Tuskegee Airmen signify passing the test

Tomi Johnson interviewed Col. Charles E. McGee (3rd from left), National President of the Tuskegee Airmen in 2002. Also pictured are Tuskegee Airman LeRoy F. Gillead, Col. Ralph W. Smith, and Captain Eugene W. Garges, Jr.

As the movie Red Tails hits theaters across the country, we remember that the famed Tuskegee Airmen and their instructors were heroes who shot down planes AND myths. Here are some comments and photos from these living legends from interviews I conducted in 2002.

Col. Charles E. McGee, Bethesda, MD, National President of the Tuskegee Airmen, talked about that era. “You had to take a physical examination and besides being physically qualified, you had to pass mental tests. Being colorblind would keep you out; in fact, we had a friend who went through the training and was able to get by until that final physical and didn’t receive his commission because he was colorblind. But those were standards for everybody, Black or White, set for pilots coming into the Army Air Corps in 1941 through 1946. It’s important that those who are captains, first officers, or engineers are qualified so that people who have their tickets punched and board an aircraft can feel comfortable.

“The Tuskegee Airmen experiment was the foundation for Black pilots of today because when that program started, there was a lot of thought that Blacks were not capable. It was that program that gave us an opportunity to prove or disprove a theory, and of course, we disproved the myth. It did bring about a change later, both in the attitudes of people and the policies of the Army Air Corps and the Air Force for using people based on their skills and ability, and giving them the opportunity to test rather than automatically saying because of color, origin of birth, or whatever, that they weren’t capable. That was a big change.”

Captain Eugene W. Garges, Jr., Manhasset, Long Island, NY, (Eastern Airlines) was a flight trainer for the Tuskegee Airmen and talked about the experiment and the participant’s aptitudes. “The color of your skin has nothing to do with your aptitude as a pilot. I always told everybody that. When people find out that I had been at Tuskegee, and asked me, ‘How were they?’ I said, ‘No different from anybody else.’ The Tuskegee Airmen proved what should not have had to be proven – that they could fly.

“I have one memory of when an instructor took a man up for his first flight in an AT6 and gave him a lot of acrobatics, and asked him if he could do that, and he said, ‘I’ll try’ and he did it as well as the instructor. And the instructor came down, went to the flight leader, and told him he had a student that could fly as good as he could. And he said, ‘Do you have a guy by the name of James?’ And it was Chappie James. He was a good pilot. My advice to young pilots is to stay in school and get all the education you can.”

Airman LeRoy F. Gillead, a native New Yorker, “Most people have no idea there were 14,612 Black and White civilian and military women and men in the Tuskegee experiment because only the 450 combat pilots get the recognition, which is just about 3%. The Tuskegee Airmen were not all Black; that is a misconception people have. All those people were part of this experiment that began with the civilian pilot training program in 1939. It had five phases – 2 civilian and 3 military components. I enlisted in the 2nd Army Air Corps at Mitchell Field in New York to go to Chanute Field in Illinois to get technical training and become part of the 99th Bomber Squadron. It began in the fall of 1939 at six Black colleges, from the fighter group to the bomber group. There were 1500 support people behind those 450 pilots that went overseas.

“Blacks were not allowed into the Army Air Corps in 1941. Two Black pilots flew, and they encouraged members of Congress to include Blacks in pilot training. There was resistance to it by Whites, so when they developed the plans to have a civilian cadre, the South didn’t want the Blacks to participate, so they couldn’t go to the South. They went to the Black colleges and to Harlem Field in Chicago. They were supposed to go from civilian to military pilot training. They did that for Whites, but there was a 15-month gap from when they allowed Blacks to get into it, until July and August of 1941. That was the first class of Black cadets, and they graduated in the winter of 1942. I became a navigator bombardier.

“Most of the Blacks who came out of the experiment worked for the government, not commercial airlines. I don’t personally know of any airline pilot who was a Tuskegee Airmen. I don’t think that happened. The number of Blacks in the commercial airline industry has only varied by 1 or 2% from whenever they started. It’s still a very small amount. The potential for pilots in America is diminishing, not increasing because of automation and the kinds of planes they fly. Now you see people flying smaller planes, and they can fly pilots longer. The potential of being a pilot is not an open field as say electronics, but pilots make good money. It’s like basketball…all these boys who want to play basketball can’t succeed. They got 10,000 trying to be Michael Jordan, but very few can do it.”

©2002 Photos by Kurk D. Johnson. All rights reserved.
©2012 Article by Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.