane would be. Later on, these took place from a
two hundred and fifty foot tower at the Airborne School,
and then in the fourth week, Phase D took them
(16:45):
into actual airplanes to make real jumps with a parachute.
After they'd successfully completed all four phases, the men would
earn their jump wings. Ultimately, on February eighteenth, nineteen forty
four black paratroopers graduated from this first round of training.
Six black officers graduated from their training on March fourth,
(17:08):
so there were twenty two men in total in the
test platoon. Based on the memoir of Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs,
who was the first black officer accepted into the Triple Nickels,
their training was extremely difficult and the white officers and
enlisted men who conducted that training were very hard on them,
(17:30):
but they did not get a sense that there were
racial undertones to this. It was the same training at
the same pace that the white paratroopers went through, and
at least in the context of their paratrooper training, Biggs
felt like they had gotten the same treatment that the
white soldiers would have. The test platoon was still housed
(17:51):
with the Service Company on base, but after earning their
jump wings, they reported feeling more camaraderie with the white
soldiers at Fort Benning than they did before. There was
sort of a perception that a paratrooper was a paratrooper
regardless of skin color, although the five point fifty five's
black officers and NCOs still were not welcome in their
(18:11):
respective clubs, and the situation off base had not changed
at all. Columbus Georgia is in a fairly rural part
of the state near the Alabama state line, and black
soldiers often faced racism and harassment from white civilians and
from the Columbus police when they were off base.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Based on the success of this first round of training,
the Army started the process of turning this twenty two
man test platoon into a full parachute infantry company. That
happened in the summer of nineteen forty four. The Triple
Nichols were moved to Camp McCall, North Carolina, which had
an airfield. Camp McCall was also segregated, but black troops
(18:54):
there did have access to a separate section of the
movie theater, and the officers were allowed access to their clubs.
The Triple Nichols also organized a football team for recreation
at Camp McCall, and they played a number of games
against teams from historically black colleges and universities.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
As the company expanded, the Triple Nickels underwent additional training
at Camp McCall. This lasted for five months, during which
more men were being recruited and put through jump school.
Their number grew to one hundred and fifty five enlisted
men and ten officers, under the command of Captain James Porter,
sometimes called the father of the five five to five.
(19:35):
Some of that training at Camp McCall was particularly unpleasant,
like one hot afternoon when they went up in a
plane that was simulating evasive maneuvers right after they had
been served a heavy, greasy lunch.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
As their training progressed, many of the men started to
think they might be deployed to Europe, especially as their
additional training started to focus on combat. The Army was
still reluctant to send Black troops into combat, but by
this point in the war, a lot of paratroopers had
been killed or injured in Europe, so reinforcements were needed.
(20:13):
Among other things, the D Day Invasion in June of
nineteen forty four had started with paratroopers from the eighty
second and one hundred and first Airborne Divisions being dropped
behind enemy lines, and they had faced really heavy losses.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
But almost a year later, the war in Europe was
coming to an end. On April twenty first, nineteen forty five,
when they were four weeks into an eight week combat
readiness program, the Triple Nicols got a different order. It
was to report to Pendleton Field in Pendleton, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
This was not because they were going to be deployed
from there to the Pacific, where the war against Japan
was still ongoing. It was because they were going to
fight fires. And we will have more on that after
another sponsor break. On May fifth, nineteen forty five, the
(21:11):
Reverend Archie Mitchell and his wife Elise were taking a
group of children on a church outing in Bly, Oregon.
Elise and some of the children spotted something on the
ground and it exploded. Elise was killed, along with five
children between the ages of eleven and fourteen. It turned
out this device was a bomb that had been sent
(21:34):
to the United States from Japan via balloon. The US
Navy had started to find balloons and parts of balloons
the previous November, and hundreds more were sighted in the
following months. We talked about these balloon bombs in our
episode on the balloons of World War II. On March sixth,
twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
By coincidence, May fifth was also the day the Triple
Nickel left Camp McCall for Pendleton, Oregon. They traveled most
of the way by rail, and it took them six
days to get there. For their first couple of weeks
at Pendleton Air Base, they mostly focused on their physical
fitness and conditioning because the base was being reactivated for
this purpose and their equipment and supplies had not arrived yet.
(22:20):
The effort to find and defuse these Japanese balloon bombs
and to fight any fires that the bombs caused was
known as Operation Firefly. It involved roughly twenty seven hundred
military personnel working in conjunction with the US Forest Service.
The Triple Nichols formed a three hundred man smoke jumping
(22:43):
unit during Operation Firefly. Smoke jumping, or sending firefighters into
an area by parachute, was a fairly new development in
the United States. Like the development of paratroopers. It had
grown out of the combination of parachutes, which have been
around in their modern formed since the late eighteenth century,
and practical aircraft, which have been around since the early
(23:05):
twentieth century. The first uses of aircraft and firefighting in
western North America started with aerial photography and equipment drops.
In the nineteen twenties, various people proposed the idea of
transporting firefighters to an area by parachute in the nineteen
twenties and thirties, but initially most people thought this was
way too dangerous to be practical. That started to change
(23:29):
with the development of more maneuverable parachutes in the mid
to late nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
In nineteen thirty nine, the Forest Service started working with
Eagle Parachute Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and most of the
first smoke jumpers that were part of this project were
employed by the company rather than by the government. They
carried out about sixty experimental jumps, and eventually some Forest
Service employees embarked on jumps as well. The first actual
(23:59):
jump umps for fire and rescue missions rather than tests
and training, started in nineteen forty, but it really wasn't
until nineteen forty four that smoke jumping started to be
seen as a realistic, practical way to fight forest fires,
and one that saved more money than it cost. The
Triple Nickels time as smoke jumpers was only partly about
(24:22):
the Japanese balloon bombs, although when they got this assignment
those were seen as a huge potential threat, especially since
summer was approaching beyond the balloon bombs. The Forest Service
was facing a huge labor shortage due to the war.
Before the arrival of the Triple Nickels, the number of
firefighters in the West had been bolstered by conscientious objectors
(24:44):
who were assigned to alternative service, including from pacifist religious
denominations like the Religious Society of Friends also known as
the Quakers. The goal for the Triple Nickels was for
them to be able to parachute into a fire area,
assess what was going on there, and keep any fires
contained until reinforcements arrived, often by mule train, because the
(25:08):
area was so remote and so far away from roads.
If they found a balloon bomb, they would cordon off
the area and diffuse it. So the Triple Nickels training
included both firefighting and fire containment techniques and bomb disposal.
To do this work, they also had to learn new
strategies for parachuting, using a different type of parachute than
(25:31):
they had learned to use in the Army. They were
taught by Frank Dairy, who was a distributor for Eagle
Parachute Company on the West Coast and who had developed
a steerable parachute called the dairy chute that the Forest
Service was using. Their uniforms and equipment also changed, including
swapping their steel military helmets for football helmets with mesh
(25:51):
screens to help protect their faces from cinders and debris.
The Triple Nickels military parachute training had focused on landing
in fields and other open areas, but as smoke jumpers,
they were typically landing in wooded areas. Instead, they would
literally aim for the trees. This was intentional. Places that
(26:15):
were clear of trees were often just too rugged and
mountainous to be traversed, or if they looked open from above,
they might really be full of downed timbers that were
hazardous to try to land on or navigate through once
you were on the ground. Members of the five point
fifty fifth talked about really having to fight against their
(26:37):
original training to intentionally aim for those trees instead of
aiming for open ground. Aiming for wooded areas also meant
that they had to learn how to get themselves out
of the trees after landing. To do this, they used
fifty feet of nylon rope that they carried with them
during their jumps.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
From May twenty second to June sixth, members of the
Forest Service train the Triple Nickles on how to use
the Forest Service as maps and on techniques for fire suppression. Then,
from June eighth to fifteenth, the Ninth Service Command trained
them on bomb disposal. Their training jumps started on June eighteenth,
and they answered their first fire call just three days later. Ultimately,
(27:22):
they were split into two groups, with six officers and
ninety four enlisted men sent to Chico Army Airfield in Chico,
California to cover the southwest, while the rest of the
men remained at Pendleton Airfield to cover the northwest.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Over the nineteen forty five fire season, the Triple Nickels
carried out more than twelve hundred jumps to help control
thirty six fires and dispose of several Japanese bombs. Sometimes
their work took them to Canada, where they helped keep
fires from spreading southward into the United States. Over that
(27:56):
summer of nineteen forty five, they developed a reputation for dedication, flexibility, adaptability,
and professionalism.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
More than thirty of them were injured during this work,
some of them seriously. As one example, on one jump,
one of the men fractured his spine while landing and
had to remain in the field while the rest of
the team worked. When it was time to hike out,
he refused their help because everyone else was tired and
they were also low on food and water, so he
(28:25):
hiked out under his own power, trying to keep his
back straight the whole time, and he did this for
more than eighteen miles. The Triple Nickels had only one
fatality during their time as smoke jumpers. Medic Malvin L.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Brown landed in a tree during a jump on August sixth.
As he was lowering himself down, something went wrong and
he fell into a rocky creek bed below. He was
most likely killed instantly.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
By the late summer of nineteen forty five, it was
clear that the Japanese balloon bombs were no longer a threat.
It would later become known that the last ones had
been launched in April of that year, so on September second,
the Western Defense Command started winding down the balloon defense project.
In October, the Triple Nichols returned to Camp McCall, and
(29:16):
then that December they became part of the thirteenth Airborne
Division and they moved to Fort Bragg. When the thirteenth
Airborne was inactivated, the Triple Nichols became part of the
eighty second Airborne under Major General James M. Gavin.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Fort Bragg was still racially segregated, and initially the Triple
Nichols were living in the worst housing available on the base,
but Gavin insisted that the Triple Nichols be integrated with
the rest of the eighty second Airborne, including insisting that
they march with the eighty second Airborne as part of
(29:51):
the New York City Victory Parade on January fourteenth, nineteen
forty six.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
The five point fifty fifth was formally deactivated on December
fifteenth night, eighteen forty seven, at which point its remaining
paratroopers became part of the third Battalion, five oh fifth
Airborne Infantry, eighty second Airborne. One of them, Charles Stevens,
was later quoted as saying, quote, everybody was crying. I
think we were crying for two different reasons. We were
(30:17):
glad the segregation was leaving the army, and we were
sad we were losing our Triple Nickel colors. Advocacy for
a racially integrated military had been ongoing during and after
World War Two, another advisory board had been convened, called
the Board for Utilization of Negro Manpower or the Gillam
(30:40):
Board for its chair, Lieutenant General Alvin Cullum Gillum Junior.
This board issued a report that once again recommended desegregation
of the military. President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order
ninety nine eighty one on July twenty sixth, nineteen forty eight,
which banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national
(31:04):
origin in the US military. This effectively banned segregation throughout
the military.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Although it took years for that to actually be put
into practice across all of the divisions, and obviously it
also did not solve racism within the army, but the
eighty second Airborne had been integrated months before the order
was even issued.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Not long after the executive Order, some of the men
who had been part of the Triple Nickels experienced a tragedy.
Multiple units from different branches of the military were preparing
for large scale maneuvers known as Operation Combine three on
September sixteenth, nineteen forty eight, at Egglin Field on the
Florida Panhandle, very near where I grew up. The five
(31:50):
oh fifth Airborne Infantry and the seven eighty fifth Tank
Battalion were on maneuvers on the ground while Air Force
B twenty nine bombers were conducting a firepower we heard
some of the bombers missed their mark and dropped their
bombs onto the troops on the ground. Five men were
killed and twenty nine were injured, and with the exception
of one white officer, all of them were black. All
(32:14):
of the pilots involved were white. In his memoir, Lieutenant
Colonel Bradley Biggs contended that this was largely covered up
and that the pilots and navigators involved were not held accountable,
and that would not have been the case had their
races been reversed.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Operation Firefly had largely been a secret while it was
going on. The military had tried to keep word from
spreading about the Japanese balloon bombs for fear that the
public would panic if they knew about them, so people
had not even been warned about the potential dangers until
after that tragedy in Bly, Oregon. That meant that the
(32:51):
Triple Nichols really did not get as much news coverage
or recognition for their work at the time the Tuskeee
Airmen for Examp were a lot more widely covered and
more widely known.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
That's still largely true today, but it started to change
a little bit in more recent years. In nineteen ninety four,
the Triple Nickels were part of a celebration of Smokey
Bear's fiftieth birthday. Pendleton Airfield is now home to the
Oregon National Guards Pendleton Aviation Support Facility, and the conference
room there is named for the five fifty fifth Parachute
(33:25):
Infantry Battalion. There are historical markers dedicated to them at
the Sisku Smoke Jumper Museum in Cave Junction, Oregon and
in Pendleton, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
In addition to Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs's book, which is
called the Triple Nickels America's First All Black Paratroope Unit,
there's also a book called Courage Has No Color, The
True Story of the Triple Nickels, America's First Black Paratroopers,
by Tanya Lee Stone. This book is intended for ages
ten and up, and it won the NAACP Image Award
(33:57):
for Outstanding Literary Work Youth and Team in twenty fourteen.
UH and that's the triple Nichols.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Do you also have listener mail?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
I do also have listener mail, and this listener mail
came with a subject line that really delighted me. It's
from Katie and the subject line of the email is
out of hand. Viking Unearthed hoksh and Katie wrote, Dear
Holly and Tracy, listening to your latest Unearthed podcast, I
(34:28):
was wondering if you had mentioned a Viking artifact that
was unearthed here in Sweden this past March. You did not,
so you may not have heard this hilarious story. In March,
a rare Viking age neck ring was discovered at a
construction site. It was in very good condition and had
a very rare design, so experts were all excited about
(34:51):
the find and it made headlines all over the country. However,
they were a bit over eager to share the discovery
and did not conduct the test to determine the authenticity
of the find. It turns out some of the construction
workers had planted an elaborate fake made of wire and
spray paint and buried it in the mud to fool
(35:12):
some land surveyors. They were fooled, and to get to
the Viking experts who were also fooled and sent out
a press release very quickly. It took about twenty four
hours for the story to unravel. It seems like the
construction workers thought the joke would be figured out very quickly.
The experts were embarrassed but took it well. I'm sure
(35:34):
every artifact will have rigorous testing done before any press
releases are sent out in the future. The construction workers
were informed that they could reclaim the necklace from the authorities,
but to my knowledge, no one ever claimed it. I've
added some links. I do not know if this will
count as unearthed, but it was a good story. The
email goes on to say, on the topic of spite houses,
(35:56):
there is a castle that was owned by a successful
general Scoglocester Castle, and I did not look much further
into that, but the email continues he built an elaborate
castle right next to the home of his father. The
size difference is very noticeable. I do not remember the
full story, but it was definitely to spite his father.
(36:17):
See the attached image. I don't currently have pets, so
my pet tax is some cherry blossoms from outside my house.
Keep up the good work, Katie, Katie, I love this story.
I did not see any of this about this quote
discovery as I was working on Unearthed. The particular links
(36:42):
that were included in the email with more information on
the story are not links that I typically look at
as part of on Earth. There have been times, though,
where over the course of researching on Earth, I will
see a similar maybe not exactly this story, maybe not
a hoax, but I will see something play out that
involves un announcement about something, and then questions raised about
(37:04):
that announcement, and then maybe the initial announcement being retracted.
That does happen sometimes, and so one of sort of
my perpetual low grade fears about Unearthed, since we do
them quarterly, is that it's possible that towards the very
end of the quarter there could be something that's announced
(37:26):
that isn't revealed as being inauthentic until after we have
already recorded the Unearthed that it's part of. These cherry
blossom pictures are very beautiful.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Listen. I will always take a flower picture, very excited
about that. I stop and so many times and take
pictures of random flowers while I'm out walking. One of
them is a close up of the cherry like one
limb of the cherry blossoms with the rest of the
tree in the background. And then yes, there is a
(38:02):
picture of this Spie House castle. The castle is many, many,
many times.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Larger than the structure that it was apparently built next to.
So thank you so much for this email, Katie. It
really tickled me this whole story. If you'd like to
send us a note about this or any other podcast
where its History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you
can't subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or
(38:32):
anywhere else you'd like to listen to podcasts. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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