just more high tech than the 95 version
My Dad was still alive when "Tuskegee Airmen" came out and I asked him about it since he flew a P-51 escorting B-17s from England to Germany in the war. My Father wasn't a bullshitter and was easily the most honest and decent man I've ever known and most importantly, he taught us from a very early age to not judge a person on what they had no control of .........skin color for example. He taught us to judge others on character.
All of that being said, the whole hoopla about the Tuskegee guys irritated him, not to any great extent, just enough to comment on it when I asked. He felt Hollywood exaggerated the accomplishments of these guys, that by doing so they pushed the idea that it was a shock that black guys could be good pilots. He went on to say that any pilots that survived all of the missions they went on were good pilots. It wasn't just the Germans or the Japanese that could knock a guy out of the sky, the aircraft itself could kill you. His problem was with the portrayal of these guys as the greatest pilots of WW2 and the bullshit attempt to make them seem more like the arrogant assholes of today.....black athletes that overly boast and celebrate in excess when they do the very thing they are paid huge contract to do. He told me he had met a number of the guys at reunions and in the Air Force that he served for 30 years. He said they weren't the guys portrayed at all. They were humble and proud of their accomplishments but didn't feel they were better pilots than any of the thousands that did a majority of the work.
Another thing that doesn't seem to get mentioned was who they were flying against. The Luftwaffe had been decimated by the time they made it to Europe, they were sending up whatever they had left including kids with almost no flight experience at all, some to do unarmed suicide missions colliding with allied bombers. I wonder why that isn't made more clear, would it take some of the glory away from the Red Tails? Oh and as for the me262s like the one on the movie poster, only a "332nd fighter group" site claims 3 kills..... no other site even mentions the Tuskegee guys...... that sight also claim that no bomber was lost when they were escorting them, other sites claims bullshit and put the number of at least 25 lost.
This guy talks about the exaggerations.
Tuskegee Airman from South Portland talks truth vs. fiction ahead of 'Red Tails' release | The Forecaster
Tuskegee Airman from South Portland talks truth vs. fiction ahead of 'Red Tails' release
By Mario Moretto
SOUTH PORTLAND — The Tuskegee Airmen get together in a different city every year. The World War II veterans, who were the first black pilots in the U.S. military, meet to catch up with each other and swap stories.
But a few years ago, in Philadelphia, they weren't alone.
They were joined by filmmaker George Lucas, who wanted to make a movie about the aviators. He had come to get their blessing, to ask them what they'd like to see in a film about their exploits in Europe.
"We told them to knock out all the crap," said Jim Sheppard, 87, a Tuskegee Airman who is originally from Harlem and has lived in South Portland for more than 30 years. "We were good enough on our own. We don't need people boosting us."
More at link....
