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outcome of our training. In general it is both fair and accurate to say that a casual attitude to study sessions and a scattershot approach to booking flights just isn’t going to produce the kind of results you’re hoping for. The Tuskegee cadets were well versed in the importance of motivation and persistence before they ever stepped into a cockpit. Recently immortalized through the George Lucas film Red Tails, the men who went on to fly and fight in the skies over Europe deserve considerable respect. Yet, as inspirational as their collective story is, individually they are often even more impressive than their reputation as a group suggests. “The movie focuses on the 355 who went overseas,” Leo Gray says, reminiscing about his experiences as a fighter pilot in WWII. It was those 355 who were deployed into action and fought in the war. They are the few who made up the Red Tails. As a young man in his 20s, Gray was one of them. But that’s not the whole story. “Nine-hundred thirty-two completed the advanced pilot training program,” Gray explains. “About 16,000 people are considered documented, original Tuskegee Airmen. That includes anyone who was assigned to any base to which pilots who graduated from Tuskegee were assigned between 1941 and 1949.” By 1949 the military had begun to integrate, which turned the experiment begun at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute into a matter of course in the armed forces. Men were given the opportunity to prove themselves based on ability, without the barriers that had limited previous generations because of the color of their skin. Gray grew up in Massachusetts, not far from Daniel Keel. They both were members of the same Boy Scout troop. Both went to Tuskegee. Gray wound up in the pilot’s seat of a P-51C and flew 15 combat missions over Europe, while Keel was assigned to a B-25 unit that was still stateside when the war ended. “Six members of our Boy Scout troop ended up at Tuskegee,” says Gray. Clearly, their circle of friends was doing something right.

“Education is the key,” says Keel. That perspective is shared by many, if not all of the Tuskegee graduates. They share a powerful conviction that it was their ability to learn that allowed them to excel. Keel qualified as a navigator, a bombardier, and a multiengine pilot. Fellow Tuskegee alum George Hardy TUSKEGEE AIRMEN Daniel Keel (left), George Hardy (center), and Leo Grey (right) says, “They all valued education. They at the Tuskegee museum. studied and were able to take the exams. They could read the manuals sufficiently to understand them and assimilate the on two continents over the course of four information that was in them.” Hardy took the test to enter flight train- decades. He retired from the military in 1971 as a lieutenant colonel. ing when he was only 17 years old. He Keel says, “The Tuskegee Airmen passed and was sworn in as a private in proved to the world that if the Negro was the Army Reserve. “They sent me home and said I’d hear from them after I turned given the opportunity, with a good education, hard work, and a little luck, he could 18.” He did, too. Hardy had a birthday in do the job as well as anyone else.” June and reported for active duty in July. Gray agrees. “In 1949 they had the first “I graduated as a second lieutenant and a Top Gun competition,” he says. The event pilot in September 1944.” Within months he was in Europe flying a P-51D as a mem- took place in Las Vegas at what is now Nellis Air Force Base. “Lo and behold if ber of the 99th Fighter Squadron, part of the 332nd Fighter Group. Still in his teens, that doggone team from the 332nd Fighter Hardy flew 21 combat missions before the Group at Lockbourne [now known as Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] war ended. didn’t go out there and win first place.” Hardy has one point of playful conThe Tuskegee Airmen were motivated, tention with the Hollywood version of persistent, and proved in the end to be his personal history. “The airplane that crashed in the end—A33,” he says, smiling. not just capable, but exceptional. That is a legacy to which any one of us, in any time “Most of my missions were flown in A33, period or profession, could aspire with and at the end of the war it was still in pride. In that sense, at least, true success good shape.” is universal given a sincere application of Hardy made the military his career. In addition to performing duties as a pilot, he motivation and persistence, coupled with also commanded a maintenance squadron. an “I can do it” attitude. He flew P-51s in WWII, B-29s in Korea, Jamie Beckett is a writer and flight instructor living and AC-119s in Vietnam. By the time he retired, he had flown 136 combat missions in Winter Haven, Florida.

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Flight Training - November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - November 2012