Tuskegee Airmen

[waltky]

Another Tuskegee Airman flies to the Great Beyond...

Dabney Montgomery, Tuskegee Airman who safeguarded Martin Luther King Jr., dies at 93
September 4,`16 - For Dabney Montgomery, the indignities at home stung more because of the noble tasks he performed for his country abroad — serving with the Tuskegee Airmen to help win World War II in a role that would eventually earn him a Congressional Gold Medal.

But at a train station in Atlanta in 1945, carrying an Army duffel bag over his shoulder after receiving his honorable-discharge papers, he was abruptly confronted with Jim Crow America. “Before I could get in, a white officer threw up his hands [and said]: ‘You can’t come in this door, boy. You got to go around the back,'” Montgomery told Alice Bernstein in a video interview. “‘You can’t come in here; you’re black. You got to go around the corner.'” Montgomery, who served as a member of the all-black fighter group and, decades later, as a bodyguard to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. died at age 93 of natural causes Sept. 3, his wife, Amelia Montgomery, told the Associated Press.

Montgomery protected King during the famous 1965 march to Montgomery from Selma, Ala. — Montgomery’s home town. Heels from the shoes Montgomery wore in that march will hang in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, which opens Sept. 24, according to Smithsonian magazine. Montgomery was born in 1923 and inducted into the armed forces in 1943, serving in what was then the Army Air Corps as one of the Tuskegee Airmen. They got their name because they trained at Alabama’s historically black Tuskegee University, which had a civilian pilot-training program, according to the university’s historical page about the airmen.

Tuskegee Airman Dabney Montgomery waves to the crowd as he is introduced before the start of a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles in June 5, 2013.​

Black servicemen who trained at Tuskegee faced discrimination in the armed services and at home, but the “Red Tails,” as they were known, distinguished themselves in a March 1945 bombing run to Berlin and by discovering a German destroyer in the harbor of Trieste, Italy, according to the university. “The tenacious bomber escort cover provided by the 332nd ‘Red Tail’ fighters often discouraged enemy fighter pilots from attacking bombers escorted by the 332nd Fighter Group,” the university said. Despite the exploits of the airmen, Montgomery said he was often smacked with discrimination at home.

In Selma, fresh out of the army, he tried to register to vote, according to the Bernstein interview. A woman there, he said, told him that he had to find “three white men that would endorse me as a good negro that would not cause any trouble in Selma, Alabama, if I voted.” When he returned with the endorsements, he said, he was denied again. This time, the woman said, it was because he did not own land in Alabama.

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[ThunderKiss1965]

Tuskegee Black pilots and Airmen did their duty and they should be justifiably proud of their service but enduring discrimination has apparently become more important in the eyes of (mostly) liberals than the incredible sacrifices that the U.S. Army Air Corps endured in combat.

And you come to that conclusion because Tuskegee Airmen have been recognized.....and were part of the U.S. Army Air Corps that endured sacrifice?

Frankly the Tuskegee Airmen is a very compelling story- both of the sacrifices by the U.S. Army Air Corps and how racial discrimination was a real part of the war effort. It is an important part of our history- why do feel compelled to come into a thread about them- and complain?

Would you be as upset about a thread about the Flying Tigers? A thread about the pilots who flew the B-25's off of the Hornet? A thread devoted to the pilots and crews of B-17's and B-25's?

What is it about Conservatives that they have a knee jerk reaction to object to a thread about American veterans- if they happen to have been black?

Sorry but those people are not true Conservatives.

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

Both of my Grandfathers served in the Pacific and Europe. One died when I was very young the other was a lifer. He also served in Korea and Vietnam. He never liked talking much about his experiences and now that he's gone they are lost forever. .

 

[Syriusly]

Tuskegee Black pilots and Airmen did their duty and they should be justifiably proud of their service but enduring discrimination has apparently become more important in the eyes of (mostly) liberals than the incredible sacrifices that the U.S. Army Air Corps endured in combat.

And you come to that conclusion because Tuskegee Airmen have been recognized.....and were part of the U.S. Army Air Corps that endured sacrifice?

Frankly the Tuskegee Airmen is a very compelling story- both of the sacrifices by the U.S. Army Air Corps and how racial discrimination was a real part of the war effort. It is an important part of our history- why do feel compelled to come into a thread about them- and complain?

Would you be as upset about a thread about the Flying Tigers? A thread about the pilots who flew the B-25's off of the Hornet? A thread devoted to the pilots and crews of B-17's and B-25's?

What is it about Conservatives that they have a knee jerk reaction to object to a thread about American veterans- if they happen to have been black?

Sorry but those people are not true Conservatives.

They surely claim to be.

But yes I agree they aren't.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says dem old planes look like dey's from another century...

Oldest Remaining Tuskegee Airman Dies at 101 in Florida
Nov 21, 2016 — Willie Rogers, the oldest surviving member of the original Tuskegee Airmen, died in St. Petersburg. He was 101.

The Tampa Bay Times reports as he approached his 100th birthday, Mr. Rogers lived in a senior apartment complex in downtown St. Petersburg, and walked the short distance every Sunday to services at historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He had lived in St. Petersburg for the last 50 years of his life.

Tuskegee Airmen - Circa May 1942 to Aug 1943​

Rogers was drafted into the Army in 1942 and was part of the 100th Air Engineer Squad. Rogers also served with the Red Tail Angels. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded him with the Congressional Gold Medal. St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman acknowledged Rogers' death on social media Saturday.

Oldest Remaining Tuskegee Airman Dies at 101 in Florida | Military.com

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WWII Mystery: Are 'Missing' Sailors Actually in NY Cemetery?
Nov 21, 2016 | It's a mystery of World War II: What happened to the 136 missing sailors from the explosion and sinking of the USS Turner?

After all, the ship did not go down in battle or even in the open sea, but while anchored near New York Harbor in 1944, so close to the city that shockwaves from the onboard munitions blasts shattered windows in some buildings. Now, newly discovered documents show that the remains of four of the missing sailors were indeed found and buried not long after the disaster in separate graves for unknowns in a Long Island veterans cemetery. And the researcher who found the documents suspects many more remains could have been found and buried along with them in those same simple gravesites, marked only with the words "Unknown U.S. Sailor" and "January 3, 1944," the day the destroyer sank. "Just don't throw them in the ground and forget about them," said military historian Ted Darcy, who is turning over his findings to the Pentagon. "These guys have been neglected by our government. It's not fair, especially to their families."

Darcy's hope is that the military will exhume the four gravesites, identify the remains and rebury them with a proper memorial. The Pentagon still officially lists 136 Turner sailors as missing. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the federal office responsible for recovering and identifying the nation's missing war dead, didn't respond to repeated requests from The Associated Press about Darcy's findings. The Turner, a 10-month-old destroyer returning from convoy duty in the Atlantic, was anchored a few miles off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, when an explosion erupted below deck, setting much of the ship ablaze. More explosions followed, the last breaking the ship in two. While no cause of the initial blast was ever determined, a Navy report mentioned anti-submarine munitions were being defused around the time.

A gravestone, left, with the inscription UNKNOWN U.S. SAILOR, is adorned with a flower and a small pumpkin at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, N.Y​

More than 150 men were rescued, but 136 others went down with the ship, according to Darcy's research. He said the Navy's National Archives file on the yearlong salvage operation contains no information, including how many sets of remains were eventually recovered from the 55 feet of water where the ship sank. Darcy contends many of the bodies would have likely been intact on the ship in compartments sealed with watertight doors. According to 1944 interment records for the Long Island veterans cemetery in Farmingdale, the remains of four Turner sailors were buried in individual graves within a year of the disaster. But Darcy, a retired Marine from Locust Grove, Virginia, believes all or most of the remains were found and comingled in the four graves. "I went to the Navy and they said, 'Hey, we don't know how many are in there,'" he said.

Darcy said comingling of unidentified remains was a fairly common practice, particularly when the Navy was overburdened at the height of World War II. The Long Island cemetery has multiple graves containing the remains of more than one WWII serviceman, while the remains of 388 USS Oklahoma crewmembers disinterred in 2015 for identification were buried in 45 mass graves in Hawaii. Another WWII MIA expert, Mark Noah, founder of Florida-based History Flight, said he "wouldn't doubt it at all" if Turner graves contained the remains of multiple sailors. "Skeletal remains can pack out a full coffin with more than a dozen people," he said. Loved ones from the Turner disaster were initially told only that their sailor was missing. If remains had been found and buried, they were never informed. "Oh, my goodness. I would've liked to have known that," 82-year-old Marjorie Avery, of Corsicana, Texas, told the AP by phone. Her father, Henry S. Wygant Jr., was the Turner's captain and still officially listed as missing.

Several relatives of now-deceased Turner sailors who survived the disaster told the AP their loved ones also were never told about the graves. Two of the last Turner survivors still living — James Thomas, of Leivasy, West Virginia, and Robert Mowry, of Irwin, Pennsylvania — also said they didn't know. More than 70 years later, their memories of the disaster remain clear yet tinged with stoicism typical of so many WWII veterans. "It's just one of those things that happen in a war," said Mowry, 91. "It was just us at the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all."

WWII Mystery: Are 'Missing' Sailors Actually in NY Cemetery? | Military.com