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‘Red Tails,’ documentary show pioneering pilots

After decades of lingering at the margins of history, the Tuskegee Airmen are finally getting their day in the spotlight.

The story of the World War II heroes, now in their late 80s and 90s, is being introduced to mainstream America through a new documentary, “Double Victory,” and a major motion picture, “Red Tails,” both of which are produced by Lucas Films. “Red Tails” was released nationwide Friday.

Airmen also are being encouraged by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz to learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen this year. The chief’s 2012 reading list not only includes “Freedom Flyers,” by J. Todd Moye, but also a recommendation to check out the documentary.

“The Tuskegee Airmen served our country with honor, tore down racial barriers, and proved themselves to be among the most capable of America’s military pilots,” Schwartz said in an email to Air Force Times. “Through works like ‘Freedom Flyers’ and ‘Double Victory’ — both of which are on my 2012 reading list — and the film ‘Red Tails’ — which Suzie and I viewed in December — many thousands of people, and hopefully a new generation of young people, will learn about the achievements and the determination of the Tuskegee Airmen.”

A long time coming

At its heart, those who know the story best say that the trials and triumph of the more than 900 men trained as pilots at a segregated airfield in Tuskegee, Ala., are part of a quintessentially American story that most people need to know more about.

Roscoe Brown, a Tuskegee Airman who served as the squadron commander of the 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group, said it’s an exciting time to be a Tuskegee Airman, but such recognition is long overdue.

Original Tuskegee Airmen like Brown, historians and supporters that include current and retired members of the military have worked over the years to help keep the history of the men alive. For them, the film is the culmination of all their efforts.

“We’ve been working on this story for 40 or 50 years,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of water that’s gone under the bridge.”

Daniel Haulman, chief of the organizational history branch of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., said the story of the Tuskegee Airmen went untold for the first couple of decades after World War II because their records were still classified. Once that information became publicly available, more people, including the airmen, began to talk and write about the history.

But Haulman, who is a co-author of “The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939-1949,” said for years American history books never mentioned the Tuskegee Airmen and their role in World War II. As late as the 1990s, a book that provides an overview of American military aviation and American aviation history ignored the men.

That began to change when the airmen received Congressional Gold Medals in 2007 and participated in President Obama’s inauguration. But the bright lights of Hollywood are expected to cement their legacy of heroism for a new generation.

“I think one of the things ‘Red Tails’ and publications, movies and documentaries will bring to peoples’ attention is not only what the Tuskegee Airmen did in World War II, but their contribution to the larger movement for racial justice,” Haulman said.

The weight of a race

To say that the military held little esteem for the abilities of black pilots would be an understatement. In fact, there were whole studies dedicated to proving they weren’t capable of understanding aviation, though blacks had been involved with flying as far back as the 19th century.

“The belief was that blacks were not capable of flying military aircraft, or any aircraft for that matter, and that they wouldn’t have the courage to do so in combat and that their reflexes were too slow to react to enemy fighters,” said Jerome Ennels, former Air University historian and current archivist for the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

Ennels, who is a co-author with Haulman on the illustrated history book, said studies conducted by the Army War College in the 1920s and ’30s sought to prove that blacks were a subhuman species, with brains that were smaller than those of white people, and that they were therefore less intelligent.

“That’s the kind of myth that was being spread during that time and perhaps during the ’40s,” he said. “The belief was that black men were not going to be capable of flying aircraft.”

But the Tuskegee Airmen shot down those theories.

Haulman points to a study that was commissioned by what was then the War Department to compare the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron with the other squadrons flying P-40s in North Africa and Italy. The study proved that the Tuskegee Airmen were flying at least as well as the other squadrons.

Joseph Carver, also an author on the illustrated history book, said the airmen knew they had to be as good as or better than their white counterparts.

“They realized they were carrying the weight of their race on their shoulders, and they could not fail in this experiment,” said Carver, a senior archivist at the Air Force Historical Research Agency. “They understood what was happening and the perception that their fellow white airmen had of them. They realized what was at stake.”

Haulman said that when the Tuskegee Airmen got the bomber escort mission in 1944, which the movie “Red Tails” portrays, it allowed them to demonstrate not only how proficient they were in protecting the bombers, but also to shoot down enemy aircraft.

While it’s not true that the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber under their escort, it is true that on average they lost fewer than other groups doing bomber escorts.

Breaking barriers

The historians say it’s no accident that the integration of the military happened just a few years after the end of World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen had faced the challenges and proved they were capable.

Haulman said there is a debate among historians about whether President Truman was motivated by the Tuskegee Airmen’s record to sign Executive Order 9981 to integrate the armed forces, but it’s likely he was aware of that record. The fact that the Tuskegee Airmen participated in Truman’s 1949 inaugural parade doesn’t hurt that theory, Carver said.

Carver and Ennels said it’s not a leap to believe that the Tuskegee Airmen had a hand in jumpstarting the modern civil rights movement.

“After being in Europe and being treated differently, and then coming back to America, they demanded equal rights and equal opportunity,” Carver said. He pointed out that several of them had a hand in organizing the Montgomery bus boycott.

Brown said the Tuskegee Airmen recognized that they had to fight for every opportunity and when they got a chance they had to be at the top of their game. He said making the most of opportunities is a concept that he wants the younger generation to grab hold of today.

“The political pressure and awareness of the success of the Tuskegee Airmen and the success of people like Jackie Robinson — all those things — created a confluence of energy to help to break the barriers of segregation,” Brown said. “Our challenges now are breaking the stereotypes some people have, even in the black community, that say we can’t do anything that’s scientific, or mathematic.

“As I’ve said many times, I hope what comes out of this is a new mantra that it’s cool to be smart,” Brown said. “The Tuskegee Airmen were cool, the Tuskegee Airmen were smart and with effort everybody can be cool and smart.”

Legacy of excellence

The legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen can be seen in today’s service. As a whole, the Air Force is slightly more racially diverse than the general U.S. population, though like most of the services, its leadership is much less diverse.

A commission found last year that the Air Force had the smallest percentage of minorities in its senior officer ranks.

The man who is currently responsible for helping the Air Force become more diverse credits the Tuskegee Airmen with laying the foundation for his own career.

Jarris Taylor, deputy assistant secretary for strategic diversity integration for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, said he knew nothing of the Tuskegee Airmen and had never even flown on a plane before he joined the service in 1985. But as luck would have it, he would go on to be mentored by original Tuskegee Airmen, retired Col. Frank Horne Sr. and retired Chief Master Sgt. Grant Williams Sr. He also served as the vice president of the Tidewater Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc.

“Without them, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

Taylor, who spends a lot of time talking to young people about opportunities in the Air Force, said he hopes “Red Tails” and the story of the Tuskegee Airmen will inspire young people to believe that they can overcome hardships and excel at whatever they do.

It’s a sentiment that Brown shares.

“We want to encourage them to go past obstacles, because basically the Tuskegee Airmen are about excellence and overcoming obstacles,” Brown said.

Brown said the military has been ahead of larger society in allowing people to advance their careers based on their skills, but he said current military members should be ready to face a different reality when they leave military service. He said that reality is that prejudice and stereotypes still exist, but excellence can overcome those barriers, too.

“Red Tails” has been heavily promoted among airmen and thousands of them got to see an advance screening of the movie at a recent Air Education and Training Command symposium.

Brown said what he wants airmen in particular, and military members in general, to take away from the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is the importance of being excellent.

“Be excellent, be compassionate, be supportive of each other,” he said. “But continue to look at that star in the sky to see how good you can be.”