-...recorded, which is good,
so that means any teachers out there,
if you want to show this to multiple sections
of your class, obviously,
we know only a certain amount of students can watch with us live,
and that's A-okay.
I will be sending you this recording after the program
so you can watch at your convenience,
and then just to make sure everything is playing
A-okay now live,
follow those important setup instructions
that you see underneath the image
of our current special exhibit, Fighting For The Right To Fight.
So first off, as you can see there,
close out all open programs on your computer,
especially any programs that are using Internet on here.
Adobe Connect is very bandwidth intensive,
and so that will help out with that
so things don't slow down or lag.
Anything ever freezes or stalls,
just kind of refresh and join in with us again.
If you couldn't hear the music or if you can't hear me,
I'll try to speak up as loud as I can,
but just kind of give us a shout.
Let us know if you can't hear us very well,
and we'll try to adjust from there,
but make sure your volume is up to the max on your computer,
and I think that's pretty much it,
and so, as I said, it's me, Chrissy, here.
Also with us from the museum is Shelby Johnson.
She will be monitoring your questions coming in,
so you'll see how we'll open up the floor
for questions in just one second,
and you'll sometimes see her typing in, as well,
so she's kind of behind the scenes, helping us out here,
providing me with some of your students' questions
so make sure we can ask these wonderful gentlemen
as many as we possibly can,
so you may be hearing her in the background.
So let's actually transition,
and let me show you kind of this new area
that we'll be moving into.
First off, if you look underneath the PowerPoint,
you'll see that Q&A area.
Now, different from the chat section, that will work --
You know, no one else will see the questions that you send in
except for me and except for Shelby,
and Shelby will be recording some of those.
Of course, we won't be able to answer all of them
or discuss all of them today,
but please type them in there at any point,
and we'll try to see how many we get to.
Now, I'm going to start my webcam
so you can actually see all of us.
Let's see if we can --Oh, let me fix this really quick.
Uh-oh.
You can only see the tops of our heads.
We don't want that.
Let's try that again.
All right. Okay.
Now, they can see.
We can see each other, and they can see all of us.
You can wave out to the world.
There's thousands of students watching us right now.
I know you can't tell that, but there are.
I promise. -Welcome.
-I'm so overjoyed and ecstatic today.
I've been looking forward, actually, to this webinar
since we, like, knew you guys were coming here to New Orleans,
so I've been kind of having a little countdown
since, you know, to this really exciting event,
and I know the students are looking forward to it, too.
-Thank you. -Good.
-I wanted to introduce you all first,
and I brought up some of your old pictures.
You guys can see in the corner there.
Next to me is Colonel Charles McGee
in the red, as you can see, in the middle,
and on his other side to his right
is Lieutenant Colonel George Hardy.
As you all know already, they are Tuskegee airmen.
I'm going to turn it over to your questions
in just one second,
but I thought I would just kind of give a brief overview,
especially for those of you who aren't studying
World War II yet,
just to give you a sense of why we're here
and what we're talking about.
So actually to bring it before the war,
in spite of adversity and limited opportunities,
African-Americans have played a significant role
in all of U.S. Military history.
However, being denied military leadership roles
and skilled training because many believed
they lacked qualifications in combat duty,
before 1940, African-Americans were barred completely
from flying in the U.S. military.
These men next to me and the Tuskegee airmen
that they were flying with silenced doubters
and proved their skill and expertise in the air
during World War II.
They are the first African-American pilots.
They will tell you about flying these kind of dangerous mission
all over the skies of Europe and North Africa during the war
and actually after World War II, as well.
So what we're going to do today is,
we're going to kind of break it up into four main sections,
and I will also be, in addition to you typing in your questions,
I'll be asking you all some questions, too,
so that actually brings me to our first poll question
of the day that I'm going to bring up here,
and then we'll actually be able to see how they respond.
So what I didn't tell you all, though,
is that the military at this time
is totally and completely segregated,
and I just want to make sure everything knew
what that definition meant before we move forward,
so I'm asking you all,
and I'm asking you to vote on it, what is segregation?
And I'll post the results in just one second, so is it --
Let's see, here -- A, unfairly treating a person
or a group of people differently from other people,
B, an unfavorable opinion not based on reason or knowledge,
C, the action of setting someone apart from other people
or D, an oversimplified image of a person or group.
I'm going to let you all vote. I see --
Don't you see it changing, there?
People are voting.
They're changing their answer.
So I know.
This is tricky, actually, so we'll see what you guys think.
I'll give it another second before I reveal.
-You guys know...
-All right.
So I'm going to broadcast results.
It's looks like we're relatively evenly split.
It's looks like A has a little bit of a lead,
but those of you who actually voted,
"C, the action of setting
someone apart from other people,"
that technically is segregation.
So as I told you, the military
is completely segregated at this time. All right.
You'll have more opportunities for polls in just one second.
I'm going to hide this, make this go away.
All right, and so, gentlemen, if you don't mind,
I'd love to kind of start with you and chat
about your early life, your childhood.
Can you tell us first, both of you, where you grew up,
and kind of our first questions from students, too,
is why did you, then, eventually decide to join the armed forces?
And that's from Mrs. Taylor's class from Lawrence
Middle School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
That's a lot in the first question, but --
-Well, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio,
but left there in third grade.
Keep growing up through Illinois and Iowa.
Had parents and grandparents said,
"Go to high school. Go to college,"
so I was in college when I entered the service,
had finished 2 years of college,
but essentially, I got into it
because I was avoiding the draft.
Had a draft card, learned in ROTC how to handle a rifle,
and that kind of met them on the ground,
heard about aviation,
passed the exams for pilot training,
but after my first flight,
I knew I'd made the right decision
because I fell in love with aviation.
-Great. Thank you.
-I'm George Hardy.
I grew up in South Philadelphia, went to school there,
but when you talk about race separation,
I walked to school to the west, went to an all-black school,
the teachers, the principal and all the students.
But that was through the sixth grade.
In the seventh grade, I walked to the east,
where the school was predominantly white,
predominantly Italian and Jewish,
and that was seventh and eighth and ninth grade.
Then, I went to South Philadelphia High School,
farther south for me, predominantly Italian area,
and of 281 in my graduating class,
only four were Afro-Americans,
so it shows you the change in my going to school,
but I graduated in June of 1942.
I turned 17 that same month, but the war was going on,
6 months before the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor,
and my brother went in the service in '41.
I wanted to go in the service,
but my father wouldn't sign the certificate to go in at 17
because I wanted to go into the Navy at that time.
-Mm-hmm. -But he wouldn't sign,
so I had to wait until 18, but in the spring of 1943,
I got the chance to take the aviation cadet exam,
and they gave it to people who were 17
if you were a high school graduate.
I took it and passed it, and I was sworn
in as a private in the Reserve, which meant when I turned 18,
I didn't have to register for the draft.
They reserved me for aviation cadet training at Tuskegee,
and I turned 18 in June of '43 and later that month,
I received orders, active duty.
I went to Keesler Field for basic training,
then to Tuskegee College Training Detachment
and entered aviation cadet training in December '43,
graduated in September '44
and ended up going overseas in the early part of 1945
and flying over the skies of Europe in a P-51 in March
and April 1945.
I was 19 years old then. -Wow.
Thank you both, and actually, we will see that P-51 just shortly,
the one that you all saw yesterday.
Everybody, just to kind of fill you in and clue you in,
we are actually going to be dedicating a P-51 Mustang
that is very much in the likeness of planes
that both of these gentlemen flew later this evening.
I'll give you all the details, and I'll show you
some really cool pictures of them
building that plane in just one second.
So what we're going to move to now,
and I've got, actually, a lot of questions on this
that I'll get to in just one second,
but it's training, and before I --
As I said, before we kind of talk a little bit more,
I have one more poll question for the students
because, actually, I got this question for you all.
A lot of people were asking me this,
but I was going to turn around and ask the students instead.
A few students asked me,
"Well, why is this group called the Tuskegee airmen?"
So we're going to let them respond and see what they think,
so is it,
A, Tuskegee was the code name
for the first overseas mission,
B, they trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama,
C, many men lived near Tuskegee, Alabama --
No, as we know,
these two gentlemen did not grew up there --
or D, Tuskegee was the nickname of the trainer planes they flew.
All right. It looks like they know.
We've got a smart group that we're talking to, here,
so I'm going to broadcast the results.
Yes, oh, it keeps changing.
82% of you, as I was just looking right now, are --
Yes, B, training at Tuskegee Institute,
and I thought in addition to the questions
that you all will be answering,
I actually have a really neat video clip
that I want to show the students
of some of the training in Tuskegee.
So what I'm going to do, actually, for us here,
I'm going to pause our video and audio.
♪♪
-Deep inside Alabama is a famous school
called the Tuskegee Institute.
It was founded on July 4th of 1881,
and since that Independence Day,
it has graduated many thousands into agriculture,
into science, into industry.
This school was the first of its kind,
and its founder, Booker T. Washington,
was a pioneer who broke open a road for others to follow.
You can't make a fighter squadron
out of concrete and aluminum and a can of paint.
It takes men.
A chemistry student, a welder,
a shoe salesman must learn how to fly.
A group of average Americans must become a team
of fighting men with wings.
♪♪
There's a new world up here.
A man has to learn his way around.
It takes many weeks of learning to make a fighter pilot,
and a lot of that learning is done in a hard, wooden chair
because a fighter pilot is a combination of a mathematician
and an athlete,
a scientist and a sharpshooter.
He's got to know what goes on inside his plane.
The heart of his fighter is steel and copper.
Its bloodstream is gas and oil,
but its brain is the man who flies it.
Squadron after squadron out of Tuskegee
flying P-40s first, tough little planes,
then striking with Thunderbolts, P-47s,
then riding the Mustangs, P-51s.
No, it was never easy for these men.
They were pioneers, and no pioneer has it easy.
They fought lies.
They fought heartbreak, and they won.
Now, they fight the enemy on his own soil.
[ Gunfire ]
♪♪
They fought the enemy, and not without loss.
Out of the first class to graduate almost 3 years ago,
only a handful are left alive
so that liberty might not perish from the Earth.
♪♪
Three years have passed
since the founding of Tuskegee Airfield.
750 pilots have been trained.
50% of them have been in combat, and this is...
-So we're going to go back live here so you can actually see us,
and we'll be moving again here shortly.
So you all saw a little bit about the training at Tuskegee.
Now, we've gotten a lot of questions already,
and one common one that Shelby keeps telling me
that's popping us is how old you gentlemen are.
Would you mind telling everybody how old you are?
I know that's a funny question.
-Well, I think George already mentioned --
Only, I was all of 22 when I went into the service,
but I'm glad to tell you, as of last December 7th,
I reached 96 years.
-96, wow. -George?
-Well, June of last year, I turned 90, so.
-90. Wow.
-I have another birthday coming up this June.
-Awesome.
Well, isn't that amazing, everybody?
And they traveled here to New Orleans just, as I said,
to do this whole big day, so they're not done.
-Nope. -That's for sure.
So I want to start off with a couple more student questions
that we've had typed in.
The first one about -- We're going to be talking
a little bit more about your training.
This comes from Madison.
She attends Velma Jackson High School in Camden, Mississippi.
She was asking, "What obstacles and challenges did you have
to go through in order to become an airman?"
-Well, I think an obstacle, really, was acceptance
because from the 1925 Army War College,
it determined that we were physically qualified
to do service work,
but not mentally and morally qualified
to do anything technical,
which eliminated us from being considered,
getting into flying an airplane, so the opportunity came,
and, of course, we can talk about the results of it later.
-Sure. -Of course,
I think the biggest thing was the racism we ran into.
You know, growing up in Philadelphia,
there was racism there, but not the way it was in the South,
and three of us scheduled to go to Tuskegee in 1943
had to go to Keesler Field first for basic training.
They gave us Pullman tickets, the three of us,
and the rest of the car was all white.
We went to Cincinnati and everything was fine.
We ate in the dining car, but out of Cincinnati,
the dining car --
We still had our Pullman tickets.
The dining car was originally segregated,
and that's when we hit it for the first time
when we went to the dining car.
Most of the dining car was tables for whites,
but they had a heavy curtain across a few tables at the end,
and all the colored people had to eat behind that curtain,
and the curtain was weighted
so that when you went through the curtain,
it would always close so that the white people
wouldn't see the black people sitting behind a curtain,
and that was our real introduction
to racial segregation in the South,
and that, to me, was the biggest obstacle.
-Because both of you gentlemen
originally came from the north, right?
So was it kind of, as you said,
shocking when you came down here?
Yeah?
-You know what, right when you cross the Mason-Dixon line
and have to change your seat in the railroad car,
and as George mentioned,
the dining setup was a big change for me, as well.
-Well, the thing is, in Philadelphia,
you still had racism and whatnot,
but once you got below the --
into the South, it was legislated by law.
-And backed by law. -And backed by law,
so if you didn't comply with it, you could be arrested.
-Another question we have about your time during training,
"What feeling did you have when you flew an aircraft
for the very first time?"
Do you remember how that made you feel?
-Well, for me, it was a real, real joy to be able to loop,
roll, and spin,
see the sky above, come back, put your feet on the ground.
Well, I'd put this this way.
I fell in love with flying. -Right away?
-Right away.
-Yes, I fell in love with flying right away.
Geez, I loved it. It was great.
I went through pilot training, graduated,
and started flying the P-40 for training
and then the P-47 combat training for overseas.
It was then that I drove an automobile for the first time,
drove it one time before I went overseas,
and I learned to drive overseas on Jeeps
and pickup trucks over there.
-Okay, so, Shelby, any more kind of about training
that you feel like we want to bring up now?
Or we can also -- Just so everybody knows, too,
we'll have a general kind of open Q&A after,
so we'll talk about each of these individual segments.
Then we'll really --
-Can I still say something about...
-Oh, yes. I'm so sorry. Yes.
-...the way Tuskegee airmen, the way...
-Please do, Lieutenant Colonel Hardy.
-After the war, we trained in Tuskegee,
but we didn't consider ourselves --
We never referred to ourselves as Tuskegee airmen,
but in the 1970s,
we formed as a national group, the Tuskegee Airmen --
-1972. -Yeah, and we adopted the name,
the Tuskegee Airmen.
I think a lot of that came from the fact that in the 1950s,
a fellow named Charles Francis wrote a book.
The title was
"The Tuskegee Airmen: The Men Who Changed a Nation,"
and that book, I think, was one of the main reasons
why I wanted to name the name to be Tuskegee Airmen,
and so we're Tuskegee Airmen, Incorporated.
-So was it something that you voted on?
Was it a name -- Yeah. Oh, interesting.
-At a convention.
-Yeah, we adopted it at a convention, Detroit,
Washington, D.C. and L.A., and in those first 3 years,
established a national organization
called Tuskegee Airmen, Incorporated.
We did change from being a military organization
to education and charitable
so that our legacy could be passed on
to the young people of today,
and we now have 50 chapters around the country.
-That's really amazing. -The organization
still continues.
The people running it were not at Tuskegee.
They're too young for that,
so the older people passed the torch to them
because we do have a scholarship fund
and other things that should be maintained,
and so this continuing organization of Tuskegee
Airmen will carry that on.
-So we're documented Tuskegee airmen,
as they say, making us official,
but we have other members of the organization.
-Well, thank you. Actually, I didn't know that.
See, I learn -- Always when I do these webinars,
I learn way more, too, which is great,
so I'm learning a lot with the students, as well.
So I actually want to kind of move on to combat, and --
We actually saw our wings for this man.
But before I really, as I said,
ask you guys some more questions about combat,
I actually wanted to show you all a little bit more
about this P-51 that the museum has restored.
So this restoration, as you can see in kind of the top
left-hand slide of the PowerPoint area there,
was actually not restored here on site.
It was restored at Flyboys Aeroworks in California
for nearly 2 years, so this particular P-51 --
Let me actually show you a couple more pictures.
So this is what it looked like in California
before it was shipped over here,
and here, you can see now, all loaded up and ready to go
and make that cross-country trip from California to New Orleans,
and then after that, this was, I think,
maybe day 1 or day 2 of them
assembling this plane inside of the building,
and then the last picture I want to show everybody.
This is actually a picture I took yesterday
when I went over across the street with Colonel McGee
and Lieutenant Colonel Hardy
to the the plane for the first time.
Newly restored, and it was painted
in the likeness of the plane that Roscoe Brown flew,
one of your good friends, right?
-Yes. -Yeah.
So tell me, this is my personal question, so sorry, students.
I'm going to ask one, and that's it.
Tell me how it felt when you saw that aircraft
on the ground there, in a museum for the first time.
-Well, to see the plane that we had learned to love
and the plane that gave us altitude,
range, and speed capability
beyond anything else prior to that,
it really allowed us to do a creditable job.
It was a real joy,
and to see it in the colors of the 100th squadron,
and know our friend, with the name Bunny on it.
-Yeah. -Both of us knew Roscoe Brown.
Sorry he isn't here.
He's not very well these days, but it was a real pleasure,
and to know that it'll be a part of the future history
of the Air Force experience is really great.
-So, yeah, we were documenting this moment
when you guys saw it for the first time.
-Well, it's good to see that airplane.
Just looking at the airplane, you see the red tail back there
and the red spinner,
that was the colors designated by the 15th Air Force,
but right behind the prop, there's red also.
That designates the 100th fighter squadron.
The three other squadrons had different coloring
right behind the prop.
-Behind the spinner.
-Behind the spinner, on the prop,
designating their --
And that designated us 99th, 301st, or 302nd,
but the red right behind, that spinner red, 100th.
-But, you know, to speak of the other aircraft that we flew,
all of us, we trained on the P-40,
and only the 99th fighter squadron flew the P-40
in combat, in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy,
and the other three single-engine fighter squadron
went directly to Italy,
and we switched over and flew the P-39 Bell Airacobra,
doing harbor and coastal patrol out of Naples for a period.
Then the group was picked to move
from the tactical work to strategic,
and that is escorting our bombers
to prevent the heavy losses by the German Air Force,
and we switched to P-47 Thunderbolts for a period,
and then finally the P-51 Mustang that you're picturing.
-Incidentally, I might mention,
we talk about the pilots and all of these things,
but the maintenance people aren't necessarily mentioned
all the time,
and you realize that when the 332nd went overseas,
they were flying P-39.
That was an airplane with the engine behind the pilot,
and they flew that up until the spring of '44.
Then they switched to the P-47, which is a single-engine plane,
heavy airplane.
They flew that in combat for only a month,
and then in July, they switched to P-51.
That meant that the maintenance people had to work
from the 39 to the 47 to the 51,
so they had to adjust to maintain
those three different types of airplanes.
-That's difficult. -Hey, Chrissy?
-Yeah. -Before we move on,
we have a really good question from Lee Woodward,
and Lee would like to know
why there are swastikas on the plane?
-Oh, very good. Lee would like to know --
I don't know if everybody heard what Shelby said.
We can see there is a couple swastikas
on Roscoe Brown's plane.
Why was that?
-That means that he had two victories
against the German fighters that we were --
Our main purpose was to prevent those fighters
from destroying a bomber
and not allowing the bombers to do their mission because,
you know, every bomber lost, that was 10 American lives.
-Right. -And that was our purpose,
to save American lives and allow the bombers to do their job.
He had two victories.
I was fortunate enough to have one victory,
so I don't know that I ever got it painted on my aircraft,
but the swastika meant that he shot down two.
-Yeah. -And he was there.
In fact, George mentioned that because I had come home
before that mission to Berlin
where Roscoe scored his victories.
You could -- -Yeah.
He was on a mission to Berlin,
which was the longest mission of the 15th Air Force.
The 332nd shot down three of the German 262 jet airplanes.
They were much faster than we were,
but our planes were more maneuverable,
and our pilots were able to double back
and get on their tail and shoot them down, three of them.
-Yeah. -Pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Those German jets, couldn't they fly --
What was it? A hundred miles per hour faster
or something like that then the P-51...
-A hundred miles per hour faster, yeah.
-...and you were able to shoot them down.
-Well, you know, the jet was new at that time.
Somebody said, "Oh,
Somehow they're going pretty fast and smoking from behind."
But they were the first jets introduced into combat.
-Yeah. -Right.
Now, again, let me know if I have statistic right.
You all can correct me.
The Tuskegee airmen flew over 15,000 sorties,
1,500 missions destroying more than 260 enemy aircraft.
I found that stat on the website, so.
-That's the history of the 99th flying
North Africa, Sicily, into Italy and joining the 332nd,
and actually, our total work, though,
even when we weren't escorting bombers,
we had fighter sweeps
destroying the chemical and the oil factories.
We destroyed as many German aircraft on the ground
on fighter sweeps as we did in the air, though,
so it was key to destroying Germany's war-making potential,
is what it was all about.
-All right.
I'm going to turn it to the students now,
and I've got a lot of great questions here.
The first one comes from Aniya,
who goes to Westdale Middle School,
which is just, you know, down the road in Baton Rouge.
She wants to know, "Can you describe
what the conditions were like
when you're flying in that plane during, like, air combat?"
That might be a tough thing to do, but...
-Well, it's a good question, and the way to know
that the young people know
that technology has changed that picture.
We didn't have that type of pressurizations
and powerful engines and so on,
so it was, I'd say, rather rustic,
but we had to wear clothing
that kept us warm at that high altitude
where the temperatures are quite cold,
and we had to be prepared to wear oxygen above --
breathe oxygen as we went to altitude.
It was quite different.
Technology has really advanced in a way
that the young people need to be aware of,
where it's taken us today over the early piston-engine drivers
and as we moved into the jet age.
-Of course, I often feel funny when I look
at these pictures of people
flying in airplanes like a P-51 over Europe and whatnot.
You see them with the oxygen mask hanging down.
That couldn't be because one,
you needed oxygen at that altitude.
Second, your mike was in your oxygen mask,
and you just pushed a button on your throttle to talk.
If you didn't have your mask fastened on,
you'd have to put it up before you could talk,
so Hollywood can have people flying around
with their mask hanging down,
but in actual fact, once you took off, it stayed on.
-Yeah.
The other was that you didn't talk because that would be --
It was the only -- The leader did the talking.
Everybody else had to keep quiet, or you were in trouble.
-Yeah. -Yeah, right.
I was a second lieutenant. I didn't talk at all.
I just listened. -Well, we'll talk about --
I saw a couple questions pass by
about what you think of the Hollywood
take on some of the things you've done.
Maybe we'll open up the floor to that a little bit later.
I want to ask another question, actually.
This is from Velma Jackson High School
in Mississippi, again, but they were wondering,
I thought this was a good one,
"How did the war affect your lives physically,
mentally, emotionally,
you know, throughout the course of the war?"
I'm sure your emotions changed throughout something like that.
-Well, looking back on it,
the country really was coming out of 10 years of Depression,
and when America decided to help our allies in Europe
against Hitlerism and later against the Japanese,
the whole country was really behind the effort.
The jobs that became available in the war buildup,
and then, of course, being drafted or entering the service
to participate in helping win the war,
there was kind of a different atmosphere
at that time over what we did in World War II.
-Yeah, that was the thing I would say is,
World War II brought people together
because over 16 million people
went into the service during that period,
and back home, people worked, too, metal drives,
things like that, blood drives,
supporting the troops over seas.
Taxes were high.
People gladly paid their taxes,
everything to support their troops overseas.
And particularly, the troops in the field
came from all levels of society, from the poor to the wealthy.
The Hollywood actors and whatnot and actresses, everybody,
so many people were in the service,
and the country really worked together during the war.
-I'm sure they've seen the Rosie the Riveter posters.
-Mm-hmm. -Everybody was involved.
It turns out, although we were able to get into aviation
in the segregated way,
women were used for a couple of years
and then sent home, had to pay their way home.
In fact, the Women Airforce Service Pilots,
it was a wide group,
but they weren't officially recognized.
Their service wasn't officially recognized until 1976.
-And I think that was a period
when women really entered the workforce
because so many men went away.
Women were riveters, anything you name,
they did during the war to support the war effort.
-And I think that's one of the, you know,
biggest lessons we teach about World War II
is this idea of teamwork and togetherness,
you know, here in the country
and how it did bond people together,
you know, in those different activities.
Now, you've probably, I'm thinking,
answered a question like this a lot,
and I'm thinking we're getting this question
multiple times in the Q&A.
How did you deal with being --
Were you scared while flying in a plane,
scared in combat ever, or did that --
You couldn't be scared.
You just had to focus on your mission.
-Well, that's the way I'd put it.
If you were scared, you were in the wrong business.
But training prepared us for the tasks that we had to do
and what we might face,
and, yes, there were some occasions
where they called it combat fatigue
and that they had to take somebody
out of the active combat.
But by and large, as I say, training prepared us
for the many variations that we might face,
and training was good.
They didn't change the standard for us,
and we were able to meet it and perform successfully.
-Well, I would say that during the war,
although we were a segregated unit,
most of our instructors at basic and advanced
and preparing to go overseas, most of them were white pilots,
but they really, I thought, did a good job of training us
where everything was almost second nature to you.
And you get overseas, I don't remember ever being scared,
but that's the reason they want people 18,
19 years old,
you know, to go in, and they can just react,
you know, to the situation and not let fear take over.
-Yeah. -Yeah. With the training we see.
-So the next question,
this one is kind of interesting I thought,
from Shaniya from Island Middle School in Louisville,
Mississippi, she was asking, did you have to --
So, I'm sure your planes got damaged
in all the different missions.
Do you have to pay for that, she was wondering?
-Well, fortunately, we had the government
to provide the facilities,
but somebody was paying taxes,
so we actually were paying for it certainly.
But the war buildup, and of course,
but when the war was over,
a lot of surplus they put around the world practically.
But that's an interesting question,
one that effects how we operate and perform today.
-Yeah.
All the pilots and people flying didn't have to pay for anything.
If their plane was damaged in combat,
they just brought it back,
and a crew chief then took care of everything, so.
-Something not right, they fix it and get it back into service.
And sometimes it had to be pushed into the bone yard.
-Do you have any sense of how many planes --
Do you know all the planes that you flew
during the course of the war?
I mean, excluding, not including training.
So, like, in the --
Did you have a new plane every time, or did you have your
plane, like Bunny, for example, like,
you knew Bunny was your plane, you know, that kind of thing?
-Pretty much in the unit, we were assigned a plane
and had a crew chief,
but sometimes an aircraft is out for certain maintenance
because after certain hours it had to be inspected and so on.
In some cases, some minor damage maybe from flack,
anti-aircraft gunfire,
or there was damage to the aircraft,
so you'd fly whatever was available
based on the number of missions the squadron was asked
to perform on a particular day and time.
-Well, you know, a lot of people have the idea
that every fighter pilot has his own plane with his name on it,
but that's not true.
The squadron has a number more pilots than airplanes,
and I came in as a new guy, and I had no airplane.
Airplanes belong to the people who are senior in the squadron,
and when they flew, that plane went by their name.
Myself, I had no airplane.
When I flew, I took what was left over.
So one day, I'll fly a C-model and the next day a D-model.
It wasn't toward the end when I was able to fly one plane
for most of my missions,
but that plane still belonged to a senior pilot
there who wasn't flying anymore.
For as long as he was in the squadron, that was his airplane.
-You know, to put a --
-Chrissy, you have another question.
-Oh, yeah. Let's finish it up here.
-I was going to say, for the young gents, man,
a squadron back at that time was 32 pilots, 24 aircraft
and then a couple hundred technicians and mechanics,
airframe man and all that kept the plane flying,
and then the other support, medical, communications,
and so maybe another couple hundred people.
So that's what a squadron back then.
Little different now where technology has taken us.
-All right, Shelly.
What's the next question?
-Mr. Parker's ties class would like to know
approximately how many hours did you fly each day?
-Ooh. That's a good question. Okay.
Ooh, do you know that? Okay.
I'll repeat that for everybody just in case
if our mike isn't strong enough.
Mr. Parker's class wants to know how many hours you flew per day
if you can answer that.
-Well, for me, the missions varied on your assignment
and escorting of the bomber group, where their target was.
My average missions was probably 4 hours and 15 minutes.
The longest I ever flew a mission, 6 hours.
Had a few under that where they were close in,
and say, we were flying from the Adriatic side of Italy,
but all the way west of the oil fields,
as we mentioned earlier,
late in the war all the way north to Berlin
and also northwest from where we were,
southern France and during the Normandy landing,
we attacked units in southern France
to keep them from backing up the German units
facing the Normandy landing.
The average, mine was about 4 hours and 15 minutes.
Yours? -Well, that varied.
When I got over there, I was with the strategic Air Force,
15th Air Force.
And you would fly normally one mission a day
with the bombers that flew one mission a day.
But the 99th, when it first went over,
was supporting tactical units, the troops on the ground,
and sometimes their pilots would fly more
than one mission a day as needed, see.
But once you got to strategic air, escorting bombers,
the bombers would usually fly one mission a day,
and that's it.
So in 15th Air Force, 332nd, we normally flew one mission a day.
-And then maybe the last one
for this particular section will come from,
this is Ms. Williams' class
in Jennings High School in Jennings, Louisiana.
How did you both feel being a black man fighting for a country
that was oppressive to your race?
I mean, is that something that you thought about
while you were overseas?
-Well, I never thought of it not being my country.
The country had declared war,
and we were behind supporting what was taking place,
so I never looked at it as being otherwise.
-No, I didn't either.
Growing up in school, I learned about American history.
I loved this country. It was my country.
And so I'm flying for my country,
and that never bothered me about this thing of segregation.
As far as flying and going to war, it's for my country, too.
-I think the other side of that,
I often talk about, well, what's your attitude?
And mine was the old "You treat other people like
you want to be treated."
If you had that type of respect, it paid off as far as
I was concerned in accomplishing,
and I couldn't have written a script for better opportunities
than I had serving our country.
As George and I have both not only in World War II,
but in Korea and Vietnam.
-All right.
We're going to kind of move forward
a little bit and talk about coming home.
Of course, then your future career, too,
and then kind of the legacy of everything
that you gentleman have achieved.
Now, I've got a lot of questions for this section,
so bear with me here.
The first one, students want to know,
what kind of welcome did you receive
when returning home from the war?
Is that maybe a complicated one to you?
-It's complicated to maybe the word welcome.
-So, yeah.
Not the right, even the right word, right?
-Yeah.
Even though we had dispelled the biases so long
that had been part of the policy and separating us,
we were still segregated when we came home.
Although they had a rest camp, I came home November '44.
They gave us a week of rest from combat, and mine
was in a hotel in Atlantic City,
and they said that was the first time
a black was sleeping in the room,
not in the room to make up the bed.
-Wow. My gosh.
-And so there were many aspects
that that part of our society living hadn't changed,
and so it was still segregated.
You couldn't go into any restaurants you want
and get food or a room at a hotel,
so it took some time,
although our experience dispelled
the biased internalizations
that had been part of that policy.
It took some time and some action by the Air Force
well after the war when they separated from the ground forces
to realize that integration was essential to a good unit,
using people based on their training
and the experience and where needed,
not their color of their skin and that type of thing.
So what we accomplished, although it took a few years
for change to take place, was still important.
-Well, I came back from overseas in August 1945.
The 99th was really deactivated over there and reactivated here
as part of the 477th composite group under Colonel Davis,
but I came back in '45, went to Tuskegee,
and everything was the same outside.
Segregation was still in full force.
But I was in Tuskegee till it closed in '46
then went to Lockbourne for a few months.
Then I was released from active duty in November of '46.
Went to NYU School of Engineering '47,
got married that same month.
Anyway, I returned to active duty in June 1948.
In April of '48, the chief of staff of the Air Force,
the Air Force was created in September 1947.
Seven months later, in April '48,
the chief of staff of the Air Force,
General Carl Spaatz announced that the Air Force,
in the interests of economy and efficiency,
were going to do away with racial segregation.
That was publicly announced, and 4 months later,
President Truman issued an executive order
saying that the Army, Navy, and Air Force will submit
their plans for racial integration.
And that's when it started with racial integration,
and fortunately, I went to school at Keesler Field
in September 1948,
and the plans for racial integration
weren't turned in to the Department of Defense
until January 1949, but at Keesler in '47,
those are there from Tuskegee.
The black people going to school there eventually were integrated
because we were,
for the first time in September '48,
Don Simmons from Chicago, he's a brown-skin,
whatnot, he was the first one from Lockbourne.
They had no, he said, never had any black officers there,
so they didn't have a separate BoQ for them,
so Don Simmons was put in a BoQ with all whites,
World War II barracks, common restroom facility.
I came a few weeks later, and I was in that barracks, too.
And when we flew, I would fly a B-25.
That's what we had to fly, and 90%-some of the time,
I was the pilot, and everyone but the copilot,
everyone else was white,
and that started in September 1948.
That was at Keesler Field.
And I graduated in '49, but the Air Force,
I guess their plan to integration
was approved in May of '49,
and the end of June, the Air Force had moved.
They deactivated the 332nd fighter group,
and within a very short period of time,
everyone at Lockbourne received orders,
hundreds of people, to white units all around the world.
So the Air Force was the first service
to really racially integrate.
The Army's plan was disapproved in '49.
They resubmitted in 1950,
and they started integrating about the time
of the Korean War.
-Korean War. -Now, Keesler, for some folks
that aren't from this general area of Louisiana
and Mississippi, is in Biloxi, or near Biloxi, Mississippi.
So did you -- It was integrated on base.
When you left base, though, there was still --
Jim Crow was still in full effect, right?
-Well, in 1948, they didn't say they integrated,
because integration, segregation was still part of the land,
part of the law.
But what they did was,
they just didn't create separate barracks for colored officers
because they didn't have any prior to that time, see?
They just quietly put us into white BoQ,
and we could go to the club then.
We flew as pilot with the copilot.
Everybody else on the plane, white,
and we did that, but quietly.
They didn't announce it to anybody.
We just did it. -It wasn't publicized.
-Yeah, right, right.
Now, you said, you know, you didn't think about being treated
necessarily as second-class citizens
when you were overseas fighting in the war,
but when you returned home, are --
Another question, actually, there's two schools
that asked this kind of same question.
How did you feel when you came back from the war and, you know,
you saw kind of the same sort of segregation here in our country?
Did you feel like you needed to act
or do something to change that?
-I personally still felt that you always do your best
in whatever you're doing and still treat others
like they want to be treated.
My first integrated assignment was in Salina, Kansas.
I got along fine on base in my work,
but I never got my family to Salina, Kansas
because the community just hadn't changed that much.
Their attitudes were still not up
to where the service was focused on taking us,
but fortunately, that base,
because of draw-down on the World War II buildup,
it was closed, and I went up to California.
But even there, things were fine on base.
Off base was still a problem with the housing, and so on.
So I might say that, although we had performed well
and dispelled some of the attitudes,
still took some of the civil rights action
later in the early '60s
to continue that direction that equality and opportunity
shouldn't come from happenstance at birth
but based on the education and experience
and their performance.
-Well, you know, you can go several ways on this.
I got out of the service in '46,
and my primary means was to catch up
and to get an education.
I wanted to be an engineer.
I got married, worried about family,
and these are priority items.
You worry about that more than anything else.
And so that's what you follow.
I needed to.
I had to have an education.
But I went back into the service,
and I got my education in the service.
I went to, got a B.S. in electrical engineering
at Institute of Technology,
and later they called me back to go to graduate school,
so I received a masters in the service.
So I got my education in the service.
So it's one of those things.
I had goals that I wanted to meet, and that was it.
I achieved those goals.
-Again, it's attitudes because,
for a number of years after the Air Force integrated,
we got assignments overseas
that we were still not getting here in the States.
I commanded a unit in the '50s in Philippines
for a couple years,
wouldn't get that kind of assignment back here at home.
Same way, even commanded a unit later in Vietnam.
We mentioned they closed Lockbourne.
Their base, which was a wing based operation
with Colonel Davis as our commander then,
the commander of the wing, I became wing commander
of Richards-Gebaur Air Base in June of '72,
and they really here in States
over those period of years from '49 to '72,
things changed very rapidly after that as attitudes changed,
and things became open
throughout the service opportunities.
But again, we experienced that slow buildup,
slow change of attitude to realize that, as I said,
your education, your potential and abilities
that should speak for you
and not have to stand for a group.
-Thank you.
Those are just such wonderful answers.
I kind of want to --
We only have about looks like 10 minutes or so left.
I just would like you both to kind of briefly talk
about the rest of your career,
especially in the military flying in Korea and Vietnam,
and tell them about that.
I know we're obviously focused on World War II,
but a little bit on the rest, yeah.
-Well, for me, I don't know.
Still I enjoyed flying, had great opportunities
and actively flew 27 of my 30 years,
but the flying, in World War II,
we had declared war and provided the wherewithal to win the war.
Unfortunately, Korea and Vietnam were using military power
for political purposes,
and in politics, you really don't win it
because politics is a compromise.
So there was a lot of unhappiness
against service people after Vietnam time frame,
and some of that is going on today in what's going on.
But again, service for our country
to have a strong military to preserve
the freedoms that we enjoy and have here in America
that don't exist in so many countries around the world
is what's important.
-Now, let's see.
Shelby, do we want to open it up?
Do we have lots of questions?
I have a couple more.
-You have a lot of questions?
-Yeah. -Okay.
Well let's, while you're kind of handing over the questions,
and because the kind of final thing
I really want to talk about --
but I'm going to have the students answer it
first before you do --
You know, I'm going to bring in one more poll question
for students,
and that poll question is, it says, "What do you think,
students, is the most important legacy
of these gentleman of the Tuskegee Airmen?"
and then I'm going to have you guys take your turn
and kind of tell us, like,
the one thing you would love to share
with students about your service
and what it means to our country today.
While Shelby gives us a bunch of your questions
as we try to kind of answer them,
but I'm going to give students
your opportunity first to answer,
and then I'll pose that question to you.
So we'll give them a second to think.
So students are saying, they're answering,
so we've got a couple coming in.
The integration of all races into the armed forces,
helping to fight racial stereotypes,
desegregation of the military.
You gentleman called attention to the inaccuracies
and prevailing racism.
Wow.
Fought for freedom for our country.
All about having, you know, to overcome obstacles
and achieve your goals.
So that's what students -- Oh, my goodness.
Awesome.
I'll share all of these responses with you in 1 second,
and then actually I'm going to turn it to you
before I ask a few more of these questions,
but what would you say, yeah, is your --
What do you want to leave, you know, with students?
You know, what's the legacy of some of your achievements?
-Well, I'd like to leave the value of lessons
that sustained that's just as important for them,
but perceive, dream your dreams, find your talent.
Prepare. Get a good education.
Both read, write, and speak well, but develop your talents.
Perform.
Let actions be your goal in always doing your best,
and persevere.
Don't let circumstance be an excuse for not achieving.
We could have gone off in a corner with our head bowed
and said, "They don't like me, don't want me.
I'm not going to do anything for them."
That's not American.
-Well, I, in the service,
I learned when you're given an assignment,
find out what the assignment is,
and do the best you can on that assignment.
Each time I was given an assignment,
I did what I thought was a damn good job,
and it was recognized over the years.
The main thing is, you apply yourself.
Learn what you're supposed to do,
and make sure you do it to the best of your ability.
And you get ahead, and that's all anyone could expect
from anyone who's serving.
But just, the thing is, don't just take no
for an answer in something
if you feel you want to know something or do something
because, quite often,
you can work around it or still move ahead.
So be persistent in your goal of what you want to do.
-All right. That's awesome.
Now, we have about 5 more minutes,
so do you mind if I sneak in a couple more questions?
-Okay. -Good.
-Okay. So from the Journey home school,
I told you we were talking about,
like, the Hollywood depictions.
There's been a few movies about it.
There's "Red Tails" that just recently came out,
and "The Tuskegee Airmen."
How do you feel about your portrayal in Hollywood?
-Well, Hollywood takes license with any character.
As George mentioned earlier, you know, in the air,
you've got your oxygen mask off, and you're talking.
You know, radio silence was important in the combat zone.
So they put in things that they hope will get folks
in the theater and so on, and it distorts true history.
You know, the young folks like what they see
in football and basketball.
Now, everybody getting in the circle
and get themselves hyped up to go win the game.
Well, we didn't have to hype ourselves up.
We spent time with the mechanic and getting in the airplane
and ensured all was well to carry out the mission.
But that's Hollywood.
-Right. -George Lucas also did
"Double Victory,"
which is a documentary, and if you can see that,
then you can compare and understand
the difference in "Red Tails."
-Well, when I look at "Red Tails,"
first of all, the love story...
[ Laughter ]
This pilot flying over this town with his mask
hanging down to starboard,
and he sees a girl waving from her roof.
Then he lands somewhere many miles away, gets a Jeep
and drives right up to the house.
You know, we didn't have GPS then,
so I don't know how he was able to do that.
And then the story about the super,
the senior pilot who had a drinking problem.
I don't think they could have gotten away under Colonel Davis
without him finding out about it and doing something about it.
-He would have been out of the picture.
-He would have been out of the picture a long time ago.
-Yeah.
-Colonel Davis was, I'd say a hell of a commander, and --
-Right man for the right job at the right time.
-You're right. The man for the right job.
And something like that couldn't have happened under him,
I don't think. But that's Hollywood.
-Yeah. That's Hollywood.
Now, Naomi from Alaska wants to know,
"What are the medals on your jackets mean?"
They're looking at both of your jackets
and want to know a little more.
-Well, we received the, they call them service medals
for the war you served
and the period of time that you served,
and then some of the others,
such as Distinguished Flying Cross,
Bronze Star, and the air medals
are for our individual performance
in the assignments that we were given.
-And then Derek from Gulf Court High School wanted to know,
when was the last time both of you actually piloted a plane?
-Well, I'm sure the Commemorative Air Force
has those Red Tail P-51 flying line
saying that I was --
Well, it would be 3 years back now to get a ride.
It's a two place job, but it has a stick in the back,
and do a roll over the lake up there, Oshkosh Air Show.
Then a year later, one of the commemorative
air force units in Chantilly, Virginia
has refurbished a BT-13,
our basic trainer, and I got a chance to go up and fly that.
So still a thrill.
All I can say now, my flying days are probably over,
but if you got the seat open, I'm ready.
-Yeah. That's right. I like it.
-Well I flew the 51 at World War II
and B-29s in the Korean War,
but the last time I actually flew an airplane
was in Vietnam flying a gunship.
It was a combination.
It had been a cargo airplane, a two car airplane earlier,
but they made a gunship out of it, a AC-119K.
Had twin engines on it, but it was so heavy
they had to put two jet engines on it also,
so we had four engines on it,
and that's what I flew in Vietnam at night
looking for trucks,
taking supplies from North Vietnam
down through Laos and Cambodia,
and down to South Vietnam.
That was the last time I flew, and that was 1971.
-All right. And let's maybe close out.
We've got a minute left, but I feel like
we've kind of discussed this, but I feel like
it's an important one to bring home again.
Again, another one from Gulf Court High School.
They want to know, how do you feel you paved the way
for civil rights in our country?
That's a hard one to answer in a minute, right?
-Well, looking at the record, we had a incredible record
and any phase that you want to look at, compare equal to,
in some cases exceeding the performance of other squadrons
doing like work,
so all is well that ends well, and it ended well.
-That's the way I look at it.
World War II was really segregated,
and one of the things that World War II,
you never have a person of color over a Caucasian.
That was a thing of World War II.
And Korean War, I was flying with a white group.
At one time, I was the only person of color
in the 28th bomb squadron flying V-29s.
But then in Vietnam, I was Lieutenant Colonel,
and I was 45 then, but I was a commander of the detachment,
and all the pilots and navigators under me were white.
About 20 years younger, but they were all white.
So during my lifetime, I've seen that change.
It's been very comforting to me.
-My experience was similar,
commanding a unit in the Philippines for a couple years,
commanding 16th tac recon squadron in my year at Vietnam.
Again, performance and ability based on
the training and experience,
we were able to -- well, I guess I can say,
represent our country well and that's a change,
and it's to say the value of lessons has sustained us,
are good for you young folks today.
Just realize where technology has taken us into a new era,
and each of you are America's future.
-And so they mentioned Tuskegee Airmen,
we have an annual convention which we go to,
but the people in Vietnam,
although were much younger than me,
we have an annual reunion also.
It's in October, and I'll be with them
at Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
-That's great.
Well, I think on that note and with it being 1:01 Central Time,
we did it all.
We got it done.
I want to say thank you to both of you,
Colonel McGee and Lieutenant Colonel Hardy
for being with us today here at the museum.
Not only talking to students, but of course talking later
to a big crowd here at the museum.
If any of you are in the New Orleans region,
we're going to have them here today
for the P-51 dedication in our U.S. Freedom Pavilion.
I'll share a little bit more details on that for a second,
but let's wave to everybody out there
because we're going to transition over,
and they won't see us.
-Thanks for the opportunity to share with you.
-Thank you so much. -Let me --
So we're going to kind of transition
to kind of close this out.
You all will see, I think, hopefully,
a rotating slide show of our next programming.
So let me actually start off not there.
Let me go back here. Let's see.
So here is the presentation this evening.
Again, Colonel McGee and Lieutenant Colonel Hardy
will be joining us here at the Museum.
And, actually, the neat thing is,
whether you're here or you're not,
and that's A-okay because you can watch it,
because, in a similar way, we'll be live streaming.
So it won't be in this webinar platform,
but we'll be live streaming it, and you can just watch it
right from your computer via that link.
In addition to that, if you want more resources on this topic,
please check out our website for our current special exhibit,
"Fighting for the Right to Fight:
African American Experiences in World War II."
If you're in the New Orleans area, again,
it's up for about another month or so,
until May 30th, but all of the exhibit materials,
or many of them, are available online
including teachers' lesson plans,
and you can see some of those lesson plans
and additional websites
on the left-hand side for you to access.
And then the last thing I'll say before I sign off
is that we actually have one more student webinar
this school year, and, in May, please join
Ela Weissberger, a Holocaust survivor
and I, as we talk about her experiences.
She'll be in town for the children's opera "Brundibar"
which will be here, actually,
and we'll be staging it at the Museum.
She'll take a little time away from her...