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Gale Cleven:
We could use your help.

AlexanderJefferson:
We?

Gale Cleven:
There's a group of us figuring out our next moves, running scenarios. We can't just stay sitting ducks.

AlexanderJefferson:
Yeah, I noticed the new and improved super goons around.

Gale Cleven:
I got a plan for that.

AlexanderJefferson:
What would you need me to do?

Gale Cleven:
This. We need help charting the area to get out of here.

AlexanderJefferson:
Back on that first day, all the guys looked to you. You got the final say. Why didn't you gripe about us bunking at eight?

Gale Cleven:
Well, let's just say I at least knew you weren't spies.

AlexanderJefferson:
Ain't that a bitch?

Gale Cleven:
Gale Cleven, Major. 100th Bomb Group. Everybody calls me Buck.

AlexanderJefferson:
Second Lieutenant, Alexander Jefferson. 332nd Fighter Group. You can call me Alex.

Kirk Saduski:
Welcome back to the Masters of the Air podcast from the National World War II Museum. Joining us this week are Josiah Cross and Branden Cook, to discuss with us their roles as Tuskegee Airmen, Richard Macon and Alexander Jefferson. Hey, guys, how are you? It's good to see you, Branden. Josiah, good to see you again.

Branden Cook:
Good to see you. How are you?

Josiah Cross:
Good to see you.

Kirk Saduski:
So Lieutenant Jefferson wrote a book, and I know it was very important to you in your preparation. Remind us of the title of the book, actually.

Branden Cook:
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free.

Kirk Saduski:
Tell us a little bit about Jefferson's book.

Branden Cook:
It had a profound impact on not only the preparation, but myself reading his entire experience, which I can kind of even relate to. I was born in Toledo, Ohio, which is not too far from Detroit. I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, which is not too far from Atlanta.
So I was able to have a familiarity with that story and that transition for him. But being able to read and understand the mind of who this man was, a brilliant, smart man, very talented and skilled and drawing, and he liked building model planes. It had a really big impact on me for a lot of reasons. I mean, seeing the ins and outs of his struggles. This is still segregation.
Detroit wasn't as bad as the South, but Detroit still had its issues, and I think sometimes that's skipped over a little bit when we talk about this period in time where he's still having to go through a little bit of struggle and strife, even in Detroit, which is considered the North. Then he comes down to Atlanta, finishes school and he's always wanted to be a pilot. His dad told him hell no.
But once he graduated, he signed up for the reserve. But to see his process and his path as not only a man but a pilot and everything he had to go through and how he dealt with it, specifically through drawing, that was his biggest thing. But he had to be careful what he was drawing. He couldn't draw everything, or it would be contraband essentially.

Kirk Saduski:
We show in the series, he starts drawing for some of the other kreegies, so-called, for cigarettes and talk about that, and that was so interesting. I love the scene when you're in the bunk and you're drawing the pinup for somebody else's idea, their dream girl. Talk about that scene a little bit.

Branden Cook:
Yeah, it was a fun scene because he loves drawing. That was an easy way for him to pass the time, and he was able to find a barter system with that. But it was fun, really. I mean, Josiah is great to work with and just to get into this idea of the man's dream girl, but also I'm able to see my dream girl through that as well.
I always connect with artists in that way and being able to express yourself physically with a pen or a paintbrush and stuff like that. So to be able to do that in the show and to let my imagination run wild with that in that scene, I'm almost living vicariously through what this picture represented. That was amazing.

Josiah Cross:
To echo Branden's sentiment, last night made me think about-

Kirk Saduski:
Tell everybody what that last night was.

Josiah Cross:
Oh, our premiere. Our world premiere.

Kirk Saduski:
It was kind of fun, wasn't it?

Branden Cook:
Yeah, it was great, it was great.

Josiah Cross:
Yeah, it was. But the specific question made me harken back to the beginning of our preparation and Alexander Jefferson's book. And I think because Branden is playing literally the man who wrote that book, I was like, man, you got a lot, for real, because my guy didn't write a book. You know what I mean? And even Jefferson in the book referencing him. And again, they really didn't know each other, know each other.

Branden Cook:
And they did. They ended up building a relationship.

Kirk Saduski:
In the various training, throughout their training they knew of each other.

Josiah Cross:
Yeah. And that's what I meant.

Kirk Saduski:
But were not friends yet. But talk about that, Josiah.

Josiah Cross:
That was like, to Branden's point, even for us in the beginning, it's like, okay, who is this guy? And we're about to be together-

Branden Cook:
And wanting to have that friendship and connection.

Josiah Cross:
Exactly. And birthing this kind of kinsmanship, this brotherhood, because we're going to need it. And I think that the eloquence in Jefferson's book is what helped me shell out Macon fully to really put some bones on him, to really give him some character from the words of Jefferson, if that makes sense.

Kirk Saduski:
One of the key scenes, not only in episode eight but in the entire series is when Major Cleven comes in to talk to Lieutenant Jefferson, and basically enlist his help. And it's really the first genuine communication that we see between the white airmen and the Black airmen. Talk about that scene that you played with Austin Butler.

Branden Cook:
Yeah, Austin was great. From the very beginning, he was warm and welcoming, which made it easy for me to relax and get into it because you are walking in with Austin Butler. But he was very welcoming and warm and we were able to have a little bit of a chat and then go and do what we needed to do. So I was nervous, definitely, but I think I was able to use those nerves in a good way because there is probably some nervousness that happens.
Well, not even probably. There definitely is nervousness there. You're not sure what this interaction is going to be like. We're both in the same position, but are we going to now act together in that position, or are we still going to take these ideas from racist America at the time, all the way over here where it doesn't serve us?
So I was using all of that to try and feel Cleven out and feel the motivation out and see, am I going to get set up or is this genuine? Because we have essentially a common goal mentally, but can we get out of our own way of the ideals that America has instilled in us to work together?

Kirk Saduski:
The other thing that's interesting, and tell me if it helped both of you guys as actors, in the sense that as you walked in, you said you're nervous, this is Austin Butler, he's a big movie star. Well, of course in the camp, in addition to the racial element, there's also Major Cleven well, he's a major you're a second lieutenant, so that's right away.
But also the fact that Cleven was just as he was Fort Babbitt, he's a leader and something of a legend. He became that installer glue. Three, so here you are playing this young second lieutenant and all of a sudden this major, this one of the leaders of the entire camp who's coming in and looking for your help. Talk about that a little bit.

Branden Cook:
Yeah, you can liken it to the real life situation. I mean, I'm coming in to do my job essentially, but this is Austin and you guys have said I'm coming in with that as well. And it is kind of a reaching of hand like, hey, we need to continue this story and we need your help.
So I kind of looked at it like that. It's almost a meta in that way and it added so much to the scene, I think, because there is a tension and a pressure that starts and then is relieved. And I think that's how I felt when I first got there. There was tension and pressure personally, and it started there, but slowly but surely it was relieved.

Kirk Saduski:
You mean self-imposed?

Branden Cook:
Self-imposed, yeah. Because everybody was great. I had no issues on set. It was the best experience of my life, but I was very nervous, very nervous. But I was able to relax just as Jefferson was.

Kirk Saduski:
One of the things, Branden, we were talking about earlier is you mentioned that and at Playtone and Gary and Tom were very proud of Band of Brothers in the Pacific, and this is obviously in that lineage. It's from the Masters of the Air, and that's the heritage for Masters of the Air.
One of the other challenges you guys have is that by now I think a lot of Americans increasingly increasing, number of Americans know who the, at least have some idea who the Tuskegee airmen were, who the Red Tails were, if not who the three 32nd Fighter Group was. But it's been thought of the Tuskegee Airmen are kind of thought have been as a collective, the Tuskegee Airmen.
But now as you and I were talking about, Branden, you guys had the chance to give stamp individual characters like Alexander Jefferson and Richard Macon like we were able to do with Richard Winters and Carwood Lipton and Band of Brothers and John Basilone and the Pacific, et cetera. Talk about that. And again, these were real guys, so it isn't just playing a generic Red Tail. These are real men. Please tell us about that.

Branden Cook:
I felt a lot of weight and pressure with that in a great way because I wanted to bring honor and respect to this hero that has gotten a bit of do, but not on this scale and this level. As we were talking about earlier, we are now a part of a lineage of great storytelling with great storytellers that are able to do it at a very high level.
And to now have the opportunity for Richard Macon, Alexander Jefferson to be a part of that, these real human beings, I just felt a lot of pressure and wanted to handle that with a lot of care. And like we were saying earlier, that's one of my biggest regrets that I wasn't able to meet him because my hope was just that I did him justice and he was able to liken and smile and say, "I see myself in that young man that feels like me."
And unfortunately, I'll never be able to know that because he unfortunately passed. But there was a lot of pressure. I felt a lot of responsibility with that, specifically making him human. Like you said, most of the time a group or it's kind of generic, but you guys don't do generic. You guys make sure these are real human beings. We're going to bring them in this story and it brings that much more depth and touch to it. So I wanted to make sure that I did that justice.

Kirk Saduski:
Early on, one of the really key moments in the production, or at least the development of Masters of the Air is when we discovered that about 20 years ago, there was an oral history project where I believe every living Red Tail gave an extended interview and we had transcripts from all of them. So we were able... And this really helped us.
We knew Jefferson because of his book. He was probably always going to be a character. But Macon really emerged after reading all of these transcripts of all these oral histories and Macon seemed so interesting. So how helpful were those oral histories to you guys? Did you guys get a chance to go through those and get some sense of who these men were?

Branden Cook:
Yeah., There was the videos as well that I got to see. Jefferson did a lot of interviews comparatively to the other people, so that definitely helped me to get who he was. I got a lot from the book. I mean, his personality comes through the book, but those transcripts and those videos helped out a lot to get a little more essence of the man.

Josiah Cross:
Yeah, I think the transcripts for Macon, because I felt so sensitive in every step because it was a living, breathing man, and there's no reference point in a technical visual way. You don't want to disrespect in some type of way where I'm just leaning on my acting ability and I'm going to wear as to this was someone's grandfather.
So those transcripts helped tonally craft what I was able to do and his mathematicianship, him being a genius at such a young age and knowing how to operate these planes from a numerical sense, being in the air and being able to orchestrate. It's 1,676 miles until we get to DuPont, that gave me more of the spirit coupled with those transcripts to where I could feel safe.

Kirk Saduski:
And you mentioned age, and I'm asking all of the guys same questions. Remind us how old Richard Macon and Alexander Jefferson were.

Josiah Cross:
Richard Macon was 19 years old.

Branden Cook:
Yeah, I think. At the beginning.

Josiah Cross:
At the beginning, yeah.

Branden Cook:
Around the same. Young, about 19, 20.

Kirk Saduski:
Imagine.

Josiah Cross:
When I was 19-

Branden Cook:
I couldn't even imagine. Well, they said last night at the premiere you were 24, you were a old man that was-

Josiah Cross:
They called you pops.

Branden Cook:
That's shocking to me.

Kirk Saduski:
I'm going to ask you who Richard Macon was and who Alexander Jefferson is. Not who they were in history, but who you determined they were and how that informed your performance.

Josiah Cross:
I think for me to truly do that question justice, once all the preparation was out the way, all the research, all the historical contact was done to the point of no return, then you have to bring the human to the research. And I heard Austin say something interesting last night where there's no room for error in that type of character development, and you must be completely confident in that expression.
And for me, Macon, selfless. And I don't want this to get taken out of context, but I think what Mr. Hanks was explaining last night about these being essentially men fresh out of high school, there is a unconscious naivete to what's happening. I personally never even held a gun in my life, you know what I mean? So to imagine operating an airplane, not only operating it, but then having to shoot at other planes with people inside-

Kirk Saduski:
Not just an airplane, a P-51.
In different context, in the Empire of the Sun, the Christian Bale character refers to it as the Cadillac of the sky because it's just so fast and it's so maneuverable. So just to your point, that it's not just shooting a gun, it's flying the best airplane in the world and you're 20 years old.

Josiah Cross:
Exactly. And to just finish who Macon was to me, just selfless and that selflessness rested in the blissful ignorance of youth. But to be that committed and determined to something he probably couldn't even wrap his mind around to me was the mark of who he was and banning himself with these brothers. In the beginning, not really. And then forming these lifelong friendships and brotherhood with these men was who he was to me.

Branden Cook:
I think Alexander Jefferson to me was he was an artist in every sense of the word. I am in awe when I read his book, I'm in awe when I think about who he was as a man, and it's something I strive to be, have that well-rounded. He was truly a well-rounded, honorable individual, and it touches me that I was able to portray him in this capacity.

Kirk Saduski:
You guys had a couple of real big challenges, you two in particular. Because, and one of the challenges, how do you come in. You're major characters in our show, but you're introduced relatively late in the game, so we will have already seen seven episodes where the audience has gotten to know Cleven and Eagan and Crosby and Rosenthal.
You guys have to come in and make an impact really in the late inning. So just as actors, how did that affect how your performances and how you prepared?

Branden Cook:
It was a bit intimidating, I think at first, because I think one of the first scenes we shot was us coming into-

Josiah Cross:
The prison war camp.

Branden Cook:
Right. And so you had Germans and Americans and everybody was there as we were entering. Literally entering not only this space that you all created, but this war camp. And Josiah or Macon has a broken neck, and he did a great job.
I remember of setting that scene of what that really would've been like for Macon, and that helped me right away as well, as well as Shruti of just dropping in. And the background extras, the whole scene was kind of set. So where it was intimidating, it was easy to drop in because everybody was there and ready to receive what we were willing to give.

Josiah Cross:
Yeah, I think Branden hit it on the head. From a technical aspect, I would say as an actor, I think the cross boarding with the shooting for me is something I have gotten used to. So in preparation, I'm trying to prepare in a total kind of way where if we're dropped in that moment that we were dropped in, it's not linear where we entered the story at that moment in time.
And the rest of the guys from the Hundredth, they were literally lined up on the side. Because we were walking down that strip and I think DeMarco was on the side and he was trying to see-

Branden Cook:
I remember you guys or something.

Josiah Cross:
Yeah, I remember you guys. And seeing us. And it was like, oh, they already are dropped into the moment. And that kind of set the stage for us to, like Branden is saying, okay, they're welcoming us and bringing us in.

Branden Cook:
Because we hadn't met.

Josiah Cross:
We hadn't met any of them.

Branden Cook:
Austin Callum, we hadn't met anyone yet, anybody. And we were separated literally by a gate, but also before we even started shooting. So we were still thinking about, oh, we want to meet the guys. And we were literally separated. So like you said, to drop in and walk in, that it was almost easy. We were already separated.

Kirk Saduski:
Did you think about what it must have been like for Richard Macon and Alexander Jefferson in that situation back in 1944? Again, because this is A, they've been shot down, now they're prisoners of war. And now they're prisoner of war in a camp of essentially, I think there were about 12 Red Tails ultimately.

Branden Cook:
Yeah, they were about 12.

Kirk Saduski:
But what was that? How did that feel walking in and you're surrounded by all these white airmen and I think the way you guys played it, there was a certain amount of, well, you tell me. Was it trepidation? Was it anxiety? Was it uncertainty? What were you trying to convey?

Josiah Cross:
I think naturalistically the environment itself that Dee provided.

Kirk Saduski:
Remind us who Dee is.

Josiah Cross:
Dee Reese, our director, who brilliantly set the stage with such a massive scale with so much elegance and grace and nuanced perspective in her direction, because there was almost this tension that was so thick in the character development with the dichotomy between the white airmen and just me, him and Shruti essentially, and we're surrounded.
And also, these guys in real life are just cups of water. They're amazing. So when they're acting, it was kind of like, just go with it. Because I don't think there was any way to half step or in between play that I don't want to be mean to you. It's like that's what it was. And for a lot of reasons out of their control in a lot of ways where it's like now we're in this camp together, racism doesn't matter now. It can't matter.

Branden Cook:
It doesn't really serve us.

Josiah Cross:
At all.

Branden Cook:
I think the tension, like I said before, was kind of easy. And it was interesting because we didn't really know each other either.

Kirk Saduski:
You and Josiah?

Branden Cook:
Myself and Josiah and Shruti.

Josiah Cross:
Shruti Gholap.

Branden Cook:
We were still kind of mean each other too. So in real life, they may have known of each other a little bit, but as the actor going into the first scene doing this and not knowing of these people, but first time meeting them, it brings another element because we did end up leaning on each other like brothers while shooting.

Josiah Cross:
Literally.

Branden Cook:
Yeah, literally.

Kirk Saduski:
In your case, Macon's case literally because of the broken neck.

Branden Cook:
That as well. So we start off making sure that he's okay. That's a really strong way to start off our time together and really set the stage like that, having to lean on each other. Not only with the walk, but with helping him with the broken neck. We all three, Shruti as well. We left feeling like a brotherhood. We left feeling similar to how I think those guys felt. I think that's really special.

Josiah Cross:
I think specifically in the barn scene, I don't want to give too much away, but I think specifically in that barn scene, I think that was a critical and pivotal moment. I remember in Dee's direction-

Branden Cook:
Care.

Josiah Cross:
Yeah, before you did that, Branden was playing it a little cold, and then Dee was like, "Caress his neck, caress his neck." And then I remember looking up at Branden as Macon and I'm shaking. And then Jefferson is, "You're going to be all right. You're going to be all right."

Branden Cook:
It changed the scene so much that it was a great direction.

Josiah Cross:
It changed the entire scene and I feel like for them, that's probably one of the moments that really sealed it for them.

Kirk Saduski:
Thank you, Josiah. Thank you, Branden. Later in this podcast, we speak to historian Matthew Delmont for more on the history and context of the Tuskegee Airmen. But thank both of you for joining us today.

Branden Cook:
Thank you.

Josiah Cross:
I don't know. Thank you.

Branden Cook:
Thank you for the time.

Kirk Saduski:
I really appreciate it.

Josiah Cross:
It was an honor.

Branden Cook:
Thank you so much.

Kirk Saduski:
One of the major events portrayed in part eight of Masters of the Air is of course D-Day. Joining us now to talk about that, Conrad Crane, a research historian at the Army War College. Welcome, Con.

Conrad Crane:
Thanks. I'm honored to be here, really honored.

Kirk Saduski:
It's great to have you here.

Conrad Crane:
Great to be here. Always great to be in New Orleans.

Kirk Saduski:
Welcome back, my good friend Don Miller.

Donald Miller:
Thank you very much.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, let's go back to pre D-Day, and again, Eisenhower... So talk more about the fact that General Eisenhower now is essentially in charge of the Air Force, and he's interested in what is his strategic aim. It's essentially to eliminate the lift officer, so they can't oppose the landings, right? Can you guys-

Conrad Crane:
He wants to land the force. That's the whole thing.

Kirk Saduski:
And that becomes that odd phrase or that odd notion that the men in the B17 were being used as bait. We refer to that in the series. Can you guys talk a little... Explain what that was about.

Conrad Crane:
That really comes after Doolittle is brought in and there's a lot of disruption and the acre goes to the Mediterranean and spots comes to fill his role, take over the US Strategic Air Forces. And they launched this beginning of February, they start launching these very violent campaigns to drop the luftwaffe. Jimmy Doolittle goes into, I guess that the story is he goes into one of the fighter headquarters and there's a big poster on the board that talks about the main role the fighters is to bring the bombers home.
And Doolittle says, "That's not right. Your mission is to kill the Germans, shoot down the Germans." And he changes the whole direction of the Air Force. Before this, the fighters had pretty much been locked into the bomber groups, and the Germans would tend to avoid them until they'd have to leave, and then they would attack the bombers.
And all of a sudden, Doolittle says, "Your main mission is to kill German fighters." And it just changes the whole dynamic of the Air War. Obviously, the fighter guys appreciate it, but the bomber guys don't. There's all kinds of nasty comments that come out some of the bomber guys once they realize what's going on and the fact that they're basically, they become bait and it leads to some increased stress in the bomber crews, and they end up doing a number of surveys to try to figure out exactly what's going on with the morale of the bomber crews.
But the end result is, again, the luftwaffe takes heavy losses, and by the time you get to D-Day, you've got a German fighter force where the average experience level of German fighter pilots is a week or two. I mean, the losses have been phenomenal. Between February and June, the German Fighter Force is basically shattered.

Donald Miller:
They lost 75% of their force in the war. It's incredible that luftwaffe. I talked to a German pilot, long retired back in the 2005 I think it was, and it's now an off quoted comment. He said, every time I pulled my canopy shut, I felt I was pulling down the lid of my coffin. He said, "We didn't have a chance in the sky." They had better gasoline, high octane gasoline. They were quicker to punch.

Kirk Saduski:
You the American-

Donald Miller:
Yeah, quicker to the punch.

Conrad Crane:
Yeah, once they get the Mustangs and-

Donald Miller:
The Mustang's very fast, it's almost as fast as it had. The Focke-Wulf was the king of the air before that. That's an upgrade of measure Schmid. And with these mustangs, they not only, as Con said, went after the luftwaffe going in, but they went after them going out doing strafing missions.
A lot of American Aces, almost most American Aces are shot down doing strafing missions, Gabby Reski and people like that. Very dangerous missions because of the armaments that the Germans had on the airfields.
But what Con's describing really is a pilot killing campaign. And this throws a lot of people off about the bombing. Well, how the bombing couldn't have worked because look at all the planes they continue to produce. Well, they didn't have pilots and they didn't have gas.

Kirk Saduski:
We talked about, and Con you were referring to, there was some real problems for obvious reasons when the strategy changed and the flyers realized that they were being used as bait. Don, in your book, you expand on that, you talk about that there was near mutiny in some bases.
And at the same time, and factor this into the discussion, we've talked a lot about the benchmark was 25 missions. You did your 25, you could go home. Well, it was right at this time when Doolittle comes in that he raises it first to 30 and then to 35. And that's a little, to a lot of guys that would seem like you're changing the rules after the game started. So talk about the morale problems that caused in the early '44.

Donald Miller:
It kind of made sense because the original crews were there a long time because they weren't doing a lot of bombing. And by the time you get to the pre D-Day effort, the pre to D-Day, guys could rotate through in five and six weeks. They could get their 25 missions and they're flying so often.
And Doolittle's point was you really train the pilots. We're giving them a lot of hours, triple and quadruple number of hours that these young German pilots are going through in training. Then send them back to the states to train guys. They'll keep them here for the 35.
And again, these guys that show up at 43, I mean, I mentioned in my book. They're getting this briefing about, okay, you're here, you got 25 missions. As you get 25 missions, you get to go home, pause. But the average is six and a half. So these guys show up at 43, they're told your chances of completing 25 missions are... And I've gone through the numbers and 25% is about the right number. 75% of these guys are going to go down.

Conrad Crane:
You really did the research on that.

Donald Miller:
And so look at these guys in early 44 and they're being told you guys are now bait. If they weren't bait before and they were taking those kinds of casualties, what kind of cash are they going to take now? Where now they're really bait, but again, it's the decimation of the luftwaffe that's going to change the whole dynamic.
Doolittle had his own plane and he would fly around the bases because he's worried about morale. The story at the hundreds is somebody took a swing at him and yeah, there's real animosity here.

Kirk Saduski:
Was there understanding by the men or the crews of what the strategy was or did they-

Donald Miller:
They figured it out.

Kirk Saduski:
And did that in any way ameliorate the bitterness?

Donald Miller:
Again, they could tell that the German air force are becoming less effective. Their losses eventually do start to drop and it takes a while. And again, the casualties in the early days of February, March of '44 are pretty nasty. But eventually they can start seeing a difference as well. By the time they get to the end of the war, there's not a whole lot of German fighters up there at all.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, let's talk about the actual on D-Day itself. I know in the longest day, they make a big deal of they just sent up two fighters.

Donald Miller:
Well, they had more than that.

Kirk Saduski:
I understand that that was the movie, but talk about that because, and we mentioned it in the episode, in episode eight, that there really was almost no fighter opposition on the beaches on any of the five beaches. And that's really the proof of the pudding, right? That's what they were attempting to do.

Donald Miller:
Bernie Lay has a lot to say about that in his book. I mean, he had been shot down and he's in France in a small village about 60 miles from the beaches. And he notices how the German... The fear that the Eighth Air Force had was twofold. They thought that one part of it was right. Hitler was moving a lot of his fighter force from the eastern front to the cities because of public pressure.
And that's why he kept the flat guns moving all the time, even though they were ineffective. And then what the Air Force feared is their husbanding, these things in forest factories or forest highways, and we can't spot them yet, but they're hidden away. And so nobody knows. So I opened one chapter of my book with one of the Air Force commanders in a B17 flying over the beaches just to see if the luftwaffe will show up. He's not quite sure.
They don't think they will. They're listening to what Con talked about. They're listening to the pilot reports. They see a delimited luftwaffe, but they don't know is this a Hitler trick or that these planes going to go and Lay's worried about that as well. He's watching from this hideaway, and he sees that maybe three or four are up, and that's about it.

Conrad Crane:
Well, part of the whole campaign before D-Day, because they don't want the focus specifically on Normandy. They bomb airfields all over France. I mean, the German Air Force is being destroyed all over France. And again, the impact really shows up on D-Day. Though, ironically, because some of the adjustments they make to the bombing, the bombing is not very effective on D-Day. It tends to go a little bit too deep.

Kirk Saduski:
What were they trying to... Yes, of course. So when the B17s went past the beaches and tried to hit bridges, and what was the purpose of that? And again, you mentioned not very effective.

Conrad Crane:
Well, they wanted to do some things on the beach areas as well, but because they also wanted to be safe, they're trying to make adjustments because they're trying to handle the landing craft. But the end result is that the delays they tend to put on their bombing means their bombs are dropping fairly far behind the beaches, so they don't really get the beach support that they're necessary.
Obviously it doesn't have a major impact anywhere, but probably Omaha is obviously the nastiest one. But let's just say that the bombing on D-Day is not as effective as they had hoped it would be. But it is an impressive note that everybody sees the airplanes flying over and that there's certain morale boost from that. And it's obvious that it's an allied. The air belongs to the allies on D-Day.

Donald Miller:
They flew differently too on the two beaches. As Con said, they went straight over the force, the landing force, and that was always dangerous. Later in the war, they'll do that down there at St. Lo and they'll bomb their own men, and the Air Force wanted to go in a different way.
But anyway, on Utah Beach, they used two engine bombers and they bombed straight across the beach, up and down across the beach horizontally as it were, and were much more effective doing that.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, Don, you've talked a lot about, and it's just such an unappreciated aspect of the entire European invasion of what the casualty rate was for the allies in, let's say January to June of '44 in that buildup, that was their real contribution.

Donald Miller:
And let's get the British in there with their-

Kirk Saduski:
That's why I say the allies.

Donald Miller:
With their typhoons and things like that. I mean, it's a joint effort and it's massive. And total ally killed on casualties about 18,000. And we didn't lose near that many on D-Day, in Omaha or any of the British or Canadian beaches, total about 5,000, I think killed.
Often isn't enough homage paid to the guys who flew those missions. A lot of them were disappointed that they weren't able to hit their targets on the cliffs of Omaha. And I think a myth arose that the air campaign was not successful. Well, if they're not there, the invasion isn't there. What army in the whole war was successful without air cover? There wasn't one.

Conrad Crane:
That was the big concern on the D-Day landings. If you didn't have air superiority, they weren't going to happen. It was just that the whole operation was just too vulnerable to the German Air Force that had to be. You had to have that. That's an essential criteria for-

Donald Miller:
It's a maximum, an Axiom for Eisenhower . We're not going to launch the fleet unless we have air superiority.

Kirk Saduski:
As you said. And so even Harrison Sports were under Eisenhower for that limited period of time. And they objected though. And talk a little bit about the-

Donald Miller:
Spot's not in a big way. He wanted oil, but Harris is complaining all the time that he cannot... See, Harris' idea is very firm, that the invasion is unnecessary. We can bomb Germany. We often use a phrase bombing people in the Atomic Age or whatever, to the Stone Age, I should say. He thought they could do that with Germany.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, he wasn't the only one though, correct? There were Americans who also believed sort of towards the beginning of the war, certainly that bombing alone, the ground troops were unnecessary.

Donald Miller:
Well, Spots believe that originally.

Kirk Saduski:
That all you would have to do is go back to that original notion that if you could knock out your enemy's industrial base and destroy their morale, you would never have to land a force.

Donald Miller:
Well, let's take the fact that bombing is brand new to a civilian in 1935 or '36. A four engine bomber is like an atomic bomb. There's that much fear of aerial bombing, and there've been very little of it in World War I, but it's a fearsome thing.
I was just talking to Con last night, we were standing on the balcony of this restaurant and I said, can you imagine what it's like to be in a city with 1200 bombers coming in on you and 1400 fighter planes and one big air train, unbelievable. Or a city like Berlin.
We had our 911 Berlin was bombed 351 times. It's 351 911s. Cologne was 75% destroyed. So this is a big deal. They weren't totally out of their minds to believe that you could bomb people into submission.

Conrad Crane:
Look at what the raids eventually over Japan and what we were doing, the evolution of those massive fire raids, it's a terrible to contemplate.

Kirk Saduski:
Can you guys talk about, I've read some actually, a lot of the German citizens' reaction where a lot of Germans start to consider this is the retribution. This is the retribution for what we've done to the Jews. This is the retribution for what we're getting because we started the war. How pervasive was that feeling and what was... Don, you had talked about the sinking morale across-

Donald Miller:
I don't know Con or Kirk, if you could really put a number on it, but it was there. There's a memoir by a woman named Ursula Von Cardoff, and she wonders whether this is retribution from God in a lot of very heavily Lutheran cities like Munster, and this was the reaction or for starting this aggressive war and things like this.
I don't think it was that way among most of the German population because when we went in later and did a lot of interrogation of Germans, it was very disappointing to hear that they weren't sorry. They were sorry that they lost. Bombing was effective. In another sense, it destroyed the connection between the people in the Fuhrer because the Fuhrer couldn't protect them, not because the Fuhrer made some mistakes.
And there's this one writer for Stars and Stripes, and he made a comment. He said, "We didn't defeat the fascism. We took their guns." And he said, "Fascism is an idea and it's going to be really hard to kill." It didn't change anybody's mind about the Jews, but bombing does change people's minds about their connection to the Fuhrer state or their desire to go to war, and that is lasting. Everybody mocks the strategic bomb survey, 220 volumes. I read every one of those volumes. I think I'm the only guy in the history of the world that read them.

Kirk Saduski:
You very well could be.

Donald Miller:
And it's really torture and lots of bottles of aspirin. But anyway, they make a comment at the end for a long time, maybe permanently, the Germans are not going to be eager to go to war or to support foreign wars. And sure enough, that happened. That was in fact, a direct effect of bombing.
But as far as eliminating the hatred that's the seedbed of Nazi racism. You don't eliminate that with bombing, you're just defeated. And so it's a different thing. It really is. So it's really hard to say, but there are these stories that it's retribution.
Now, Thomas Mann, the novelist, did a broadcast from LA and a very famous broadcast, and he got out just in time in the 30s, and he said... He basically points a finger at his own people. And he said, "You brought this on and don't forget what you did when you supported Hitler."
And he said, "I see all those smiling faces at the Berg rallies." He said, "The minute you raised your arm and salute to Hitler, you put your whole family in jeopardy. Don't you think there was going to be retribution? Don't you think you're fighting a murderously powerful country when they rise up?"
Think of the American Civil War and how the South paid for succession, and it's going to happen to us and it's going to happen to all of you. That's the decision you make. You put your little children, your grandchildren, in high jeopardy, and when you support the Fuhrer because he has to win, he has to win, or your country's kaput.

Kirk Saduski:
Bombed or not. Obviously, there was no rising up against the Third Reich.

Donald Miller:
And then you have your own children that have been indoctrinated. If they're 17 for seven years, they're turning their parents in the Hitler youth.

Kirk Saduski:
Con, how would you sum up the Allied, particularly the American bombing effort campaign against Germany between 1942 and 1945?

Conrad Crane:
I mean, it's been interesting having written about it myself and Don in the last 20, 30 years. When I wrote my book initially in the early 90s, I was really defending what I thought of superior morality, somewhat of the American approach versus the British and some others.
And once you really get into the dynamics of the end of the war, we really take the gloves off against the Germans in October '44 and obviously against the Japanese in March of '45. There was actually, I read a description of a bunch of guys at a bar and in Nuremberg during the trials, and somebody was talking about the fact that the American and British bombing wasn't any different what the Germans had done and that everybody should be treated the same.
And there was, I think it was an American reporter who said, "Well, all you had to do was give up and we would've stopped." If we had given up, you would not have stopped. What you had done to the world and that all the things you did to Jews and everything else would've continued.
So at least we were prepared to end what we were doing, but you were not. And that ended the conversation. I mean, war is a terrible thing. I mean, those of us have studied it for years and years... Watch what's happening in Ukraine right now. I mean, I know working with the American military and we talk about how we're going to fight war short and get everything done quick.
And you watch about what's happening in Ukraine right now as that war goes on and on and on, and the atrocities rise. It's amazing we have any control in war at all sometimes. And you got to look back at World War II and realize that it was... Michael Howard wrote an interesting essay one time talking about morality and warfare, and he said, "You got to understand as wars go on, that you have less and less options than you think."
And I think that if you look at the World War II and its end result, we achieve victory. We end the war, we make a better world later. But a lot of the actions due up to that are pretty nasty. And war is a terrible thing, and it is to be avoided. And once you start it, I agree with Curtis LeMay, you want to end it as fast as you can. But what it will take to do that can be terrible sometimes.

Kirk Saduski:
Joining us is historian, Matthew Delmont of Dartmouth University and the author of Half American, the Heroic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad. Welcome, Matt. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Matthew Delmont:
Thanks for having me.

Kirk Saduski:
Matthew, a significant part of Masses of the Year involves the 332nd Fighter Group known as the Red Tails or the Tuskegee Airmen. We discovered that during the summer of 1944, a number of Red Tails were shot down and put into the same POW camp as Men from the hundredth Bomb group. Majors Cleven, Egan, and others. Taking a step back, can you tell us more about the history of the Tuskegee Airmen?

Matthew Delmont:
So when we take ourselves back to late 1930s in the lead up to World War II, once the war has really started in Europe, but America hasn't yet joined in the war. Black Americans all across the country are pushing President Roosevelt, pushing military leaders to desegregate the military. They say this is an affront to our patriotism. They desired to be able to serve equally, to be able to help defend the country, but they're pushed away.
Of course, the military throughout World War II is racially segregated. The Marine Corps, for example, doesn't allow any Black Americans to serve as Marines for a whole year until 1942. There was a wave of political pressure brought both by civil rights activists, but also by Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender in Pittsburgh Courier. President Roosevelt had to respond to that.
When he was running for his third term in 1940, he recognizes he needs Black voters to be able to get into office. And one of the things he agrees to do is establish this initial training program for Black pilots. That's a small step. It's well short of the full integration of the military that a lot of Black Americans were calling for, but it's an important foot in the door.
In terms of why it was the Army Air Corps. Part of that was about the dynamics of the different branches at the time. I mentioned earlier, the Marine Corps says no way on any Black Marines at the start of the war. The Navy is reluctant to have Black Americans to serve in any capacity beyond mess attendants until very late in the war when they finally established some Black officers.
The Army Air Corps is selected to identify because it's such a high profile position, but it's also a part of the military that can be almost cordoned off in some way. You can imagine training the set of pilots and keep them as a separate unit, different from being able to put Black officers on a ship where they'll have to be aligned with everyone else. That's part of what leads the military to select the Air Corps is this site of innovation, so to speak. That's established in spring of 1941.
Initially, the thing about doing it in Chicago where it would be a racially integrated setting, they eventually do it in Tuskegee, Alabama. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Becomes the first leader of the Tuskegee Airmen. It's the first cohort that gets trained at the base, and it's really in those first couple years, 1941, 1942, that these pilots are demonstrating first to their own white commanders, but then eventually to the rest of the military, and then eventually to all of America that Black Americans can serve as combat pilots.
And it's important to understand what a huge hurdle they had to overcome. The mindset of most military leaders at the start of the war was Black Americans really don't have the intelligence, the skill, the bravery to be able to participate in combat in any capacity, much less be able to fly these technologically advanced airplanes. And so that's what these guys are up against.
Some of their own white commanders don't think they have this ability. And even after they first deploy in spring of 1943 after they fly some of their first missions, one of their commanders tries to undercut them by filing an after action report that suggests they don't have the skill to be able to participate in combat, that they were too timid, they weren't aggressive enough to be able to be good fighter pilots.
Then it emerges into this massive relations battle where you have Black newspapers supporting the airmen and a lot of mainstream white newspapers and magazines, siding with these military commanders saying that maybe it was a mistake to be training Black pilots in this way. And so all of this is lurking in the background.
I think what makes it so powerful that the Tuskegee Airmen not only are skilled and successful in combat, they recognize every time they go up in the air, they're not just fighting for themselves and for their country, they're fighting for the future of Black pilots in the United States. If they had failed, it could have been a whole nother generation before another group of Black men were given that opportunity.

Kirk Saduski:
We focus on three individuals, three particular men, Robert Daniels, Richard Macon, and Alexander Jefferson. Tell us a little bit, particularly about Macon and Jefferson.

Matthew Delmont:
So Alexander Jefferson and Richard Macon were two of the Tuskegee Airmen pilots. There were nearly a thousand by pilots that were trained overall during the war and just over 300 deployed into combat. Alexander Jefferson was originally from Detroit, Michigan before he went into the Tuskegee Airmen, and Richard Macon was originally from Birmingham, Alabama.
And so part of what's interesting when you look at the Tuskegee Airmen is they really do come from all different parts of the country, and they're all coming together for this common mission to try to help America win the war, but also to really prove that Black Americans can take on this role as fighter pilots. And Macon and Jefferson are great examples of that.
They both deployed about a year after the first wave of fighter pilots deployed. And so part of the Tuskegee training project was having a cohort after cohort of pilots who were going through training. But I think what makes Jefferson and Macon story stand out is that these were two of the Tuskegee pilots who were shot down and were held as prisoners of war.
So we alluded to earlier on August 12th, 1944, Macon and Jefferson were finding in tactical support on a mission to destroy these radar stations in Southern France, and they were both shut down and that when they parachuted and hit the ground in France and they were captured by German troops. And their experience is POWs was unique among the Tuskegee pilots, and it gives us a window to understanding what it meant to serve in the war at the time.

Kirk Saduski:
So as you're saying, yes, the Macon and Jefferson unique that they were shot down and they were put into the style of glove three like so many of the men that we had portrayed. And Lieutenant Jefferson, we focused on him initially because he was mentioned in Don Miller's book, Story of World War II. Don knew him and had interviewed him. And then he wrote his own book, Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free. And so we knew that he was going to be one of our characters.
And then when we read the oral history that a lot of the men gave about 20 years, and we read Richard Macon's history and background, we knew we had another one of our main characters. But what was really interesting, I have to say, Matt, was reading about this and reading their own testimony in the oral histories, and I sort of anticipated, assumed that there must have been some racial friction. The American military was completely segregated.
And then these guys, Jefferson, Daniels, Macon, and I think about 10 or 11 others were thrown into a completely integrated POW camp. And you would think that's a formula for some real problems. But from everything we've read, including the oral histories that Macon and Jefferson and Daniels gave, there was not much of it. Can you talk about that?

Matthew Delmont:
I think it is one of the really curious stories of the war that these Black pilots are in an integrated camp, and they both described not really experiencing any racism from the white pilots they're being held with the other POWs from Allied Air Forces. But also, maybe even more surprisingly, they described pretty decent treatment from the Germans who found them, captured them and were holding them as prisoners of war.
You would think with the racist Nazi ideology that Hitler was espousing, that Germany was fighting to uphold this idea of Arian superiority, where they quite literally didn't believe Black people and other minorities were human. You would think that they would be treated horribly. But what they said was that the German captors treated them as pilots and as officers.
And that was the basis on which they regarded them. They didn't pay attention to the color of their skin, which I think it says something about how these different militaries understood how to conduct themselves, that what they saw was the rank, and they treated them in accordance to that. For the white pilots, they were captured alongside and held alongside.
A lot of the stories from the war said that once the action got going, once people were in combat, or once they were in these harrowing situations like being held as prison of war, there wasn't as much racial animosity. It's when things were in rest areas or when troops were in pubs in England or when they were in the United States training or on recreation, that's when a lot of the racial prejudice and animosity came more to the forefront.
So in many ways, it is surprising that they didn't encounter more racism, but I think it speaks to a large reality that a lot of these guys were just trying to survive and get back home, and that's what they focused on. And I think thankfully, were able to put any personal animosities they might've had and personal prejudice they might've had aside and support each other as best they could as a story.
It's one of the most frustrating things to look back at that time period and see that segregation, racism served no strategic or tactical purpose during the war. It made the American military a less effective fighting force. They were people who were turning away Black volunteers and draftees who had advanced language skills, who had PhDs from Harvard, who had technical backgrounds who could help win the war.
I think the story of the POWs though treating each other well. By and large, these individuals wanted to support each other. That part of what was frustrating about the maintenance of segregation during the war is that it really lowered everyone to the lowest common denominator. It said, we're not going to try to integrate the military because we don't want to offend the people for whom who will hold so tightly to these racist beliefs.
The people who were in the POW camps are the ones who fought shoulder to shoulder and eventually integrated units later in the war. They knew they had to count on each other, and they knew that they would be more successful if they could rely on the person next to them. And thankfully, eventually the military does get there just a few years later with the desegregation of the military by Truman's Executive Order in 1948.

Kirk Saduski:
And at the end of Jefferson's book, he tells us of an incident when he's getting off the ship and for the last couple of years, he had fought alongside white guys. He had been in captivity, all these things had happened, and yet when he got off the ship in New York, he faced the same old segregation. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Matthew Delmont:
Yeah. The story he tells is he is on this troop transport ship brought back to the United States. They dock in New York, and he is coming down the plank, and he is an officer. And what he says is he encountered a white enlisted man. I think he said he was a privater who's directing the troops on which way to go. He said, white troops this way, Black troops that way, except he didn't say Black troops, he said he used the N word.
And for Jefferson, it was just this moment where he describes his pride and relief at seeing the Statue of Liberty finally being home after all he went through. Imagine being in combat, being a POW, surviving all of that, and you're so thrilled to get back to the United States and then just melting that you're back here and it's the same old, same old.
It's the same old crap that you thought you left behind, that you thought you were fighting to make go away. I think unfortunately, that was the reality for a lot of Black veterans. One of the things I write about in the book is for Black Americans, the war didn't end in 1945, that whole generation of Black veterans came back and they kept fighting.
One veteran said they went from fighting in the European Theater of Operations to fighting in the Southern Theater of Operations. They became leaders in the civil rights movement because they wanted to fight for different kind of America. They wanted actual freedom and democracy, the things that World War II is about, they want it to be true for Black Americans here in the United States.
And the other thing I'll say about Jefferson is he was one of the key organizers in getting the Tuskegee Airmen reunion started in the early 1970s. I think we know more about the Tuskegee Airmen today because they wanted to tell their story. They refused to be silenced or left out of the history books, and he deserves credit for that as well. I think the only thing I would add, just thinking about Masters of the Air and how excited I am for that to come on TV.
Part of what was so important about the Tuskegee Airmen both during the war and why it's important for us to tell their stories today is it really mattered for these men to be able to prove that Black Americans could be combat pilots in the military. It was an important high profile position at the time.
It's the reason I think the show is going to be so popular when it comes out now is that everyone deserves credit and thanks for fighting World War II, but there was something about the act of fine and fine in combat that was powerful and resonates so powerfully. I don't want that to get lost in the Tuskegee story that them breaking down that particular barrier among all the barriers that had to get broken down, that particular barrier was a really important one for them to defeat.

Kirk Saduski:
Next week, Don Miller and I discuss the final episode of Masters of the Air and we interview Mark Herzog, one of the directors of the documentary, The Bloody Hundredth, which tells the story of the real life men featured in Masters of the Air.

Mark Herzog:
I think that the audience when they finish the scripted series, has a yearning for more. I think it's just a natural question mark that needs to be answered for a lot of people when they finish the series, especially a series as rich as this.

Kirk Saduski:
And next week, we'll hear more from Tom Hanks and the stars of the series, Callum Turner, Nate Mann and Anthony Boyle. Masters of the Air is an Apple original series from executive producer Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Getsman. Next week's podcast is the final podcast of this series from the National World War II Museum.