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^[[1945]]

TAAF Can Take Pride In A War Job Well Done

By Lem Graves Jr

Journal and Guide War Correspondent

If there appears to be some extra chest expansion noticeable around Tuskegee Army Air Field this week, I would say that there was sufficient justification for it.

For they're celebrating the fourth anniversary of the field this week - which means that they are also celebrating the fourth anniversary of Negro pilot training in the Army Air Forces - and I am convinced that they have good reason for taking pride in their four year achievement at TAAF.

The best way to evaluate the commodity turned out by any production plant, it seems to me, is to watch its performance under the difficult strains of hard use. To be sure, plants can set up various scientific testing grounds at which consumer use conditions are simulated, but they seldom show the "bugs" which develop when the product is exposed to the trying conditions of actual use.

[[image: black and white head shot of an African-American man in uniform]]
[caption] GRAVES [/caption]

I may not be able to see and know how they build my automobile in Detroit but I can tell, after I've driven it several thousand miles, whether the automobile manufacturer has reason to beat his chest about his accomplishment. 

THEY PASSED THE TESTS

So without knowing too much about how they do their job at TAAF, I can say, without hesitation, that they can take pride in their achievement. Because I watched their finished products operating under the gruelling tests of war and combat and I know they were good.

While TAAF is busy celebrating its four year production record, it seems appropriate to briefly review the record made by the Negro men on wings who did a magnificent job as Army Air Corps pilots and ground personnel in the overseas theatre. For they were trained at TAAF and they passed, with flying colors, the supreme test of ability, training, leadership and cooperation which was imposed by combat in North Africa and Europe.

It was April 2, 1943, when the 99th Fighter Squadron sailed from New York harbor. They were the pioneers. No Negro Air Corps pilots had ever flown in combat for the United States before and nobody knew how the "experiment" would turn out.

Two months later, on June 2, these pilots were briefed for their first mission. Flying P-40 Warhawks, from Cape Bon, in North Africa, they were sent to divebomb the tiny Island of Pantelleria, between North Africa and Sicily.

CARRIED HEAVY LOAD

These men carried a heavy load on this mission. Not only did they carry bombs but they carried the hopes and aspirations of 13,000,000 American Negroes. But despite their load, they got off the ground, did their job and came back to land.

With this mission, they launched a new career for Negro youth - a career which has cost many lives but a career which opened new vistas of opportunity for service to their country and for personal achievement.

It was a hard, gruelling pace that they had to follow before they were "accepted." In those first days, many white airmen were skeptical about their ability to measure up. Every known psychological barrier was thrown in their way. Despite the fact that they flew regularly for several months from North Africa, Sicily, and the Eastern Italian coast, around Foggia, there still existed, in the minds of other Air Forces personnel, some doubts about their ability. These doubts, which persisted long after Capt. Charles B. Hall had shot down the first German plane to become a victim of a Negro airman, and after several of their fliers had been killed or made prisoners of war, depressed these young men and made it particularly difficult for them to continue the hard, dangerous work of dive-bombing and close-support flying. If TAAF had done a less efficient job of training them, it is quite possible that they would have cracked in the face of the persistent refusal of their fellow Air Corps mates to "accept" them.

But then came Anzio. The great show started on January 28, 1944. In three days of furious fighting, the 99th became a fighting byword among allied air and ground troops in the Mediterranean theatre. Names of heroes of that memorable air operation were on the lips of every Air Corps pilot in Italy. The kids were "in."

DAVIS TAKES LARGER COMMAND
Meanwhile, Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who had commanded these men through the North African and early Sicilian phases of combat operations, had returned to the United States to assume command of the three-squadron 332nd Fighter Group.

This outfit, three times the size of the 99th and accompanied by a colored service group, the 96th, had sailed with your reporter aboard, from Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation for the Italian theatre on January 3 of the same year.

We were still on the high seas when radio reports flashed the startling news that the 99th fliers had run their victory total from one to seventeen planes in the Anzio beachhead show. Morale went up because these men, facing combat themselves, knew that other Negro pilots had made the grade and had paved the way for them.

THEY HAVE OWN DIFFICULTIES
As a result of the 99th's great showing, we met an enthusiastic welcome when we first landed in Italy. But the 332nd fliers were destained to have to "sweat out" their own gruelling period of initiation, regardless of the achievements of the 99th. They had five months of difficult, monotonous and unrewarding coastal patrol duty in the P-39 Airacobra assigned them and their growing pains were no less severe than had been those of their predecessors.

But they were also, to have their day of triumph. It was June 9, 1944, after they had been taken out of the P-39 and placed in the cockpit of the heavy, effective P-47 Thunderbolt for long range, bomber escort duty with the 15th Strategic Air Force. On June 7, these lads had flown their first bomber escort mission. On June 8th, they had been assigned a strafing mission which was scarcely spectacular.  But on June 9, while escorting bombers from the Adriatic coast of Italy, they were jumped by German fighters and they shot down five enemy planes in some bristling action.

WHITES FOUND THEM DEPENDABLE

From then on, the 332nd fliers were "in."  They had other difficult moments but from June 7 until the end of the war on May 8, 1945, these fliers earned the respect and admiration of thousands of bomber and fighter crew members who found them dependable and courageous.

An interesting sociological sidelight to their notable achievements was the fact that they converted many southern lads to a new appreciation for and evaluation of the abilities of Negro airmen and indoctrinated these men with a genuine respect for the potentialities of Negro youths.

For nine our of ten 15th Air Force officer and enlisted fliers will invariably praise the "Red Tails" as they came to be known when they were transferred from Thunderbolts to the P-51 Mustang last fall. The 332nd men painted the tails of the Mustang a bright red color. Whites commend them, especially for the fact that they would stick by the bombers, despite the temptation to promote their own "jerry-killing" reputations by unauthorized fighter sweeps. They stayed on the job, protecting bombers, which was their usual assignment.  Many white Air Corps men have told me that, at escort, the "Red Tails" were the best fighter group in Italy.

Col. Davis who led the 99th, and then the 332nd, into combat, has been chosen to lead the third Negro Air outfit into combat in the Pacific. His new command is the 477th Composite Fighter-Bomber Group. That is a tribute to the genius of this officer, one of the first class of fighter pilots to graduate from TAAF.

TWO COMMANDERS OUT OF FIRST CLASS

As further evidence of the quality of training given at TAAF from the very beginning is the fact that another graduate in that first class, Major George Spencer Roberts, succeeded to the command of first the 99th and later the 332nd Group when [[pencil underlined]] Col. Davis left those units to assume [[/pencil underlined]] bigger commands.  Col. Davis and Major Roberts are the only Negro Air Corps group commanders in the United States Army.

Of the other three men in that first class, only one, Captain Mac Ross, has been killed. He crashed in Italy last year. The other two men are: Captain Lemuel Rodney Custis, who completed a tour of duty as a combat pilot with the 99th and has returned to the States; and Captain Charles Debow, a former fighter squadron commander, who has been returned to the United States.

Of the graduates of Tuskegee, eighty have been awarded the coveted Distinguished Flying Cross, and more than 400 have won the Air Medal with oak leaf clusters as a result of brilliant combat records overseas.

Some have died but in dying for the joint cause of world peace and domestic justice for their people, have made memorable contributions to race progress.  Those who have lived are shining examples of notable accomplishment despite the terrific odds against them.

On the basis of the things I saw them do, I'd say TAAF has reason for pride on this, its fourth anniversary.  What would you say?


NASM PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY - 19 April 2001