As the son and nephew of an Eighth Air Force flight engineer and pilot,
my interest in World War II came at an early age. Some of my earliest
memories are of running outside to look up at military airplanes flying
overhead. When I was in grade school, I read every book in the library
about the war and when the Air Power series was on TV in the 1950s, my
dad and I made a point of going over to my grandparents - we didn't
have a TV yet - to watch every episode. My dad had a couple of books
that he had picked up at the old Dyersburg Army Air Field after it
closed and I read them from cover-to-cover time and time again. One was
a 1945 Army Air Forces annual, and it was essentially a history of the
war from start to finish, and served as an excellent primer for
learning about the war in general, particularly as it involved the air
forces. After I went into the Air Force and started making my own
history, I continued to read books on the war as they came out,
particularly the pocketbook editions, which I could slip into the leg
pocket on my flight suit and pull out to read during those long, boring
flights across the Atlantic and Pacific - or across the South China
Sea. I never read much inflight in Vietnam because the legs were too
short, but I nevertheless usually had a book in my pocket or in my
flight back to read in my bunk in the barracks. Quite often I found
myself in close proximity to the places where some of the history
described in those books had been made. It was only natural that I
would develop a powerful industry in history in general, but
particularly in World War II. Over the years I have written numerous
articles for magazines, particularly World War II and WW II History
magazines. Some have been published, some haven't, at least not yet.
But I have also written a number of articles about subjects in which I
have a special interest, some of which are somewhat controversial and
are off-limits to the conventional media primarily because of political
or social implications. I plan to scan some of those articles and
publish them on the net, along with documents that are available, but
not well-known to the public, not even to World War II history
enthusiasts.
The Tuskegee Airmen:
In the 1960s at the height of the civil rights movement, it was only natural that the World War II colored fighter pilots, the so-called "Tuskegee Airmen," would be discovered by the Afro-Centrist historians of the day. Since that time the men of the 99th Pursuit Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group have become the subjects of several books, a cable TV movie was made about them and they are now the subjects of an upcoming Hollywood production by noted film-maker George Lucas of Star Wars Fame. A myth has developed around the men of the 332nd Fighter Group, a myth that the young airmen overcame racial prejudice and rose to become superior fighters pilots who were so good that they never lost a bomber. But in truth, they lost a lot of bombers and their immediate superior in the 506th Fighter Wing, B/Gen. Dean Strother summed up his impressions of the group with five words - "They just weren't that good."
The Tuskegee Airmen:
In the 1960s at the height of the civil rights movement, it was only natural that the World War II colored fighter pilots, the so-called "Tuskegee Airmen," would be discovered by the Afro-Centrist historians of the day. Since that time the men of the 99th Pursuit Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group have become the subjects of several books, a cable TV movie was made about them and they are now the subjects of an upcoming Hollywood production by noted film-maker George Lucas of Star Wars Fame. A myth has developed around the men of the 332nd Fighter Group, a myth that the young airmen overcame racial prejudice and rose to become superior fighters pilots who were so good that they never lost a bomber. But in truth, they lost a lot of bombers and their immediate superior in the 506th Fighter Wing, B/Gen. Dean Strother summed up his impressions of the group with five words - "They just weren't that good."