I wrote this story in summer 2001 and originally published it in Aviation Review, Vol. 4, No, 4.
If you’re knowledgeable about aviation history, you’ve probably heard of the Tuskeegee Airmen.
What first comes to mind when somebody mentions them? The first all-black fighter squadron? Likely enough.
However, since to me what somebody does is more important than what he looks like, there is something else that seems to be at least equally or even more impressive.
During World War II, the Tuskeegee Airmen never lost a bomber that they were defending to enemy fire.
That, to me, is phenomenal.
It is also the chief reason that I welcomed the opportunity to hear a presentation made on April 12, 2001, by one of the Tuskeegee Airmen, at our local library.
The airman’s name was Dr. (2nd Lt.) Theodore O. Mason. He is a retired dentist and a local area resident.
He began his presentation by stating that the history of the Tuskeegee Airmen had gone largely ignored by the general public until HBO released a documentary on the topic in 1995. His opinion was that it was mostly factual, but some points were a little stretched.
To further lay down the foundation for the presentation, he stated what living conditions were like in 1941 and 1942.
The biggest highway in our area was not built yet. The housing developments were different. Food – especially sugar – was rationed, as was gasoline.
If you were around the ages of 18 and 19, you were probably in the service. Male dormitories in colleges were depleted.
Dr. Mason had lived in Cadiz, Ohio all his life and until his enlistment. (Cadiz is located about 60-66 miles from Mansfield.)
The day before his enlistment, he experienced first-hand prejudices against black people. He went to a local restaurant with two friends and tried to purchase a chili dog. He was permitted to do this, though he was forced to go outside of the restaurant to eat it and could not sit down at a table.
At that time, his primary transportation was a train. After he rode in one to Columbus, he was put under a sergeant with thirty other blacks. They were put on a train and not told where they were to be taken. They were not permitted to sit in any car except the front – and as this was a steam engine, directly behind a coal tinder.
Time magazine interviewed another Tuskeegee airman for its August 28, 1995 issue. This airman experienced a similar situation. He was put in a seat in the first car of the train, where the soot poured on and the smoke enveloped him – to let the German POWs have a nicer seat further back in the train.
As the train with Dr. Mason progressed further south, they crossed the Ohio River. The next morning he woke up in Nashville.
Late in the evening he got off the train – in Biloxi, Mississippi.
He was shipped to Tuskeegee University, and placed in the college training detachment. There each airman remained for 6-8 months before ever getting into an airplane.
He described the men he worked with as “unbelievable.” Most had two years of college, though a half-dozen had only completed high school. (He had gone to Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio.) Some had even completed graduate degrees. Two had even received degrees from Purdue in engineering. All this gives an idea of the quality of training they had received.
Very early in the training he remembered an instructor telling them, “Look at the man on your left. Look at the man on your right. One of the three of you will not graduate.” Dr. Mason estimates that it was closer to two of the three.
Before the program had begun, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had asked for and received a ride from “Chief” Charles Anderson. This had convinced her that black people could fly, and she was able to convince her husband of the fact, and “the Tuskeegee experiment” began.
However, like everywhere else in the army, they were still under a white officer.
This tradition dated back to the Civil War, when freed slaves were permitted to join the Union Army, but only under white officers. (This lasted until 1948, when President Harry Truman desegregated the military.)
During World War II, black units included the 369th New York, the 671st Massachusetts, the 92nd and 93rd infantry, and the 99th squadron (known as the Tuskeegee Airmen.)
Single-engine pilots who graduated at Tuskeegee flew over 1500 missions, and shot down about 900 airplanes. Bomber crews did not go overseas.
In 1943, the number of airmen who graduated from Tuskeegee were more than enough needed to replenish the 99th squadron, so the 300th, 301st, and 302nd squadrons were formed.
Twin-engine pilots began to be trained. They were trained primarily with strafing and skip-bombing, in the B-25. Later, they changed over to P-47s, to save crew members: the B-25 required a crew of 6 [sic]; the P-47 required a crew of one.
Dr. Mason was stationed at Godman Field, Kentucky, which was also the only place that returning 99th Fighter Pilots could come back to when their tours of duty were over, as they could only return to a black base.
When Godman Field became quite crowded, the Tuskeegee fliers moved to a larger field, in Seymour, Indiana.
There, the B-25 pilots, including Dr. Mason, practiced their skip bombing – by skip-bombing insecticide onto farmer’s orchards; doing them good while getting practice!
At Godman Field, they could go to the black officer’s club on base. The white trainers could go across the street to Fort Knox to the white Officer’s club on base. However, at Seymour Field in Indiana, Col. Selway tried to establish two separate officer’s clubs, in direct violation of Army Regulation 210-10.
About 100 men of the Tuskeegee Airmen organized a protest. Col. Selway tried to force them to sign a form stating that they had read and understood the material that stated that there would be two clubs. They responded that they had read it but had not understood it, since it defied the Army Regulations. Since they would not obey the direct order to sign it, they were reprimanded and three were court-martialed. Of these, two were found not guilty. The one found guilty, Roger Carey, was convicted on the charge that he shoved against a Major – according to Dr. Mason, he actually brushed against him. He was fined.
Before the court-martial, they had moved to South Carolina and then back to Godman Field. At that point, they were confined in their barracks, while seeing German POWs walking around on the street without supervision.
In 1946, the Tuskeegee Airmen moved to Lockbourne Field in Columbus, Ohio. At this point, Dr. Mason was discharged from the Air Force.
He returned to Cadiz, Ohio; there he went to the same restaurant at which he had tried to purchase a chili dog the day before he left for military service. He was told again that he could not eat it in the restaurant.
He went to see a friend, the Common Pleas Judge of the county. The judge told him that he could not advise him as he might have to be a judge in the case. He proceeded to pull volumes off the shelf and put bookmarks in them, and then left for an early lunch-break. Dr. Mason decided to look at the volumes. In them were marked the laws pertaining to the case.
This judge then talked to the Justice of Peace, who talked to the owner, and the Justice of the Peace explained the laws to the owner. Since then Dr. Mason has had several chili dogs at that restaurant!
In 1948, the Air Force desegregated, and that marked the end of the Tuskeegee airmen. In 1995, 98 of the people who had been reprimanded in the officer club protest were forgiven – their records were expunged (or wiped clear.)
Dr. Theodore Mason said that his most memorable mission went like this: He was in primary training. He flew with his instructor for about four hours. He shot landings and the like. Then he was told to land and taxi on the tarmac. At that point the instructor climbed out. He said, “I’ll see you.” At that point Dr. Mason did some soul-searching: do I have enough confidence to take off, and even if I make it off, can I land?
This flight was his first solo flight, and yes, he made it.
He says that he is proud of how far the service has come in becoming integrated.
In Dr. Mason’s B-25 pilot career with the Tuskeegee Airmen, even though he did not see combat, he achieved something perhaps more important: he was one of the men who would undergo extreme segregation and prejudices to pave the way so that no matter what your color, if you wanted to, you could still serve your country.