AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2020 - 18

WAYPOINTS

A century of perseverance

BY THOMAS B. HAINES
Editor in Chief

Tuskegee Airman shares 100 years of wisdom
HE NEEDED A BIT OF ASSISTANCE lifting a knee high
enough to get onto the airstair step of the Cirrus Vision
Jet, but you could imagine a time 65 years earlier when he
easily could have scrambled up the ladder into a Lockheed
F-80 Shooting Star or a Northrop F-89 Scorpion ready
to head off into combat over Korea. Retired U.S. Air
Force Col. Charles E. McGee, one of the last remaining
Tuskegee Airmen, turned 100 on December 7, 2019, commemorating his centennial by flying a Vision Jet on the
day before his birthday and flying a Cessna Citation M2
the next day on his birthday-all after flying a HondaJet
on his ninety-ninth birthday. And by "flying," I mean
flying-not just
along for the ride.
Pilots who flew
with him say he
handled all the
controls with
aplomb and had
complete situational awareness
regarding airspace, nearby
traffic, and air
traffic control
expectations
(see "Birthday
RETIRED U.S. AIR Force Col. Charles McGee is welcomed
Flight for a Hero,"
at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to help celebrate his
100th birthday.
page 48).
By the time he flew those early jets in Korea, he was
already battle hardened, having flown 137 combat missions in World War II-P-39s, P-47Ds, and, of course,
the Red Tail P-51 Mustangs that became synonymous
with the Tuskegee Airmen.
After 100 combat missions in Korea, McGee flew
again in Vietnam, safely returning from 172 missions in
McDonnell Douglas RF-4 photo-reconnaissance jets. He
retired from the Air Force in 1973 after 409 combat missions-one of the highest of any U.S. Air Force fighter
pilot-and with 6,308 flying hours, an exceptionally high
number for a military pilot.
But McGee's biggest battle was not in the skies over
Europe,
Korea, or Vietnam, but on the ground in the
Editor in Chief
TOM HAINES is a
United States where he and fellow African American
43-year pilot with
servicemen were seen as grunts only, not given the
thousands of flight
opportunity to excel because of the belief that they were
hours in scores of
models of airplanes.
not capable of more.

18 | AOPA PILOT February 2020

During an interview with AOPA in the spring of 2019,
McGee shared the prevailing excuses early in World War
II for not allowing black aviators. Number one was that
there were no black mechanics, and white mechanics
would never be permitted to work on airplanes flown
by black pilots. As an experiment, he said, the Army
agreed to train a group of African Americans to be aircraft mechanics. "The Army expected them to fail. And
they didn't," McGee said. In fact, the first authorization
for the 99th Pursuit Squadron-an all-black flying unit
trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama-was an
experiment, McGee said.
When the mechanics succeeded, the "Army Air
Corps said, 'Oh, my gosh, then we need an airfield for
the pilot training,'" McGee recalled. They found $4 million to build training bases-including Tuskegee Army
Airfield-to train black pilots, even though there were
already dozens of training fields in the country. The
Army leadership couldn't imagine black pilots training
on the same fields as white pilots.
As is evident now all these decades later, McGee and
the other Tuskegee Airmen battled through years of segregation and racism to succeed. What is most surprising
in talking with McGee is that there is no bitterness. He is
matter-of-fact about how it was and he continues today
to be an advocate for perseverance in reaching goals. He
speaks often to schoolchildren, encouraging them to rise
above whatever circumstances might try to hinder them
from reaching their goals. In our interview he describes
it as his four Ps:
Perceive: Dream your dreams and pinpoint something
you like doing.
Prepare: Get a good education. Learn to read, write, and
speak well.
Perform: Let excellence be your goal in everything you
do. Always do your best. Nobody can ask more from you.
Persevere: "We could have gone off, bowed our heads
as they called me names-didn't like me-and not served
our country." Don't let circumstances like that be an
excuse for not achieving.
Clearly in his century of life, McGee has developed
great wisdom from which all of us can benefit. He is a
national treasure of whom I and many others are in awe.
Happy birthday, Colonel McGee.
AOPA
EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org

@tomhaines29

AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2020

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