February 28, 2019 • 47 mins
The Tuskegee Airmen braved racism and brutally tough training in order to secure their spot in American history as the first African-American military pilots. Listen in today to the story of their determination and heroism.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
So this is stuff you should know about the Tuskegee Airman.
(00:22):
That's right, one of our Every year we try to
do a Black History Month podcast at least one. And
uh did mean to keep everyone on suspense this year
right here at the end of the month, but this
one we were getting this one put together. Yeah, this
is a good one. Yeah, and it's uh, I mean,
this is what we typically like to do, stuff that's
(00:44):
like your very little known history. I would say Tuskegee
Airman is is does not fall into the little known category,
yet still undersung. I think even after two not very
good feature films. Oh did you see any of them?
I had? The only one I'm familiar with was um,
I think it's just called the Tuskegee Airman, and I
(01:04):
kept confusing it with Memphis Bell. Yeah, Tuskegee Airman was
an HBO movie with Larry Fishburne and other Malcolm Jamal Warner.
I think, yeah, good seeing him, sure always, but uh,
I mean that one was okay, but I think better
than the Red Tails movie was. Uh yeah, Red Tails
just wasn't very good, which is a shame. Sure. But
(01:28):
speaking of shame, let's talk about how the Tuskegee Airmen retreated.
Just to get started, Um, we should kind of briefly
go over like the history of African Americans in the military,
because where we really pick up with our story the
Inner War period between World War One and World War Two. Um,
the military was very much segregated still officially, just like
(01:51):
America was. It was law. Segregation was law at the time.
But that's not to say that, um, African Americans hadn't
served in the military and US previously, uh, in some
pretty substantial roles too. Yeah, I mean dating back to
like when they were not even considered Americans, Like when
when uh, I mean, I keep wanting to say black Americans,
(02:14):
but they were not considered that, like during the Revolutionary War, um,
on both sides. Actually, as you'll learn in a short
stuff about black loyalists, it's interesting that slaves fought for
and against the revolution, really interesting all the way up through.
And you know, we should do podcasts on a lot
of these things, but they fought in the War of
(02:36):
eighteen twelve. They fought as the Buffalo Soldiers in many
of the conflicts against Native Americans all the way up
through World War One, where they joined the army, despite
the fact that there was segregation at home and in
the military um, notably the Harlem hell Fighters who fought
with the French, and even though Americans did not fully
(02:59):
recognize that as an accomplishment, the French government did. Ironically, Yeah,
if that sounds kind of weird to you, the the
American military had an all black regiment and said here,
you take them to to France, and France was like, sure,
we'll take them, We'll use them and awarded them the
Quada Gair for Heroism in combat um, which is like,
(03:21):
if you'll remember our Native American code talker episode. France,
especially World War One, had kind of a history of
awarding and recognizing bravery among minorities that were just totally
shown to the United States, you know, yeah, And I
mean there was even a study conducted by the Army
War College in nineteen five about the fitness and suitability
(03:42):
of black soldiers in the military, and it was just
it was brutal and racist, and you know, just said
the worst things you can imagine about the lack of
fitness for a black man to serve for the Americans
in the American military. Yeah, and I think this Army
War College study was basically just a an official position
(04:03):
paper that that summed up the sentiments among military officers
and most of the military at the time. Um that
they just wanted to get it down on paper. It's
like an official position so that that it wouldn't be eroded,
that they could say this is the military's official position
on black people. And essentially what it said was black
(04:25):
people are not intellectually capable of receiving like theoretical training.
They they can probably be you know, um worked into
uh like combat troops, but it's going to take a
lot more effort and you really have to dumb it
down and then maybe you can organize them into a
(04:46):
combat troop. But really, we don't have high hopes for this,
so we should probably just not mess with the whole
thing and just keep it in all white military. Yeah.
That that was And despite all of this, there were
still black soldiers who a achieved in the military, uh,
most notably in the reason we bring this Uh, this
gentleman up. Benjamin O'Davis sr Uh became the first black
(05:09):
general in the U. S. Military. He figures prominently in
the Tuskegee Airmen story, and that his son, Benjamin Davis Jr. Uh, Well,
we'll we'll tell you what he did, but he figured
very prominently in the formation and story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Yeah,
he's huge, he's um one of the leading figures, and
he gets most of the glory and the press and everything,
(05:30):
but there were plenty of others who who served quite valiantly. Yeah,
so that that's like the briefest of summations. I definitely
think we should do one on the Buffalo Soldiers at
some point. Tots agree like, I don't understand why Bob
Marley drew that that um line between Prasta's and Buffalo soldiers.
(05:53):
I'm not kidding, Like I know that it sounds like
a hilarious thing that Josh would say, but I have
always always wondered that, like what is he talking about?
What's the you know, were they were they rostas or
something like that, or is it do they have the
spirit of the roster vice versa. I'd love to get
to the bottom of that. Alright, let's do it. Okay, alright,
(06:14):
I'm excited. So that brings us to World War two. UM.
And like you said before, segregation is still, uh the
law in the United States. Race racism was rampant, and
it still is in a lot of places in this country,
but back then very much rampant. Uh. And despite all that,
(06:34):
there were still plenty of African Americans who wanted to
be in the army and wanted to fly planes. And
this was pre Air Force. It was called the uh,
the Army Air Corps. Yes, and we should say like
this was extremely prestigious to be in the Army. Air
Corps was far and away the most prestigious branch of
the military, although it wasn't technically its own branch, but
(06:57):
the UM. The it was the most prestigious part of
the military. UM because it was widely considered and rightfully
so you had to be really really sharp, really smart,
really quick on your toes, and just really large and
in charge. Basically to fly planes in the military. It
was still pretty new. It was a fairly new thing,
(07:19):
and the whole the whole world, but also the US
really looked up to aviators at the time because this
is at a time where if you flew across country,
you just you just made history kind of thing. So
to to UM to be a part of the Army
Air Corps, that was a that's a sweet plum right there. Yeah,
(07:39):
And so you know, we we move over to Alabama
at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, and this was a
place where you if you were a Black American and
you wanted to go to college and get a higher education,
that was a great place to start. Uh. Founded in
one by Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington UM. And
(08:00):
during this period they had something called the Civilian Pilot
Training Program, which is it was established basically to get
a pool of pilots with experience, uh, people who could
train pilots in the United States. And there were black
colleges participating in this program, and Tuskegee was one of them. Yeah.
(08:20):
The Howard University also had a program. UM. There were
also like by this time, there was some UM black
aviation history that had been established and it was small,
but it was really proud, and rightfully so, because if
you were an African American and you said, you know
what I really look up to all these pilots too,
(08:41):
I want to go be a pilot. The first story
you went to got slammed in your face. The next
door you went to, slamming in your face. And again,
like the idea that black people couldn't learn how to
fly a plane, So how are you going to let
one fly a plane or try to teach them? What's
the point? It's also probably pretty dangerous and expensive. Um,
Like you could not as an African American get into
(09:05):
a flight school. And so some of these earliest African
American pilots in aviation history and like the say, like
the twenties, the early thirties, like some of them were
self taught. There's a guy, see Alfred Anderson, who taught
himself how to fly in land planes because no flight
school would teach him, no white pilots would teach him.
(09:28):
He had to save up biz own plane and teach himself,
and he became a legend. He's known as the father
of black aviation in America. Yeah, and there's a like
you said, a very small but proud list, Bessie Coleman.
It was a black woman who went to France to
learn to fly. She was black and Native American yeah,
we should, she should get her an episode two. Uh.
(09:48):
In NY two, James Banning and Thomas Allen became the
first black pilots to fly across the US from l
A to New York, and they as well. At least
Banning could not go to flight school, so he basically
found a white pilot who would give him private lessons,
which is pretty remarkable. Um. And the cool thing about
(10:08):
this story is they, uh, it cost a lot of
money to fly across the country at any point, so
they would stop in black communities and raise money basically
and say, hey, get you know, donate some cash. You
can sign our airplane and that will allow us to
buy fuel to get to the next stop as we
go across country. Yeah. So they became the first black
(10:30):
pilots to fly all the way across the US as
a result, which is that's pretty great. But it was
like it was, it was stories like this and people
like these um who were profiled in the black press
at the time that I don't want to say, I
guess the press was pretty much segregated at least, but
for all practical purposes, African America had its own um
(10:53):
pressed and I guess the standard establishment press was just
writing stories about white people only, uh or things that
related to white people. So African Americans had their own press.
So stories of people like this UM spread throughout the
country and inspired like whole new generations of pilots. And
it also inspired, like you said, the Tuskegee Institute and
(11:14):
Howard University and some other private schools like one formed
by Cornelius Coffee and Willi Brown in Chicago to actually
start training black pilots. And so this is a this
is already established by the time the drumbeat, the earliest
drumbeat to World War Two started and UM, the the US,
(11:35):
led by Franklin Roosevelt, said we need to get the
civilian pilot training program going because we need a pool
of people who already know how to fly in case
we need to turn them into military pilots as well. Yeah,
And the the idea here with these uh, with the
black journalists and newspapers was here, here's what we want.
You know, there's the V for victory slogan and campaign.
(11:56):
Let's start up something and get the word out called
the double V campaign, which is basically victory in Europe
but also for black soldiers, victory at home and trying
to make a dent and discrimination and racism. If we
go over there and we can fight and we can
fly planes and serve our country, maybe that might make
(12:17):
a difference when we come back home that we were
you know, distinguished with our military service. So that was
a double V campaign trying to get victory at home
against racism as well as in Europe on the ground
with the military. And none of this might have happened
had it not been for one Eleanor Roosevelt. And maybe
(12:38):
we should take a break there. Yeah. What does Eleanor
Roosevelt have to do with all this? We'll find out
in just a minute, all right, Chuck. So, I mean,
(13:06):
I'm just gonna say it, Eleanor Roosevelt, give it up. Yeah, man,
I mean she was a great lady in a lot
of ways. But uh, what she did in the case
of the eventual Tuskegee Airmen was she visited Tuskegee. Um,
they had a training airfield called Moten Field m O
t O N. Yeah. Because remember this is like they're
(13:27):
they're they're flying program that they already established. Yeah, so
she visits, Uh, she's watching the pilots take off, fly
around land, and she was like, good argue in one
of those planes. That is a bitch in Eleanor Roosevelt man,
And they said sure, So she went up with an
African American pilot. She she went up with that, see
(13:49):
Alfred Anderson, the self taught father of aviation. Yeah, and
everything went great and she had apparently a good time,
went back home and got in her husband's ear and
was like, Hey, these these guys can fly planes. They're
doing a great job. They're fit for military service. So
let's let's get this thing going in earnest And he
did so, uh in January. So here's the thing. This
(14:12):
is what I'm on clear on, Like it's it's doubtless
that Eleanor Roosevelt played a role in making sure that
this this actually happened, that that um African American pilots
were eligible to fly for the US military, the Army
Air Corps. Right, But the timing of it I can't
(14:33):
quite suss out either. The US military said, yeah, we're
going to establish a black pilots training program at Tuskegee
UH in January nine, and then Eleanor Roosevelt showed up
a couple of months later to make sure that this
actually happened, or she showed up and then they established it.
(14:53):
I can't quite suss that out, but either way, she's
a pretty cool lady, Like she went down and saw
for herself and then came back and said, hey, we
really should make this happen. Or she knew that this
was happening but also could see people just dragging their feet,
so she went down to shine light on the whole
prosper the project, and uh, it kind of took off
(15:14):
from there. I feel forgive the pun. Either way, she
she played some sort of pretty cool role in getting
it going. Yeah, and when it first started, there was
sort of a joint affair between Tuskegee and the Army
Air Corps as far as uh providing funding and equipment personnel.
They all sort of chipped in a little bit. Um.
(15:34):
There were flying a few different planes for training, one biplane,
the Steerman PT seventeen. Eventually they were able to move
over to the Tuskegee Army air Field a few miles
away from Moten Field, where they had access to the
P forty Warhawk, and then they were like now we're
talking right, But also, I mean the initial primary training
(15:55):
at motion field was this kind of quasi university military training,
almost like an r OTC air training program. And then
once you graduated from primary, you moved over to the
Army field and you were full on on a military
base in military life. Yeah, and this like this, this
wasn't the first time that black pilots tried to apply.
(16:19):
Like pre Tuskegee, they were applying. Recruits were applying and
getting rejected every time they tried to get into the
Air Corps. Eventually the N double A CP got involved,
a lawsuit was filed UM. And even after that, when
they started admitting black men into the Air Corps, it
was ten cadets every five weeks, so they were you know,
(16:42):
it looks like they were purposefully just sort of stymying
the process through red tape and bureaucracy to still not
allow them to train. Yeah. And initially so that that
lawsuit UM was by a Howard University student named Yancey
Williams who wanted to be a just straight up Army
Air Corps cadet, and the N double A CP back
(17:03):
back the lawsuit UM, and the result was apparently the
military saying, okay, we'll just start to segregated all Black
Pilot program where the n double a CP and most
black leadership wanted just integration in the Army Air Corps.
So they were like, okay, fine, we'll take it, but
we're not like, this is not what we were going for,
(17:26):
but we'll take this. It's better than nothing. I guess, yeah,
that's that's probably a good way to put it. Um.
But the program starts up in earnest. However few cadets
they were allowing. It started to build up. These men
are getting trained. Um men from the north came down
and this is you know, this is an Alabama during
the Jim Crow era, and there are there's one documentary
(17:50):
called They Fought Two Wars, which basically was like, you know,
they're getting trained, they're serving their country, and then they
go out like on the weekend maybe for a little
R and R and then met by the southern whites
of Alabama who basically, you know, treated him exactly how
you would expect. There was even a petition to end
the program just because they were like, there are so
(18:10):
many black men in our town. Now, we don't want
them in our community, right, Surely something bad will happen
to our community. Because of this, there was also apparently
at least one incident where black military police were disarmed
by white locals around Tuskegee civilians Yeah, who just refused
to recognize that they had any authority over them whatsoever,
(18:32):
military police or not. UM. And the at the time
this this happened early on, the commander of the UM
of the base, UH Ellison, James Ellison, Major James Ellison,
was UM. He protested very loudly and very vocally and
said this is messed up. I won't stand for this.
And they said, hey Ellison, UM, yeah, we need somebody
(18:56):
who is on the side of the recruits, but maybe
not quite so much of a true believers. So you
come over here with us and we're gonna relieve you
of your post. And instead they brought in a guy
named Colonel Noel Parrish, and he was maybe a little
less gung ho about civil rights and equality and desegregation. UM.
He very much withstood and stood up with the segregationist
(19:21):
policies of the military. He didn't fight against it, but
within this framework he's very much credited for UM being
very fair, very even handed UM and giving like full throated,
legitimately good UM quality training to these black recruits at Tuskegee,
(19:42):
like he wasn't. They weren't getting um like subpar or
or less than adequate training compared to their white counterparts elsewhere.
They were getting just as good training to be trained.
Like he was taking it seriously and he was being
fair about it. So um, he's he's suspected for for
that to to have overseen this, um this this project,
(20:05):
I guess fairly, rather than he very easily could have
gone to the other side and just dragged his feet
to or put up unnecessary roadblocks and obstacles too, but
he didn't. Yeah, And one of the uh, I guess
you could call it one of the silver linings of
the segregation in the military was there was already a
ninety nine pursuit Squadron was already established, which were black
(20:29):
cadets to get training on maintenance and tech support for UH,
for the for the air patrol. So they were already
in place. So by the time Tuskegee gets rolling and
these cadets are being sent in to learn to fly,
they were like, let's just give them the ninety nine
pursuit squadron. So it was basically an all black unit,
(20:50):
from the maintenance, to the to the technical support to
the pilots that were training. Obviously not the instructors. But
I get the feeling, you know, from research at that
lent Um some sort of uh kind of led to
camaraderie and that they had their own guys on the
ground and training you know, oh yeah, yeah for sure.
(21:10):
I mean like it was an basically an all black
squadron and not all the commanders um or trainers were
white like that. My favorite guy, chief Alfred Anderson UM,
he was the ground commander in chief that self taught
father of aviation he UM. He was the head of
the ground commanders at Tuskegee. So there was a mixed
(21:32):
But one of the things I think you kind of
hit upon that gets overlooked is when you talk about
Tuskegee and the Tuskegee Airmen, UM, you're talking about four
hundred to five hundred ish pilots fighter pilots typically UM
that are thought of as a Tuskegee airman. But there
were so many more people that made up like this
(21:54):
whole project, this whole movement basically UM that I think
there was something like twelve housing, like people trained in
aviation through the that that are really technically Tuskegee airmen.
They they are considered um so and they get overlooked
a lot because the fighter pilots get all the glory.
(22:15):
But I mean these are all these people played a
huge significant role in the whole thing. Yeah. So we
mentioned uh at the onset the first African American general
Benjamin O'Davis Sr. And that his son figured prominently. So
that's Ben Jr. Uh, he comes in. He went to
he followed in dad's footsteps. He went to West Point, where,
(22:36):
you know, despite it was sort of like a Lord's
of Discipline sort of seen there. Oh man, I forgot
about that book. Yeah, man, that was good. Good movie. Um,
I make brutal to watch, but a really good movie.
But Davis basically went to West Point, didn't give him
a roommate, made him eat by himself. Uh. They say
that he was like literally not spoken to by anybody
(22:59):
unless they absolutely had to speak to him. Yet he
persevered through all this. He graduated and uh went to
teach at Tuskegee instead of going to command for enlisted troops.
So it was a bit of serendipity that he ended
up there. I think kind of right. At the same time,
this Air Corps began, which is really really kind of cool. Yeah,
(23:20):
one of the first things he did was um as
he was I think he became the commander of the
ninety nine Pursuit Squadron. Um. He also was one of
their first graduates. He was in the first class to
graduate from flight school there. So, um, I don't know
that he had much flight training prior to that, but
he went and learned it. Became pretty distinguished as a
(23:41):
pilot either way. But he he was immediately assigned the
ninety pursuit squadron. He was in charge of it, which
is pretty cool, right. So um as the as the
um the Tuskegee Airman started to distinguish themselves, which we'll
talk about more in a minute. Um Davis kind of
(24:02):
became distinguished as well because he was leading the whole show. Yeah,
and you know, he he had been through West Point.
He knew what the deal was. He was like, he
knew that there was a lot more riding on this
than just forming an air squadron. He was like, black
people all around the country are looking at us, They're
banking on our success. Um, we have to like we
(24:24):
have to be better than the best, UM, and so
he was really tough. He tough but fair, but he
would not put up with with anything that took away
from their ultimate goal, which was to be the best
airman in the country, black or white. Um. Apparently there
were black pilots who would wash out of the program
that historians say, like, you know, if that was a
(24:46):
white pilot, that he would have been allowed to keep going.
Like that's how high the standard was that Davis set
for the Tuskegee Airman, Right, Well, it wasn't just Davis,
I think. I think they were saying like they were
unfairly not given their wings, whereas a white pilot elsewhere
in another base undergoing training wouldn't have washed out. So
(25:08):
some of the pilots that that did wash out probably
did because they were being held to unfair racist standards,
not necessarily by Davis, but by some of the white
commanders and trainers. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, but
I saw where Davis was very quick to give someone
the aust if they didn't think they were living up
to their position. Yeah. So the upshot of that, though, Chuck,
(25:30):
was that, UM, the people who graduated from this program
at Tuskegee were really really good pilots. I mean really
good pilots. They were just held to, whether fair or unfair,
higher standards. They had to prove themselves more than say,
their white counterparts at other bases, and so the ones
(25:51):
who actually did manage graduate were just as good as
it got. But what's said is for the people who
washed out, they might not have washed out of some
of the other programs, like if they had been white
elsewhere in another program. Um. So that and of itself
is kind of demoralizing. But what really getches when you
(26:11):
step back and realize, like the the the men who
were going through pilot training program were the face of
black America, and so not only were they being watched
by you know, um, by racists whites and supportive whites too,
but but say from racist whites to just watch for
(26:33):
them to fail. I think Henry L. Stimpson, who was
the Secretary of War, said sure, we're going to give
him a shot, but I expect nothing less than disaster
to be produced by this. And I think he met
like literal disaster, like planes crashing everywhere kind of thing.
So not only did you have like that kind of
observation going on you at all time. You also carried
(26:54):
with you the hopes and dreams and expectations of Black America,
and not just Black America something big, in amorphous and
vague like that, but your family and your church group
and your community back home. We're all like pulling for
you but also really expecting everything from you. And if
you graduated, that was huge, and if you washed out,
(27:16):
I'm sure that was equally huge in the other direction. Yeah.
So March uh two was when the first class of
cadets graduated. Um, it would take another like four months
or so five months to get enough pilots, you know,
graduating through the program that they were a full fighter squadron.
And the early results you know they were. There were
(27:40):
very high ranking US officials that were pretty impressed early on,
including that Secretary of War Stimpson that you you talked
about that predicted disaster. Yeah, he had a change of heart. Yeah,
he visited Tuskegee and said, the outfit looks as good
as any I've ever seen. Major General James Julio said,
from results so far obtained to believe that the squadron
will give an excellent account of itself in combat. And
(28:01):
that it would be a credit to its race and
two Americans everywhere. Um. And despite this, it still took
a long time to get the full confidence to actually
send them into the theater of war in Europe. Well. Yeah,
and I don't even know if it was confidence. I think, well,
I guess it was confidence in a way. But there
were other commanders of at the time they call them
(28:22):
air forces, where it was like squadrons and groups just
put together like a huge mass of of UM. Air
Corps subdivisions were called air forces at the time, So
if you were running the show in an air force,
you'd be like, I don't want them, I don't want them.
And all of them were saying I don't want them.
They couldn't give them away, so they were just stuck
in America, while um, the United States had already joined
(28:44):
World War two and was all fighting in places like
North Africa and the Mediterranean. Yeah, and I think, you know,
I don't know if this is confirmed, but some say
that Eleanor Roosevelt got in her husband's ear once again. Uh.
And finally, in what April ninety three, they got their
first orders thee to go to North Africa. Uh. In
(29:06):
nineteen forty three, which was what is up like two
years after the first graduated class. So you know the
upshot to this though, is they're still training this whole time,
right right, They're just getting better and better in training.
But can you imagine like having to sit around and
wait waiting for the order to get out there? Yeah?
So UM, some of the first assignments they got when
(29:28):
they were running sorties off of North Africa. Um, they
were there was an island called Panatella, I believe into
a knee cap Uh it's Pantalaria, Pantellaria. Wow, that was
way off, Thank you for correct Yes, Um, Pantellaria was
(29:49):
occupied by the Italian Army and they gave up. They
surrendered the island without any ground forces having to land
because the Tuskegee airmen were bombing them so bad. They
were sent dive bombing campaigns. And that usually consists of
attacking a ground position, whether it's like um, some sort
of transport like transport planes and an airfield or rail
(30:13):
cars or um, you know, gas or water, infrastructure, just
stuff to make the enemy rather uncomfortable or unable to
operate in this place that they've occupied. Um. And it
very rarely, uh requires any kind of aerial dog fighting
like we think of with fighter fighter pilots. It's more
(30:33):
just attacking the enemy where they are rather than trying
to battle for domination of the skies. That's what a
dog fight is, It's what um fighter to fighter combat is.
So this is different. So you're not gonna encounter other
fighters typically, so you're not gonna have as many kills.
They don't count like blowing up a set of rail
cars as a kill, you have to shoot another fighter
(30:55):
plane out of the sky, and that's what they really
count when you're a fighter pilot it. But if you're
not being assigned those kind of sorties, you're not gonna
rack up kills like that. So everybody understood this. This
was fine, But apparently somebody was talking to the press
back in America and ended up getting a story out
of Time magazine that questioned the ninety nine fighter squadrons
(31:19):
bravery because they've been flying all sorts of authorities, But
where were all their kills? All these other white pilots
had all these kills, Where was the Tuskegee Airmen's kills?
And the the context of that wasn't put into that
that magazine. So what the rest of America read was
the Tuskegee Airmen or cowards. And all of a sudden,
Benjamin O'Davis Jr. Finds himself being called back to Washington
(31:42):
to explain why his squadron are being called cowards in
the national press. That's right, so let's pick that up
right after this message, because things changed in January. All right,
(32:14):
So the Tuskegee Airmen are over there, uh doing these
um you know, they're dropping bombs. They did get a
little bit of um fighter to fighter action, but not enough,
you know, to toward the press off. Uh. This is
despite the fact that they had virtually um you know,
they were still segregated. You know. What they usually did
(32:35):
was say, here, let's mix in these uh, these new
guys with some experience guys, and they can sort of
mentor them and help them out. Because it was segregated,
they kept them separate. And yet they still persevered through
all this. Uh. Like you said before the break, Davis
comes home to the US to sort of battle these reports. Uh.
And then things took a real change. In January. There
(32:58):
was a uh patrol unit of twelve planes flying over
on CEO and they spotted these German fighters. Um, just
like like Maverick and Goose and Top Gun although they
were just training, right battle and top Gun right, No,
there wasn't a battle, but they did engage that MiG
(33:19):
Remember he flew upside down and flipped him off and
took a polaroid. So dumb. So we're doing a sequel
to that, you know, like a sequel with Tom Cruise
and really yeah, yeah, and it's exactly what you would think.
It's Tom Cruise is now the veteran instructor and a
and a young Maverick comes under his watch, and I
(33:42):
don't even know, I'm not even sure, but it's I'm
sure it's one of those deals where you know, Cruise
gets to say, like I was you. Yeah, I'm gonna
toss Christian Navarro's hat in the ring. How about that?
I think they've already cast it, but uh, you never know.
Maybe maybe we've got some whole chuck and we're just influence. Yeah, Christian,
(34:02):
if you're listening, we we're rooting for you, my friend. So, uh,
they see these German fighters, these twelve planes, and they're like,
let's go get them fellas. Uh, and they get into
a dog fight, pretty legendary dog fight, and they record
five kills in about four or five minutes, no losses,
no losses. That's a big one too, Yeah, And it
was a very big deal for the ninety nine after that.
(34:25):
And this was like after these reports had come into
the US. They weren't like they were fairly dejected, but
that made him hungrier than ever. And this is why
they sort of flung themselves headlong into this attack and
they made the news and they became known all of
a sudden as these pilots that would really go after
the Germans. They have a high kill rate, and it
(34:47):
was a big deal. Yeah. So there's two other things.
So not only um were they were they not being
assigned missions typically that would rack up high kill rates,
so how can you criticize them for that? But secondly,
when they were in North afric in their first assignment,
they were given really old, really obsolete planes and they
were um when they did engage German UH fighter pilots,
(35:11):
they were out out classed as far as the planes
are concerned. And they were still taking out Germans and
dog fights, so like they had a lot going against
them and still managed to prove themselves and then something
really big change. They got transferred over to the UM
I believe, the fifteen Air Force and the nine hundred
(35:36):
first and the three hundred and second, the four Tuskegee
UM fighter pilot squadrons were all brought together under the
three hundred and thirty second Fighter Group under the command
now of Benjamin O'Davis Jr. Is a colonel at this
point yep who and then placed under the fifteen Air
Force and the Benjamin O'Davis Jr. And the guy who
(35:59):
headed up fifteen their force. They they had the same
philosophy for the kinds of assignments that the Tuskegee Airmen
would be carrying out from now on, which were bomber escorts,
and it was don't leave the bomber squadron. Like when
you're escorting bombers, that's the point. You don't you don't
peel off and chase after any other jets that are
(36:20):
like any German jets that are coming towards you. And
there were German jets, but German fighter planes, UM, And
you don't chase them away. You just stay with the bombers.
That's your point. And UM that's another thing that's not
like you're not going to rack up a ton of
kills in that respect. Yeah, I'm sure it was tough, like,
especially given their reputation, they wanted to go shoot down
(36:40):
German planes and Davis was like, no, man, you gotta like, uh,
you gotta be disciplined in these these bombers are under
threat and you gotta stick with them and so um.
As a result of this, they developed like a really
great reputation for for safely escorting bombers to their destination.
I mean, if you're part of a bomber fleet, you're
(37:01):
flying behind enemy lines to go bomb a city or
an oil refinery or something like that. And the purpose
of these planes is not to shoot other planes out
of the sky. It's to drop bombs. So you need
fighter jets to escort you, fighter planes to escort you
to these drop sites, and um shoot away any other
(37:23):
planes that are going to try to shoot you out
of the sky. So it's pretty hairy, but it's also
um like you're protecting the bombers. That's the point. So
the reputation that they developed Chuck actually became legendary. There
was a false, a false myth that generated around it.
But one that even when you peel away the myth
and look at reality, it's still pretty impressive. Yeah. And
(37:46):
the other thing that helped too was in you know,
we mentioned that they were flying um, I mean, they
weren't obsolete planes, they were just not as good as
what they were flying against. Uh. They finally get the
fifth one Mustang and they were like, now we're talking dudes,
like this is this is go time? Really cool airplane.
One of my favorites of all time is that fifty
(38:07):
one Mustang. That's the World War two fire plane that
everybody thinks of. Yeah, I mean it's it's I want
to use words here, I can't use on this show
to describe it because I get so excited about it.
But it's pretty sweet. So they now finally had and
you did mention the jet, you know, the MEU the
m E two six two from Germany was the first
jet that used in combat like that. And if you
(38:29):
look at this thing, it looks like I would rather
have the Mustang. This thing looks dangerous to me. It
may well have been. I don't know much about it. Oh,
you mean to be like the pilot of it, Yeah,
I mean it was just an early small jet like
I can't. I don't know. It was probably pretty scary
to fly, or maybe it was great. I don't know.
I'm but the three thirty second Now with their P
fifty ones, they start painting there. You know we mentioned
(38:51):
the movie Red Tails. That can comes from what they
did on their wing. They painted their the tail of
their plane red and that they became known for that.
It was very distinguishable from the air and there were
a lot of bomber pilots who were like, we want
these red Tales because these guys are awesome. And some
of them didn't even know that they were black pilots.
They just knew that they were Red Tails, right. And
(39:14):
and again the Red Tails had developed a really good
reputation for escorting bombers to their bomb sites. Um and
what was their rank? What did they lose? Uh? I
know that for many many years they said they never
lost a bomber, which is not true. They didn't. One
of the newspapers in Chicago, the Chicago Defender, published a
story in that of more than two hundred bomber escort missions,
(39:39):
the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber. Today is in
people not the airmen. But that was the that was
the myth that developed that they never lost a bomber.
That is basically impossible over something like two hundred missions. Um.
But that's the myth that stood for um like fifty
(40:00):
sixty years something like that. And then finally in a
story and with the Air Force like actually dug in
and did the shoe leather work on it and found, um, no,
actually they did lose some bombers. They lost something like, uh,
I think twenty six or twenty seven bombers, but out
of like the two hundreds something missions, that is still
(40:21):
a ridiculously small amount. And that other um squadrons and
fighter groups in the fifteenth Air Force they average something
like forty seven, so almost double what the Tuskegee Airman
saw in losses. So they had paltry losses. But yeah,
the idea that they just wouldn't have ever lost a
(40:41):
bomber is it's it's impossible. You just couldn't not lose
a bomber over that many missions. So you know, we
all know how World War two ends. UM spoiler alert,
the Allies. Uh, the Allies did their job, and so
the Tuskegee Airmen start to get sent home like with
(41:01):
other troops over the years. And here's the you know
that the double V campaign. They were hoping they come
home and they are more accepted, and they might even
be revered, they might get good jobs, they might become
commercial airline pilots. None of those things happened. Very sadly,
that did not equate to equality back home, which is
one of the troope like black eyes on this country's history.
(41:24):
You know, yeah, um, some of them, I mean yeah,
that was it should have just automatically triggered. Well, they
shouldn't have This should have never happened in the first place, right,
like dragging feet on segregation and making African America jump
through these hoops like this, um, rather than just integrating,
like making a segregated Air Air Corps squadron first and
(41:49):
letting them prove themselves like that and then once they
proved themselves still not opening doors or anything like that. Um.
It that it should have never happened. But the fact
that it didn't happen automatically is pretty pretty shameful. It
did they It's not like they weren't successful. Though. They
(42:10):
laid the groundwork and they laid the foundation, and they
began the momentum for a lot of people, say the
civil rights movement that, um, they they what they the
groundwork that they laid, the way that they changed America's
minds about black people in general, like oh, they actually
can fly planes, and oh they can't shoot Germans out
(42:32):
of the sky, and oh look at this, they can
actually do better at bomber escorts than white counterparts. Right. Um,
that change and mentality that they were able to take
advantage of in this circumstance and history, that changed everything.
So they were very much successful in that. It's just
shameful that that they had to just keep fighting and
(42:52):
keep pressing on that this was really just the first
step rather than the last. Yeah, for sure, But I
mean I think that wording is is perfect picked. It
was the groundwork, absolutely, the foundation. Foundational groundwork was laid. Um.
As for Colonel Davis, he uh after the war in
ninety is when Truman ended segregation in the military. Uh.
(43:13):
Colonel Davis advised on that integration and had a great career.
He retired in nineteen seventy and in very cool was
made an honorary General of the Air Force, four star general.
So he'd made it to lieutenant general before he retired, UM,
and I think a four star lieutenant general, and then
Clinton advanced him to general, so he was a four
(43:37):
star general of the Air Force after retirement. That's right. Yeah,
pretty great story. Yeah, it is a pretty great story.
There was also something called the Freeman Field Mutiny, which
is kind of happening in the off to the side
the UM. The Tuskegee Airman also formed a bombardier group,
a bomber group of bomber pilots that never saw any action,
(43:58):
but saw a lot of races and segregation in back
at home during training. And there was one event that's
called the Freeman Field Mutiny where they basically protested segregated
officers clubs, segregated and unequal officers clubs. And the way
that they protested it um through basically civil disobedience, but
(44:19):
in the military at a time when you could be
executed for disobeying and direct order, which they were given. UM,
they stood up for their civil rights. And that's another
way that that another thing that's pointed to as laying
the foundation for the civil rights movement, peaceful civil disobedience,
and that actually came out of the Tuskegee Airman's story
(44:41):
as well. Absolutely good stuff, good stuff. Check. This is
a good idea to cover this one. Yeah, I mean
this was long overdue. But uh, like I said, I
don't think we had an article on the House of
Fork site, so we just went out and had it
commissioned on our own. Nice work. Uh. Well, let's see.
If you want to know more about the Tuskegee Airmen, apparently,
go watch a couple of so so movies. There's some
(45:03):
documentaries out there. One of them is called They Fought
Two Wars, which is perfectly titled. Um. And there's also
I think an American experiences a lot of stuff. Start reading,
go to Tuskegee, Alabama. Do all that stuff? Okay, yes,
And since I said do all that stuff, it is
time for listener man, I'm gonna call this, uh the
(45:24):
Tits Project. Hey, guys, just listen to the elephant episode.
And Josh mentioned that typically groups of birds and deer
don't actually know each other like elephants and recognize one
from the other. However, I just read an article in
a recent Audubon magazine. Um, I know, he said typically,
but I wanted to point you towards this study that
is really interesting, the with Them Tit project in Britain.
(45:46):
It is a very long running study where they're looking
at the relationships between tits in Britain and they have
found that they run in social groups and appear to
have friends. I highly recommend giving a read appearent when
these guys must recognize each other. And I actually read it,
and that's why I'm recommending it because it's a really
great article. It's uh, it's called It's from Audubon Magazine,
(46:07):
Audubon dot com or I'm sorry dot org the Surprising
connection between Birds, Facebook and other social networks. Very cool article.
So that is from Miranda and Duluth, Minnesota. Nice. You
can go read that and have fun, fun, fun on
the Audubon magazine until Daddy takes your laptop away. Weird.
(46:29):
That was great, Chuck. I don't think we can improve
on that. So we're just going to say, if you
want to get in touch with us, you can um
join us on all of our social media networks. UH,
go to stuff you should know dot com. It's basically
the clearinghouse for links to find us hanging out on
the social meds. UH. And you can also send us
an email, send it to stuff podcast at that's the
(46:52):
AT symbol how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. M h m
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
So this is stuff you should know about the Tuskegee Airman.
(00:22):
That's right, one of our Every year we try to
do a Black History Month podcast at least one. And
uh did mean to keep everyone on suspense this year
right here at the end of the month, but this
one we were getting this one put together. Yeah, this
is a good one. Yeah, and it's uh, I mean,
this is what we typically like to do, stuff that's
(00:44):
like your very little known history. I would say Tuskegee
Airman is is does not fall into the little known category,
yet still undersung. I think even after two not very
good feature films. Oh did you see any of them?
I had? The only one I'm familiar with was um,
I think it's just called the Tuskegee Airman, and I
(01:04):
kept confusing it with Memphis Bell. Yeah, Tuskegee Airman was
an HBO movie with Larry Fishburne and other Malcolm Jamal Warner.
I think, yeah, good seeing him, sure always, but uh,
I mean that one was okay, but I think better
than the Red Tails movie was. Uh yeah, Red Tails
just wasn't very good, which is a shame. Sure. But
(01:28):
speaking of shame, let's talk about how the Tuskegee Airmen retreated.
Just to get started, Um, we should kind of briefly
go over like the history of African Americans in the military,
because where we really pick up with our story the
Inner War period between World War One and World War Two. Um,
the military was very much segregated still officially, just like
(01:51):
America was. It was law. Segregation was law at the time.
But that's not to say that, um, African Americans hadn't
served in the military and US previously, uh, in some
pretty substantial roles too. Yeah, I mean dating back to
like when they were not even considered Americans, Like when
when uh, I mean, I keep wanting to say black Americans,
(02:14):
but they were not considered that, like during the Revolutionary War, um,
on both sides. Actually, as you'll learn in a short
stuff about black loyalists, it's interesting that slaves fought for
and against the revolution, really interesting all the way up through.
And you know, we should do podcasts on a lot
of these things, but they fought in the War of
(02:36):
eighteen twelve. They fought as the Buffalo Soldiers in many
of the conflicts against Native Americans all the way up
through World War One, where they joined the army, despite
the fact that there was segregation at home and in
the military um, notably the Harlem hell Fighters who fought
with the French, and even though Americans did not fully
(02:59):
recognize that as an accomplishment, the French government did. Ironically, Yeah,
if that sounds kind of weird to you, the the
American military had an all black regiment and said here,
you take them to to France, and France was like, sure,
we'll take them, We'll use them and awarded them the
Quada Gair for Heroism in combat um, which is like,
(03:21):
if you'll remember our Native American code talker episode. France,
especially World War One, had kind of a history of
awarding and recognizing bravery among minorities that were just totally
shown to the United States, you know, yeah, And I
mean there was even a study conducted by the Army
War College in nineteen five about the fitness and suitability
(03:42):
of black soldiers in the military, and it was just
it was brutal and racist, and you know, just said
the worst things you can imagine about the lack of
fitness for a black man to serve for the Americans
in the American military. Yeah, and I think this Army
War College study was basically just a an official position
(04:03):
paper that that summed up the sentiments among military officers
and most of the military at the time. Um that
they just wanted to get it down on paper. It's
like an official position so that that it wouldn't be eroded,
that they could say this is the military's official position
on black people. And essentially what it said was black
(04:25):
people are not intellectually capable of receiving like theoretical training.
They they can probably be you know, um worked into
uh like combat troops, but it's going to take a
lot more effort and you really have to dumb it
down and then maybe you can organize them into a
(04:46):
combat troop. But really, we don't have high hopes for this,
so we should probably just not mess with the whole
thing and just keep it in all white military. Yeah.
That that was And despite all of this, there were
still black soldiers who a achieved in the military, uh,
most notably in the reason we bring this Uh, this
gentleman up. Benjamin O'Davis sr Uh became the first black
(05:09):
general in the U. S. Military. He figures prominently in
the Tuskegee Airmen story, and that his son, Benjamin Davis Jr. Uh, Well,
we'll we'll tell you what he did, but he figured
very prominently in the formation and story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Yeah,
he's huge, he's um one of the leading figures, and
he gets most of the glory and the press and everything,
(05:30):
but there were plenty of others who who served quite valiantly. Yeah,
so that that's like the briefest of summations. I definitely
think we should do one on the Buffalo Soldiers at
some point. Tots agree like, I don't understand why Bob
Marley drew that that um line between Prasta's and Buffalo soldiers.
(05:53):
I'm not kidding, Like I know that it sounds like
a hilarious thing that Josh would say, but I have
always always wondered that, like what is he talking about?
What's the you know, were they were they rostas or
something like that, or is it do they have the
spirit of the roster vice versa. I'd love to get
to the bottom of that. Alright, let's do it. Okay, alright,
(06:14):
I'm excited. So that brings us to World War two. UM.
And like you said before, segregation is still, uh the
law in the United States. Race racism was rampant, and
it still is in a lot of places in this country,
but back then very much rampant. Uh. And despite all that,
(06:34):
there were still plenty of African Americans who wanted to
be in the army and wanted to fly planes. And
this was pre Air Force. It was called the uh,
the Army Air Corps. Yes, and we should say like
this was extremely prestigious to be in the Army. Air
Corps was far and away the most prestigious branch of
the military, although it wasn't technically its own branch, but
(06:57):
the UM. The it was the most prestigious part of
the military. UM because it was widely considered and rightfully
so you had to be really really sharp, really smart,
really quick on your toes, and just really large and
in charge. Basically to fly planes in the military. It
was still pretty new. It was a fairly new thing,
(07:19):
and the whole the whole world, but also the US
really looked up to aviators at the time because this
is at a time where if you flew across country,
you just you just made history kind of thing. So
to to UM to be a part of the Army
Air Corps, that was a that's a sweet plum right there. Yeah,
(07:39):
And so you know, we we move over to Alabama
at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, and this was a
place where you if you were a Black American and
you wanted to go to college and get a higher education,
that was a great place to start. Uh. Founded in
one by Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington UM. And
(08:00):
during this period they had something called the Civilian Pilot
Training Program, which is it was established basically to get
a pool of pilots with experience, uh, people who could
train pilots in the United States. And there were black
colleges participating in this program, and Tuskegee was one of them. Yeah.
(08:20):
The Howard University also had a program. UM. There were
also like by this time, there was some UM black
aviation history that had been established and it was small,
but it was really proud, and rightfully so, because if
you were an African American and you said, you know
what I really look up to all these pilots too,
(08:41):
I want to go be a pilot. The first story
you went to got slammed in your face. The next
door you went to, slamming in your face. And again,
like the idea that black people couldn't learn how to
fly a plane, So how are you going to let
one fly a plane or try to teach them? What's
the point? It's also probably pretty dangerous and expensive. Um,
Like you could not as an African American get into
(09:05):
a flight school. And so some of these earliest African
American pilots in aviation history and like the say, like
the twenties, the early thirties, like some of them were
self taught. There's a guy, see Alfred Anderson, who taught
himself how to fly in land planes because no flight
school would teach him, no white pilots would teach him.
(09:28):
He had to save up biz own plane and teach himself,
and he became a legend. He's known as the father
of black aviation in America. Yeah, and there's a like
you said, a very small but proud list, Bessie Coleman.
It was a black woman who went to France to
learn to fly. She was black and Native American yeah,
we should, she should get her an episode two. Uh.
(09:48):
In NY two, James Banning and Thomas Allen became the
first black pilots to fly across the US from l
A to New York, and they as well. At least
Banning could not go to flight school, so he basically
found a white pilot who would give him private lessons,
which is pretty remarkable. Um. And the cool thing about
(10:08):
this story is they, uh, it cost a lot of
money to fly across the country at any point, so
they would stop in black communities and raise money basically
and say, hey, get you know, donate some cash. You
can sign our airplane and that will allow us to
buy fuel to get to the next stop as we
go across country. Yeah. So they became the first black
(10:30):
pilots to fly all the way across the US as
a result, which is that's pretty great. But it was
like it was, it was stories like this and people
like these um who were profiled in the black press
at the time that I don't want to say, I
guess the press was pretty much segregated at least, but
for all practical purposes, African America had its own um
(10:53):
pressed and I guess the standard establishment press was just
writing stories about white people only, uh or things that
related to white people. So African Americans had their own press.
So stories of people like this UM spread throughout the
country and inspired like whole new generations of pilots. And
it also inspired, like you said, the Tuskegee Institute and
(11:14):
Howard University and some other private schools like one formed
by Cornelius Coffee and Willi Brown in Chicago to actually
start training black pilots. And so this is a this
is already established by the time the drumbeat, the earliest
drumbeat to World War Two started and UM, the the US,
(11:35):
led by Franklin Roosevelt, said we need to get the
civilian pilot training program going because we need a pool
of people who already know how to fly in case
we need to turn them into military pilots as well. Yeah,
And the the idea here with these uh, with the
black journalists and newspapers was here, here's what we want.
You know, there's the V for victory slogan and campaign.
(11:56):
Let's start up something and get the word out called
the double V campaign, which is basically victory in Europe
but also for black soldiers, victory at home and trying
to make a dent and discrimination and racism. If we
go over there and we can fight and we can
fly planes and serve our country, maybe that might make
(12:17):
a difference when we come back home that we were
you know, distinguished with our military service. So that was
a double V campaign trying to get victory at home
against racism as well as in Europe on the ground
with the military. And none of this might have happened
had it not been for one Eleanor Roosevelt. And maybe
(12:38):
we should take a break there. Yeah. What does Eleanor
Roosevelt have to do with all this? We'll find out
in just a minute, all right, Chuck. So, I mean,
(13:06):
I'm just gonna say it, Eleanor Roosevelt, give it up. Yeah, man,
I mean she was a great lady in a lot
of ways. But uh, what she did in the case
of the eventual Tuskegee Airmen was she visited Tuskegee. Um,
they had a training airfield called Moten Field m O
t O N. Yeah. Because remember this is like they're
(13:27):
they're they're flying program that they already established. Yeah, so
she visits, Uh, she's watching the pilots take off, fly
around land, and she was like, good argue in one
of those planes. That is a bitch in Eleanor Roosevelt man,
And they said sure, So she went up with an
African American pilot. She she went up with that, see
(13:49):
Alfred Anderson, the self taught father of aviation. Yeah, and
everything went great and she had apparently a good time,
went back home and got in her husband's ear and
was like, Hey, these these guys can fly planes. They're
doing a great job. They're fit for military service. So
let's let's get this thing going in earnest And he
did so, uh in January. So here's the thing. This
(14:12):
is what I'm on clear on, Like it's it's doubtless
that Eleanor Roosevelt played a role in making sure that
this this actually happened, that that um African American pilots
were eligible to fly for the US military, the Army
Air Corps. Right, But the timing of it I can't
(14:33):
quite suss out either. The US military said, yeah, we're
going to establish a black pilots training program at Tuskegee
UH in January nine, and then Eleanor Roosevelt showed up
a couple of months later to make sure that this
actually happened, or she showed up and then they established it.
(14:53):
I can't quite suss that out, but either way, she's
a pretty cool lady, Like she went down and saw
for herself and then came back and said, hey, we
really should make this happen. Or she knew that this
was happening but also could see people just dragging their feet,
so she went down to shine light on the whole
prosper the project, and uh, it kind of took off
(15:14):
from there. I feel forgive the pun. Either way, she
she played some sort of pretty cool role in getting
it going. Yeah, and when it first started, there was
sort of a joint affair between Tuskegee and the Army
Air Corps as far as uh providing funding and equipment personnel.
They all sort of chipped in a little bit. Um.
(15:34):
There were flying a few different planes for training, one biplane,
the Steerman PT seventeen. Eventually they were able to move
over to the Tuskegee Army air Field a few miles
away from Moten Field, where they had access to the
P forty Warhawk, and then they were like now we're
talking right, But also, I mean the initial primary training
(15:55):
at motion field was this kind of quasi university military training,
almost like an r OTC air training program. And then
once you graduated from primary, you moved over to the
Army field and you were full on on a military
base in military life. Yeah, and this like this, this
wasn't the first time that black pilots tried to apply.
(16:19):
Like pre Tuskegee, they were applying. Recruits were applying and
getting rejected every time they tried to get into the
Air Corps. Eventually the N double A CP got involved,
a lawsuit was filed UM. And even after that, when
they started admitting black men into the Air Corps, it
was ten cadets every five weeks, so they were you know,
(16:42):
it looks like they were purposefully just sort of stymying
the process through red tape and bureaucracy to still not
allow them to train. Yeah. And initially so that that
lawsuit UM was by a Howard University student named Yancey
Williams who wanted to be a just straight up Army
Air Corps cadet, and the N double A CP back
(17:03):
back the lawsuit UM, and the result was apparently the
military saying, okay, we'll just start to segregated all Black
Pilot program where the n double a CP and most
black leadership wanted just integration in the Army Air Corps.
So they were like, okay, fine, we'll take it, but
we're not like, this is not what we were going for,
(17:26):
but we'll take this. It's better than nothing. I guess, yeah,
that's that's probably a good way to put it. Um.
But the program starts up in earnest. However few cadets
they were allowing. It started to build up. These men
are getting trained. Um men from the north came down
and this is you know, this is an Alabama during
the Jim Crow era, and there are there's one documentary
(17:50):
called They Fought Two Wars, which basically was like, you know,
they're getting trained, they're serving their country, and then they
go out like on the weekend maybe for a little
R and R and then met by the southern whites
of Alabama who basically, you know, treated him exactly how
you would expect. There was even a petition to end
the program just because they were like, there are so
(18:10):
many black men in our town. Now, we don't want
them in our community, right, Surely something bad will happen
to our community. Because of this, there was also apparently
at least one incident where black military police were disarmed
by white locals around Tuskegee civilians Yeah, who just refused
to recognize that they had any authority over them whatsoever,
(18:32):
military police or not. UM. And the at the time
this this happened early on, the commander of the UM
of the base, UH Ellison, James Ellison, Major James Ellison,
was UM. He protested very loudly and very vocally and
said this is messed up. I won't stand for this.
And they said, hey Ellison, UM, yeah, we need somebody
(18:56):
who is on the side of the recruits, but maybe
not quite so much of a true believers. So you
come over here with us and we're gonna relieve you
of your post. And instead they brought in a guy
named Colonel Noel Parrish, and he was maybe a little
less gung ho about civil rights and equality and desegregation. UM.
He very much withstood and stood up with the segregationist
(19:21):
policies of the military. He didn't fight against it, but
within this framework he's very much credited for UM being
very fair, very even handed UM and giving like full throated,
legitimately good UM quality training to these black recruits at Tuskegee,
(19:42):
like he wasn't. They weren't getting um like subpar or
or less than adequate training compared to their white counterparts elsewhere.
They were getting just as good training to be trained.
Like he was taking it seriously and he was being
fair about it. So um, he's he's suspected for for
that to to have overseen this, um this this project,
(20:05):
I guess fairly, rather than he very easily could have
gone to the other side and just dragged his feet
to or put up unnecessary roadblocks and obstacles too, but
he didn't. Yeah, And one of the uh, I guess
you could call it one of the silver linings of
the segregation in the military was there was already a
ninety nine pursuit Squadron was already established, which were black
(20:29):
cadets to get training on maintenance and tech support for UH,
for the for the air patrol. So they were already
in place. So by the time Tuskegee gets rolling and
these cadets are being sent in to learn to fly,
they were like, let's just give them the ninety nine
pursuit squadron. So it was basically an all black unit,
(20:50):
from the maintenance, to the to the technical support to
the pilots that were training. Obviously not the instructors. But
I get the feeling, you know, from research at that
lent Um some sort of uh kind of led to
camaraderie and that they had their own guys on the
ground and training you know, oh yeah, yeah for sure.
(21:10):
I mean like it was an basically an all black
squadron and not all the commanders um or trainers were
white like that. My favorite guy, chief Alfred Anderson UM,
he was the ground commander in chief that self taught
father of aviation he UM. He was the head of
the ground commanders at Tuskegee. So there was a mixed
(21:32):
But one of the things I think you kind of
hit upon that gets overlooked is when you talk about
Tuskegee and the Tuskegee Airmen, UM, you're talking about four
hundred to five hundred ish pilots fighter pilots typically UM
that are thought of as a Tuskegee airman. But there
were so many more people that made up like this
(21:54):
whole project, this whole movement basically UM that I think
there was something like twelve housing, like people trained in
aviation through the that that are really technically Tuskegee airmen.
They they are considered um so and they get overlooked
a lot because the fighter pilots get all the glory.
(22:15):
But I mean these are all these people played a
huge significant role in the whole thing. Yeah. So we
mentioned uh at the onset the first African American general
Benjamin O'Davis Sr. And that his son figured prominently. So
that's Ben Jr. Uh, he comes in. He went to
he followed in dad's footsteps. He went to West Point, where,
(22:36):
you know, despite it was sort of like a Lord's
of Discipline sort of seen there. Oh man, I forgot
about that book. Yeah, man, that was good. Good movie. Um,
I make brutal to watch, but a really good movie.
But Davis basically went to West Point, didn't give him
a roommate, made him eat by himself. Uh. They say
that he was like literally not spoken to by anybody
(22:59):
unless they absolutely had to speak to him. Yet he
persevered through all this. He graduated and uh went to
teach at Tuskegee instead of going to command for enlisted troops.
So it was a bit of serendipity that he ended
up there. I think kind of right. At the same time,
this Air Corps began, which is really really kind of cool. Yeah,
(23:20):
one of the first things he did was um as
he was I think he became the commander of the
ninety nine Pursuit Squadron. Um. He also was one of
their first graduates. He was in the first class to
graduate from flight school there. So, um, I don't know
that he had much flight training prior to that, but
he went and learned it. Became pretty distinguished as a
(23:41):
pilot either way. But he he was immediately assigned the
ninety pursuit squadron. He was in charge of it, which
is pretty cool, right. So um as the as the
um the Tuskegee Airman started to distinguish themselves, which we'll
talk about more in a minute. Um Davis kind of
(24:02):
became distinguished as well because he was leading the whole show. Yeah,
and you know, he he had been through West Point.
He knew what the deal was. He was like, he
knew that there was a lot more riding on this
than just forming an air squadron. He was like, black
people all around the country are looking at us, They're
banking on our success. Um, we have to like we
(24:24):
have to be better than the best, UM, and so
he was really tough. He tough but fair, but he
would not put up with with anything that took away
from their ultimate goal, which was to be the best
airman in the country, black or white. Um. Apparently there
were black pilots who would wash out of the program
that historians say, like, you know, if that was a
(24:46):
white pilot, that he would have been allowed to keep going.
Like that's how high the standard was that Davis set
for the Tuskegee Airman, Right, Well, it wasn't just Davis,
I think. I think they were saying like they were
unfairly not given their wings, whereas a white pilot elsewhere
in another base undergoing training wouldn't have washed out. So
(25:08):
some of the pilots that that did wash out probably
did because they were being held to unfair racist standards,
not necessarily by Davis, but by some of the white
commanders and trainers. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, but
I saw where Davis was very quick to give someone
the aust if they didn't think they were living up
to their position. Yeah. So the upshot of that, though, Chuck,
(25:30):
was that, UM, the people who graduated from this program
at Tuskegee were really really good pilots. I mean really
good pilots. They were just held to, whether fair or unfair,
higher standards. They had to prove themselves more than say,
their white counterparts at other bases, and so the ones
(25:51):
who actually did manage graduate were just as good as
it got. But what's said is for the people who
washed out, they might not have washed out of some
of the other programs, like if they had been white
elsewhere in another program. Um. So that and of itself
is kind of demoralizing. But what really getches when you
(26:11):
step back and realize, like the the the men who
were going through pilot training program were the face of
black America, and so not only were they being watched
by you know, um, by racists whites and supportive whites too,
but but say from racist whites to just watch for
(26:33):
them to fail. I think Henry L. Stimpson, who was
the Secretary of War, said sure, we're going to give
him a shot, but I expect nothing less than disaster
to be produced by this. And I think he met
like literal disaster, like planes crashing everywhere kind of thing.
So not only did you have like that kind of
observation going on you at all time. You also carried
(26:54):
with you the hopes and dreams and expectations of Black America,
and not just Black America something big, in amorphous and
vague like that, but your family and your church group
and your community back home. We're all like pulling for
you but also really expecting everything from you. And if
you graduated, that was huge, and if you washed out,
(27:16):
I'm sure that was equally huge in the other direction. Yeah.
So March uh two was when the first class of
cadets graduated. Um, it would take another like four months
or so five months to get enough pilots, you know,
graduating through the program that they were a full fighter squadron.
And the early results you know they were. There were
(27:40):
very high ranking US officials that were pretty impressed early on,
including that Secretary of War Stimpson that you you talked
about that predicted disaster. Yeah, he had a change of heart. Yeah,
he visited Tuskegee and said, the outfit looks as good
as any I've ever seen. Major General James Julio said,
from results so far obtained to believe that the squadron
will give an excellent account of itself in combat. And
(28:01):
that it would be a credit to its race and
two Americans everywhere. Um. And despite this, it still took
a long time to get the full confidence to actually
send them into the theater of war in Europe. Well. Yeah,
and I don't even know if it was confidence. I think, well,
I guess it was confidence in a way. But there
were other commanders of at the time they call them
(28:22):
air forces, where it was like squadrons and groups just
put together like a huge mass of of UM. Air
Corps subdivisions were called air forces at the time, So
if you were running the show in an air force,
you'd be like, I don't want them, I don't want them.
And all of them were saying I don't want them.
They couldn't give them away, so they were just stuck
in America, while um, the United States had already joined
(28:44):
World War two and was all fighting in places like
North Africa and the Mediterranean. Yeah, and I think, you know,
I don't know if this is confirmed, but some say
that Eleanor Roosevelt got in her husband's ear once again. Uh.
And finally, in what April ninety three, they got their
first orders thee to go to North Africa. Uh. In
(29:06):
nineteen forty three, which was what is up like two
years after the first graduated class. So you know the
upshot to this though, is they're still training this whole time,
right right, They're just getting better and better in training.
But can you imagine like having to sit around and
wait waiting for the order to get out there? Yeah?
So UM, some of the first assignments they got when
(29:28):
they were running sorties off of North Africa. Um, they
were there was an island called Panatella, I believe into
a knee cap Uh it's Pantalaria, Pantellaria. Wow, that was
way off, Thank you for correct Yes, Um, Pantellaria was
(29:49):
occupied by the Italian Army and they gave up. They
surrendered the island without any ground forces having to land
because the Tuskegee airmen were bombing them so bad. They
were sent dive bombing campaigns. And that usually consists of
attacking a ground position, whether it's like um, some sort
of transport like transport planes and an airfield or rail
(30:13):
cars or um, you know, gas or water, infrastructure, just
stuff to make the enemy rather uncomfortable or unable to
operate in this place that they've occupied. Um. And it
very rarely, uh requires any kind of aerial dog fighting
like we think of with fighter fighter pilots. It's more
(30:33):
just attacking the enemy where they are rather than trying
to battle for domination of the skies. That's what a
dog fight is, It's what um fighter to fighter combat is.
So this is different. So you're not gonna encounter other
fighters typically, so you're not gonna have as many kills.
They don't count like blowing up a set of rail
cars as a kill, you have to shoot another fighter
(30:55):
plane out of the sky, and that's what they really
count when you're a fighter pilot it. But if you're
not being assigned those kind of sorties, you're not gonna
rack up kills like that. So everybody understood this. This
was fine, But apparently somebody was talking to the press
back in America and ended up getting a story out
of Time magazine that questioned the ninety nine fighter squadrons
(31:19):
bravery because they've been flying all sorts of authorities, But
where were all their kills? All these other white pilots
had all these kills, Where was the Tuskegee Airmen's kills?
And the the context of that wasn't put into that
that magazine. So what the rest of America read was
the Tuskegee Airmen or cowards. And all of a sudden,
Benjamin O'Davis Jr. Finds himself being called back to Washington
(31:42):
to explain why his squadron are being called cowards in
the national press. That's right, so let's pick that up
right after this message, because things changed in January. All right,
(32:14):
So the Tuskegee Airmen are over there, uh doing these
um you know, they're dropping bombs. They did get a
little bit of um fighter to fighter action, but not enough,
you know, to toward the press off. Uh. This is
despite the fact that they had virtually um you know,
they were still segregated. You know. What they usually did
(32:35):
was say, here, let's mix in these uh, these new
guys with some experience guys, and they can sort of
mentor them and help them out. Because it was segregated,
they kept them separate. And yet they still persevered through
all this. Uh. Like you said before the break, Davis
comes home to the US to sort of battle these reports. Uh.
And then things took a real change. In January. There
(32:58):
was a uh patrol unit of twelve planes flying over
on CEO and they spotted these German fighters. Um, just
like like Maverick and Goose and Top Gun although they
were just training, right battle and top Gun right, No,
there wasn't a battle, but they did engage that MiG
(33:19):
Remember he flew upside down and flipped him off and
took a polaroid. So dumb. So we're doing a sequel
to that, you know, like a sequel with Tom Cruise
and really yeah, yeah, and it's exactly what you would think.
It's Tom Cruise is now the veteran instructor and a
and a young Maverick comes under his watch, and I
(33:42):
don't even know, I'm not even sure, but it's I'm
sure it's one of those deals where you know, Cruise
gets to say, like I was you. Yeah, I'm gonna
toss Christian Navarro's hat in the ring. How about that?
I think they've already cast it, but uh, you never know.
Maybe maybe we've got some whole chuck and we're just influence. Yeah, Christian,
(34:02):
if you're listening, we we're rooting for you, my friend. So, uh,
they see these German fighters, these twelve planes, and they're like,
let's go get them fellas. Uh, and they get into
a dog fight, pretty legendary dog fight, and they record
five kills in about four or five minutes, no losses,
no losses. That's a big one too, Yeah, And it
was a very big deal for the ninety nine after that.
(34:25):
And this was like after these reports had come into
the US. They weren't like they were fairly dejected, but
that made him hungrier than ever. And this is why
they sort of flung themselves headlong into this attack and
they made the news and they became known all of
a sudden as these pilots that would really go after
the Germans. They have a high kill rate, and it
(34:47):
was a big deal. Yeah. So there's two other things.
So not only um were they were they not being
assigned missions typically that would rack up high kill rates,
so how can you criticize them for that? But secondly,
when they were in North afric in their first assignment,
they were given really old, really obsolete planes and they
were um when they did engage German UH fighter pilots,
(35:11):
they were out out classed as far as the planes
are concerned. And they were still taking out Germans and
dog fights, so like they had a lot going against
them and still managed to prove themselves and then something
really big change. They got transferred over to the UM
I believe, the fifteen Air Force and the nine hundred
(35:36):
first and the three hundred and second, the four Tuskegee
UM fighter pilot squadrons were all brought together under the
three hundred and thirty second Fighter Group under the command
now of Benjamin O'Davis Jr. Is a colonel at this
point yep who and then placed under the fifteen Air
Force and the Benjamin O'Davis Jr. And the guy who
(35:59):
headed up fifteen their force. They they had the same
philosophy for the kinds of assignments that the Tuskegee Airmen
would be carrying out from now on, which were bomber escorts,
and it was don't leave the bomber squadron. Like when
you're escorting bombers, that's the point. You don't you don't
peel off and chase after any other jets that are
(36:20):
like any German jets that are coming towards you. And
there were German jets, but German fighter planes, UM, And
you don't chase them away. You just stay with the bombers.
That's your point. And UM that's another thing that's not
like you're not going to rack up a ton of
kills in that respect. Yeah, I'm sure it was tough, like,
especially given their reputation, they wanted to go shoot down
(36:40):
German planes and Davis was like, no, man, you gotta like, uh,
you gotta be disciplined in these these bombers are under
threat and you gotta stick with them and so um.
As a result of this, they developed like a really
great reputation for for safely escorting bombers to their destination.
I mean, if you're part of a bomber fleet, you're
(37:01):
flying behind enemy lines to go bomb a city or
an oil refinery or something like that. And the purpose
of these planes is not to shoot other planes out
of the sky. It's to drop bombs. So you need
fighter jets to escort you, fighter planes to escort you
to these drop sites, and um shoot away any other
(37:23):
planes that are going to try to shoot you out
of the sky. So it's pretty hairy, but it's also
um like you're protecting the bombers. That's the point. So
the reputation that they developed Chuck actually became legendary. There
was a false, a false myth that generated around it.
But one that even when you peel away the myth
and look at reality, it's still pretty impressive. Yeah. And
(37:46):
the other thing that helped too was in you know,
we mentioned that they were flying um, I mean, they
weren't obsolete planes, they were just not as good as
what they were flying against. Uh. They finally get the
fifth one Mustang and they were like, now we're talking dudes,
like this is this is go time? Really cool airplane.
One of my favorites of all time is that fifty
(38:07):
one Mustang. That's the World War two fire plane that
everybody thinks of. Yeah, I mean it's it's I want
to use words here, I can't use on this show
to describe it because I get so excited about it.
But it's pretty sweet. So they now finally had and
you did mention the jet, you know, the MEU the
m E two six two from Germany was the first
jet that used in combat like that. And if you
(38:29):
look at this thing, it looks like I would rather
have the Mustang. This thing looks dangerous to me. It
may well have been. I don't know much about it. Oh,
you mean to be like the pilot of it, Yeah,
I mean it was just an early small jet like
I can't. I don't know. It was probably pretty scary
to fly, or maybe it was great. I don't know.
I'm but the three thirty second Now with their P
fifty ones, they start painting there. You know we mentioned
(38:51):
the movie Red Tails. That can comes from what they
did on their wing. They painted their the tail of
their plane red and that they became known for that.
It was very distinguishable from the air and there were
a lot of bomber pilots who were like, we want
these red Tales because these guys are awesome. And some
of them didn't even know that they were black pilots.
They just knew that they were Red Tails, right. And
(39:14):
and again the Red Tails had developed a really good
reputation for escorting bombers to their bomb sites. Um and
what was their rank? What did they lose? Uh? I
know that for many many years they said they never
lost a bomber, which is not true. They didn't. One
of the newspapers in Chicago, the Chicago Defender, published a
story in that of more than two hundred bomber escort missions,
(39:39):
the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber. Today is in
people not the airmen. But that was the that was
the myth that developed that they never lost a bomber.
That is basically impossible over something like two hundred missions. Um.
But that's the myth that stood for um like fifty
(40:00):
sixty years something like that. And then finally in a
story and with the Air Force like actually dug in
and did the shoe leather work on it and found, um, no,
actually they did lose some bombers. They lost something like, uh,
I think twenty six or twenty seven bombers, but out
of like the two hundreds something missions, that is still
(40:21):
a ridiculously small amount. And that other um squadrons and
fighter groups in the fifteenth Air Force they average something
like forty seven, so almost double what the Tuskegee Airman
saw in losses. So they had paltry losses. But yeah,
the idea that they just wouldn't have ever lost a
(40:41):
bomber is it's it's impossible. You just couldn't not lose
a bomber over that many missions. So you know, we
all know how World War two ends. UM spoiler alert,
the Allies. Uh, the Allies did their job, and so
the Tuskegee Airmen start to get sent home like with
(41:01):
other troops over the years. And here's the you know
that the double V campaign. They were hoping they come
home and they are more accepted, and they might even
be revered, they might get good jobs, they might become
commercial airline pilots. None of those things happened. Very sadly,
that did not equate to equality back home, which is
one of the troope like black eyes on this country's history.
(41:24):
You know, yeah, um, some of them, I mean yeah,
that was it should have just automatically triggered. Well, they
shouldn't have This should have never happened in the first place, right,
like dragging feet on segregation and making African America jump
through these hoops like this, um, rather than just integrating,
like making a segregated Air Air Corps squadron first and
(41:49):
letting them prove themselves like that and then once they
proved themselves still not opening doors or anything like that. Um.
It that it should have never happened. But the fact
that it didn't happen automatically is pretty pretty shameful. It
did they It's not like they weren't successful. Though. They
(42:10):
laid the groundwork and they laid the foundation, and they
began the momentum for a lot of people, say the
civil rights movement that, um, they they what they the
groundwork that they laid, the way that they changed America's
minds about black people in general, like oh, they actually
can fly planes, and oh they can't shoot Germans out
(42:32):
of the sky, and oh look at this, they can
actually do better at bomber escorts than white counterparts. Right. Um,
that change and mentality that they were able to take
advantage of in this circumstance and history, that changed everything.
So they were very much successful in that. It's just
shameful that that they had to just keep fighting and
(42:52):
keep pressing on that this was really just the first
step rather than the last. Yeah, for sure, But I
mean I think that wording is is perfect picked. It
was the groundwork, absolutely, the foundation. Foundational groundwork was laid. Um.
As for Colonel Davis, he uh after the war in
ninety is when Truman ended segregation in the military. Uh.
(43:13):
Colonel Davis advised on that integration and had a great career.
He retired in nineteen seventy and in very cool was
made an honorary General of the Air Force, four star general.
So he'd made it to lieutenant general before he retired, UM,
and I think a four star lieutenant general, and then
Clinton advanced him to general, so he was a four
(43:37):
star general of the Air Force after retirement. That's right. Yeah,
pretty great story. Yeah, it is a pretty great story.
There was also something called the Freeman Field Mutiny, which
is kind of happening in the off to the side
the UM. The Tuskegee Airman also formed a bombardier group,
a bomber group of bomber pilots that never saw any action,
(43:58):
but saw a lot of races and segregation in back
at home during training. And there was one event that's
called the Freeman Field Mutiny where they basically protested segregated
officers clubs, segregated and unequal officers clubs. And the way
that they protested it um through basically civil disobedience, but
(44:19):
in the military at a time when you could be
executed for disobeying and direct order, which they were given. UM,
they stood up for their civil rights. And that's another
way that that another thing that's pointed to as laying
the foundation for the civil rights movement, peaceful civil disobedience,
and that actually came out of the Tuskegee Airman's story
(44:41):
as well. Absolutely good stuff, good stuff. Check. This is
a good idea to cover this one. Yeah, I mean
this was long overdue. But uh, like I said, I
don't think we had an article on the House of
Fork site, so we just went out and had it
commissioned on our own. Nice work. Uh. Well, let's see.
If you want to know more about the Tuskegee Airmen, apparently,
go watch a couple of so so movies. There's some
(45:03):
documentaries out there. One of them is called They Fought
Two Wars, which is perfectly titled. Um. And there's also
I think an American experiences a lot of stuff. Start reading,
go to Tuskegee, Alabama. Do all that stuff? Okay, yes,
And since I said do all that stuff, it is
time for listener man, I'm gonna call this, uh the
(45:24):
Tits Project. Hey, guys, just listen to the elephant episode.
And Josh mentioned that typically groups of birds and deer
don't actually know each other like elephants and recognize one
from the other. However, I just read an article in
a recent Audubon magazine. Um, I know, he said typically,
but I wanted to point you towards this study that
is really interesting, the with Them Tit project in Britain.
(45:46):
It is a very long running study where they're looking
at the relationships between tits in Britain and they have
found that they run in social groups and appear to
have friends. I highly recommend giving a read appearent when
these guys must recognize each other. And I actually read it,
and that's why I'm recommending it because it's a really
great article. It's uh, it's called It's from Audubon Magazine,
(46:07):
Audubon dot com or I'm sorry dot org the Surprising
connection between Birds, Facebook and other social networks. Very cool article.
So that is from Miranda and Duluth, Minnesota. Nice. You
can go read that and have fun, fun, fun on
the Audubon magazine until Daddy takes your laptop away. Weird.
(46:29):
That was great, Chuck. I don't think we can improve
on that. So we're just going to say, if you
want to get in touch with us, you can um
join us on all of our social media networks. UH,
go to stuff you should know dot com. It's basically
the clearinghouse for links to find us hanging out on
the social meds. UH. And you can also send us
an email, send it to stuff podcast at that's the
(46:52):
AT symbol how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. M h m
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