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Tuskegee Airmen -- Circa May 1942 to Aug 1943 at an unknown location. (National Archives)
The skies were filled with bombers and fighter planes. Their engines hummed steadily, in the otherwise quiet skies above Germany. The target of the March 24, 1945, mission was the Daimler-Benz tank assembly plant—one of the most heavily guarded targets of the Third Reich.
As they approached Berlin, the reality of one of the most dangerous air missions of World War II became apparent. They were up against the world’s first operational fighter jets—the German ME 262. Amid the horrors of World War II, these were the monsters of the skies. They could fly 150 mph faster than the fastest U.S. fighter plane, and could climb 1,300 feet higher than the P-51 Mustangs they were up against in the battle.
“They had just a devastating effect when they encountered American bombers because they could climb up very high and just make passes through the bomber formations and knock them out,” said retired Air Force Col. Roosevelt Lewis.
Yet flying with the Americans was something the Germans had not expected—the Tuskegee Airmen. They were African-American fighter pilots who had to fight prejudice at home so they could go to war against the Germans, and whose participation in the battle was an honor. “They were afraid of nothing,” Lewis said. “They wanted a chance to fly and fight for this nation.”
The men who flew the red-tailed P-51 Mustangs are said to have never lost a bomber in all their hundreds of escort missions. The black pilots were discriminated against at every turn, yet they took that discrimination as a cause to show the world what they could do.
They saw that mission through, and escorted the bombers back to safe ground.
A Continued Legacy
This photo from September 1944, shows Capt. Andrew D. Turner signaling to the chief of his ground crew before taking off from a base in Italy. He was a member of the 15th U.S. Army Air Force. (National Archives)
Lewis is the president of the Tuskegee Airmen chapter in Tuskegee, Ala., and was trained at the now-famous airbase by the men who helped end segregation in the military.
He has made it his life’s work to teach their legacy.
The spotlight is once again on the Tuskegee Airmen. Director George Lucas is releasing a film about them on Jan. 20, “Red Tails,” based on the nickname given to them by the bomber crews, “Red Tailed Angels.”
Lewis is just one of many African-Americans inspired by them. He met the leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., when he joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in 1960.
“He said something that has always stayed with me,” Lewis said. “He said that ‘your performance is your measure of merit in this life.’”
Gen. Davis taught him virtues he carries to this day, which he has in turn passed to younger generations today. He said discrimination goes beyond just race—maybe a person doesn’t get picked for a basketball game because they’re short, or they get pushed to the side due to other notions.
Yet what he learned is that a person needs to do well under all circumstances, and that a person needs to have both a passion for what they do, and the ability to persevere through hardships.
Then eventually, “those things will show,” he said. And when the opportunity finally comes, “Your performance has to be like nobody has performed before.”
He referred back to the famous bombing mission on Berlin. Just prior to the mission, the leading general received a message from the bomber crews saying if they were going into Berlin, they wanted Red Tailed Angels by their sides.
Hearing this, Davis changed the nose art on his P-51 to “By Request,” which was a note to he and his men that when nobody believed in them, they performed, and they showed what they could do, and when the time came, others came to them.“For the first time during the war, the airmen were in such demand until they were requested by the white bomber units because of their reputation and because of the work they did in protecting their escorts,” Lewis said.
Yet he noted what the Tuskegee Airmen have left behind is not “a black story or a white story.”
“This is an American story, of the first order,” he said. “This is really a story of discipline. A story of excellence. A story of people not giving up no matter the odds. These were Americans who would not give up—who fought for the opportunity to fight for their country, and when they were given that opportunity they excelled.”
He added that the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is one that does not want to live in segregation. Rather, it is a lesson that when a person is bulled and cast aside and judged, they can charge on without self-pity, and achieve greatness without resentment. And it is a reminder that the only way to eliminate discrimination is to soar above it.
