The Tuskegee airmen are the result of the efforts of the Civil Rights Division and African American men that wanted to be a part of the fight for America’s freedom. They finally won that battle in 1941 and set out for the next fight. Tuskegee was a segregated trial airbase to see if having African Americans as pilots would work. The men enrolled at Tuskegee had to go through a six month training camp, where a white man would only have to be in for about 1-2 months.
Even with all of the extra trials that they had to go through, 1000 men graduated from Tuskegee before the end of the war and 450 of those brave men went across the sea to fight in the war. Their leader was a man by the name of Benjamin O. Davis Jr. He bravely lead these men into battle for a good portion of the war before returning stateside to Tuskegee to help train the next line of pilots. After his return to war he took control of the squadron and began to fulfill his callings and eventually became the first African American General in World War II and was presented the Distinguished Flying Cross for Bravery and Leadership.
Even though these men where normally greatly outnumbered, through over 200 missions under heavy fire, they never lost a single bomber. All together they shot down 111 enemy aircraft and another 150 on the ground. They sank one destroyer and 40 boats and barges. They also knocked out more than 600 railroad cars and only lost 150 men who died in war or accidents.
They were the first key footsteps to an integrated military and lead the way to leadership positions for anyone that was not a white man in America.
Luther H. Smith (#93)
Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1920, Luther Smith became a WWII hero and an aerospace engineer who made significant advances in aviation. Luther was introduced to flying at the age of 13 while riding in a Ford Tri-Motor. On July 15, 1941 he soloed through the Civilian Pilot Training Program at the Des Moines Flying Service. At the age of 21 he was the first African-American from Iowa accepted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant for training at Tuskegee, Alabama. During WWII he flew 133 successful missions, destroying two enemy aircraft in the air and another 10 on the ground. On an escort mission in October, 1944, his P-51 was severely damaged during a bombing of an oil tank freight yard. When the plane’s engine burst into flames, Luther knew he had to parachute out but he became trapped in the cockpit. Subconsciously he pulled the parachute’s rip-cord which jerked him from the plane. He crashed through trees in the landing fracturing his hip and came to rest on a tree branch. German soldiers freed him from the tree and transported him to a military hospital in a Yugoslavian village. Eventually he was transferred to a German POW camp in Austria. When he was released from the camp at the end of the war he weighed only 70 pounds. For the next two years he was hospitalized and endured 18 operations. He retired from active military service in 1947 as a Captain. For 37 years he was employed as a General Electric Company aerospace engineer. He first worked at GE in Schenectady, New York and from 1961 until 1988 he was at the Missile and Space Operation in Philadelphia advancing to various management positions. He has been awarded two patents for dynamic sealing devises in aircraft.
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr (1912–2002)
Born in Washington, D.C., and after spending his earlier years going to many different schools, Benjamin David, entered in to the all‐white U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where the last African American to graduated was in the 1880s. After he graduated in 1936, he requested for assignment to the Army Air Corps and was refused because there were no black aviation units. Instead, he was assigned to an all‐black infantry regiment and then to the Tuskegee Institute as an instructor. In 1941, the War Department finally allowed blacks into the Air Corps, although in segregated units. Davis established a flight program at Tuskegee, and as a lieutenant colonel took command of the 99th Pursuit Squadron (the “Black Eagles”), the first black air unit. In 1943, during World War II, he led the unit to North Africa. As a result of this experiance, he commanded the 332nd Fighter Group, a larger all‐black flying unit, and as a colonel, flew sixty combat missions in the Italian theater. In 1948, following President Harry S. Truman's desegregation order, Davis designed the implementation program for the U.S. Air Force. In 1954, he was promoted to brigadier general, in 1959 to major general, and in 1965, he became America's first black lieutenant general, serving with the air force in Germany and the Philippines during the Vietnam War before his retirement in 1970. Afterward, he served in the early 1970s in the U.S. Department of Transportation on issues involving air hijacking and aviation safety. He passed away July 6 of 2002.
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