Anwyn & the Colonel - A Tale Of The Tuskegee Airmen
by Lee H. Goldberg

If my section is short a review or news item this week, please accept my apologies, but I took an afternoon off to play "hooky" from work with my daughter to attend a fascinating lecture on some of America's greatest heroes -- the Tuskegee Airmen. Nearly a thousand pioneering black aviators (plus over 4000 mechanics, technicians, and other support staff) fought valiantly in Europe and Africa for victory over Hitler's Luftwaffe while also fighting on a second front back home for their basic civil rights.

Given my daughter's heritage, and my lifelong affair with flight, it was not a difficult choice to pull Anwyn out from school a little early to attend a talk being given by Col. Charles E McGee, USAF (retired). While Anwyn is only seven and certainly did not pick up on all the details of Col. McGee's talk, I think she began to understand a little about what kinds of odds the "Negroes" of my parents' era faced, and the kind of character it took to break down the barriers to equal opportunity. I'll try not to rhapsodize too much, but that character is still evident in Col. McGee's upright posture that belies his 84 years, and the gentlemanly way that he relates the challenges that the Airmen faced in simply proving that they were as good as the next guy.

I thought I knew a lot about the Tuskegee Airmen, but my eyes were opened in the brief hour that McGee related a handful of the details of "The Tuskegee Experience." It's hard to believe, but the project that eventually formed the 377th Air Wing arose from a token experiment to train a single squadron of 30 pilots that was pre-engineered to fail and initially led by a base commander who was convinced blacks had no place in the air, or anywhere else in the military beyond serving in mess halls and cleaning latrines. McGee feels that much of the success was due to the determination of Benjamin Davis, the first black military aviator, and leader of the 99th Fighter Squadron. He also credits several self-taught black civilian aviators who joined the Airmen to lead maintenance operations, instruct, and fight with providing the role models and inspiration to keep pushing against the odds.

Of course the flying geek in me marveled at McGee's accounts of pilots trained on slower, less-sophisticated P-40 Warhawks transitioning to the fearsome P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs while in the field by reading manuals and taking a quick check ride -- all without missing a day of active combat! He also spoke glowingly of the radio techs and mechanics who also trained in the field, and supported the new aircraft without ever compromising the readiness of their existing ships.

The hour barely scratched the surface of this relatively unknown American saga, and I am looking forward to settling in with McGee's recently-published biography, Tuskegee Airman, to catch up on more of the juicy details.

I wish there had been more time to ask the dozens of questions I had for Col. McGee, but a 7-year-old's attention span is quite finite and we left before the Q&A session had really warmed up. Happily I was able to get a picture of Anwyn and the Colonel before we headed out the door for milk and cookies. This memento, and others like it, will help both of us remember what heroes can accomplish, and help us set our sights just a little higher in what we expect from ourselves.

Comments? Questions? Tales of your own personal heroes? Write me at: lgoldberg@green-electronics.com.

• Comment on this editorial
• Editorial Archives
• Return to the i/oZONE