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F R E E D O M F L Y E R S THE TUSKECEE AIRMEN OF WORLD WAR II FREEDOM FLYERS FREEDOM FLYERS FREEDOM The Tuskegee Airmen J. Todd Moye FLYERS of World War II OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2010 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2010 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moye, J. Todd. Freedom flyers: the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II / J. Todd Moye. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-538655-4 1. United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Group, 332nd. 2. United States. Army Air Forces. Fighter Squadron, 99th. 3. United States. Army Air Forces. Composite Group, 477th. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Aerial operations, American. 5. United States. Army Air Forces—African American troops. 6. World War, 1939-1945—Regimental histories—United States 7. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Europe. 8. World War, 1939-1945—Participation, African American. 9. African American air pilots—History. I. Title. D790.252332nd.M69 2010 94°.54'4973—de22 2009034079 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on add-free paper Title page illustration: Maj. James A. Ellison reviews the first class of Tuskegee cadets TAAF, returning the salute of Mac Ross. U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency. For Luke and Henry Contents Prologue: “This Is Where You Ride” i 1 The Use of Negro Manpower in War 13 2 The Black Eagles Take Flight 41 3 The Experiment 70 4 Combat on Several Fronts 98 5 The Trials of the 477th 123 6 Integrating the Air Force 145 Epilogue: “Let’s Make It a Holy Crusade All the Way Around” 171 Acknowledgments 187 Notes 191 A Note on Sources 217 Bibliography 221 Index 233 vii Pxologue “This Is Where You Ride” John Roach grew up in the South End of Boston, the son of West Indian immigrants. His father, a native of Montserrat, had fought for the British Empire in World War I in a unit composed entirely of dark- skinned men and worked in Boston as a laborer; his mother worked for white families as a domestic. Roach's neighborhood was mixed—"Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Greeks, Russians, all kinds of people.” Scraps with kids from the Irish neighborhoods nearby were not uncommon, but Roach cherished his experience growing up in the South End. “I think it was a gratifying experience to live in that area because it was like an international community,” he remembered. “You got to know each other and got to real ize that no matter where you're bom, you're a person. Everybody has likes and dislikes, everybody has quirks that you may or may not like. And you realize that you just take people as they come, and the better you treat them, the better they'll treat you in most cases.” He learned something else from his parents: “You can't fight your way up to the top with your fists. You can with your character.” Roach developed a keen mind and a strong character, and he expected to rise as high in life as his talents could take him.1 As a child, Roach developed a fascination with airplanes. His mother later told him that when she took him for walks in his baby carriage, he would scan the skies for airplanes and point at them excitedly if any should pass overhead. In elementary school he found kindred spirits, two class mates who shared his interest in flying machines. “We found out that you could get to East Boston Airport by going down to Rose Wharf on Atlan tic Avenue in Boston, and there was a ferry that went across the bay to the edges of the East Boston neighborhood. We'd walk along in front of where the ferry came in and where you paid your money to go across on the ferry, and we'd beg pennies from the neighbors going by until we had 4c,” enough for ferry fare. From the ferry landing in East Boston they walked a mile or more to the airport. “You couldn't get out on the airport, but you could hang on the fence. And we would hang on the fence and watch the airplanes take off and land. Once in a while one would taxi by, and we'd just go out of our minds,” Roach said. “We'd do that all day on a Saturday after we had done our chores at home, and then we'd head on back, beg pennies again from the 1 people on the sidewalk, come across on the ferry, and then walk home. My mother never knew I did that, or she would have killed me. “That was my introduction to the aircraft,” Roach remembered. “I just watched them take off. I couldn’t understand how a huge thing like that could get up in the air and fly so graceful, but that did it. I said, ‘Somehow I’m going to fly airplanes.’ I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where or why or when, but I knew somehow I’d do it. My mother said she thought so too when she found out I liked airplanes.” Roach could not have known it then, but the nation’s armed forces systematically denied African Americans even the opportunity to learn to fly, and civilian institutions were not much more accommodating. At the beginning of 1939, the year Roach turned fourteen, there were only twenty-five licensed African American pilots in the entire country.2 Roach attended racially integrated Boston public schools. When he graduated from Mechanic Arts High School, a venerable institution sev eral miles from his home, in 1943, he knew little of the political machi nations on the part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other black institutions that had recently forced the U.S Department of War to open a military flight training facil ity in Tuskegee, Alabama, for African Americans. He just knew that he wanted to fly. “That’s when I found out that there was this unit being established at Tuskegee Army Air Field to train black pilots,” he said. Before then it had “never crossed my mind that there were no black mili tary pilots. I figured, you know, airplanes were airplanes” and could be flown by anyone with the desire and ability to learn how to fly them. Roach, who considered himself as patriotic and gung-ho about military service as any other American teenager, began devouring reports from the Tuskegee program that he found in the black newspapers in his neighborhood barbershop. Six months after his seventeenth birthday, in June 1943, Roach gathered up his birth certificate, his diploma, and a let ter from his parents giving him permission to join the armed forces, and set off for the recruiting station in downtown Boston to enlist in the Army Air Forces (AAF) for flight training. “What would you like, sonny?” a white sergeant at the station asked him. Roach answered that he had come to join the AAF. The sergeant explained to him, not unkindly, that the AAF was not accepting black recruits but that he was welcome to sign up for service in the infantry. Roach started to argue with the sergeant based on what he had learned from the newspa pers, thought better of it, and left. He went to nine other recruiting stations in greater Boston and was rebuffed at each one. Roach started to wonder if he wasn’t being discriminated against. “I was kind of surprised because after reading the African American newspapers and all the other papers, 2 FREEDOM FLYERS