- I'm Chuck Stout, curator at the Wings over the Rockies
Air and Space Museum.
In this episode, we're going to go behind the wings
with some of the first Black aviators in the US military,
the Tuskegee airmen.
This one's going to be cool!
(upbeat lo-fi music)
We're going to take a look at the north American F-86 Sabre,
and we're going to take a look at the F102 Delta Dagger.
To make this episode even more special,
today we have one of the few surviving Tuskegee airman,
but before we get to Colonel Harvey,
let's talk a little bit about the history
that made the Tuskegee airman
the legend that they are today.
The Tuskegee airmen were an experiment
by the US Army Air Corps to determine
whether Black pilots could handle military flying.
It turns out they could!
But the Tuskegee airman fought a second battle.
One against racial discrimination.
Successful applicants for the Tuskegee experiment
had to have at least two years of college,
and most were already licensed civilian pilots
at a time when the air Corps was teaching white teenagers
to fly right out of high school.
- Nice going, Bob.
You've got a right to be happy.
With an impressive combat record and war accomplishments,
the success of the Tuskegee airmen
helped influence then president Harry Truman's decision
to de-segregate the armed forces in 1948.
- [Director] 15 0 8.
- I asked the Congress for a civil rights bill
and I demanded the integration of the armed forces.
- The United States Congress decided
that we should try and see if it was true
that Black people could not fly.
From the beginning, the experiment was set up
so that the Tuskegee experiment would fail.
In 1925, there had been a study published
that stated that Black people were incapable
of being combat pilots.
They couldn't fly airplanes,
they didn't have the strength of character
to be combat pilots under stress and pressure.
And the Tuskegee experiment was basically to find out
if that was true.
They succeeded beyond everybody's expectations.
But it still didn't have a lot of support.
And then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt came
and visited the Tuskegee airfield,
and she flew with a Black instructor pilot, Chief Anderson,
and when they landed, she said,
"it looks like Black pilots can fly all right to me."
So after the endorsement of the First Lady,
the Tuskegee airman started gaining some traction,
and by the end of the war,
they had trained almost a thousand people,
and we're lucky enough to have one of them
here with us today.
Colonel James Harvey III. (upbeat lo-fi music)
Thank you for being with us this morning, Colonel Harvey.
- Thank you.
It's good to be here.
Actually, it's going to be any place. (laughs)
- So tell me how the first Black Americans
became pilots in the US military.
- Well, that wasn't an easy job.
Everything was stacked against us.
We didn't have the ability to fly aircraft
or operate heavy equipment.
We were inferior to the white man.
We were nothing.
We overcame all that Mickey Mouse stuff,
and we proved in the end that we were the best.
We were better than they were.
- So what first sparked your interest in aviation?
- I was standing in my yard one day in a little town
in northeastern Pennsylvania called Nuangola Station,
and I heard this noise and I looked up,
and there was a flight of P40s flying in formation.
And I said to myself, "I could do that.
I'd like to do that one day."
And that was it.
- So can you tell me a little bit about
what happened when you first tried to enlist
in the Army Air Corps?
- I arrived in Washington DC and told to ride in the car
where Negroes ride.
Welcome to the south.
So this is new for me now.
So I'll have to adjust.
And I adjusted.
Not because I wanted to, because I had to.
If I didn't, well, I wouldn't be sitting here today.
- So how did you manage to get
into the flight training program?
- When I finished my 30 days of basic training,
they put me in the Army Air Corps engineers,
driving bulldozers, graters, carriers.
My mission was to go into the jungles in the Pacific,
doze out an area, and build an airfield.
I said, "this isn't for me."
So I applied for cadet training.
There were 10 of us that took the exam,
nine whites and myself.
When the dust cleared, two of us had passed.
And from there I was sent to Keesler Field
in Biloxi, Mississippi for 30 days of basic training.
And I finished my basic training, my 30 days,
after Tuskegee I went, and the rest is history.
- Obviously there's a lot more to flight training
than just stick and rudder skills.
Was the academic part difficult?
- Well, I was a perfectionist and perfectionists,
they can do anything.
Give them the problem, they'll solve it.
There's no problem for a perfectionist.
- That is a great message for our audience to hear.
Can you tell me what primary flight training
was like at Tuskegee?
- Yes.
Our primary instructors were graduates
of the Tuskegee Institute Flying School
and they were people of color just like me.
Their job was to not only teach us to fly,
but teach us how to react to our white instructors
who would be taking over in basic and advance.
They would get in our face, call us all kinds of names,
the names that the white instructors would be calling us,
and they taught us the fly, and they adjusted our attitudes.
- I understand that after World War II,
you continued to fly for the Air Corps,
and then the Air Force and ended up flying
the F86 Sabre jet.
We've got one right here.
Let's take a closer look.
(upbeat lo-fi music)
The North American F86 Saber,
sometimes called the Sabre Jet,
is a transonic airplane.
The Sabre is best known
as America's first swept wing jet fighter.
It was able to counter the Soviet MiG-15,
which was their first swept wing jet fighter
in the skies over Korea.
What do you remember about flying the F86?
- The F86A had automatic slats on the wings.
The slower your speed, the more the slats come out
to give you more lift.
The only bad part about automatic slats
are the rollers get a little dirty,
and if the ground crew doesn't keep the rollers clean,
you can go into a tight turn, one will come out,
one won't, you can go into a spin
if you weren't a Tuskegee airman.
Because we fly with our feet on the rudders.
- My understanding is that in addition to flying this thing,
you were also a flight leader.
- I was a flight commander,
assistant operations officer, and test pilot.
So I had pretty good jobs.
- So there's a big difference between flying a transonic
or subsonic jet like this one, and going supersonic.
Let's go take a look at the F102.
The Convair F102 a supersonic interceptor
that played a significant part in the Cold War.
Besides being the first American airplane
to have a Delta wing, the F102 prototype
was intended to be supersonic,
but it couldn't break the sound barrier
as it was originally designed.
The area rule developed by Richard Whitcomb
was what allowed it to become supersonic,
increasing its speed by about 40%.
Here we are at the F102.
What was it like to fly it?
- Oh, there's no comparison! (laughs)
Fire upon is like speed.
And this aircraft, it goes supersonic on the deck, you know,
and I checked out a Newfoundland in the winter time,
we'd get down on the deck about 500 feet,
goes supersonic, and just ripple the snow.
It's the first all-weather interceptor
that the Air Force had in its inventory.
- From being denied enlistment in 1943
to rising to colonel in the`Air Force,
you've had a really interesting career.
What stands out to you?
- Well, there's only one thing that stands out,
really stands out, and that's winning the Weapons Meet
that we were not supposed to win.
They're going to award two trophies in that contest.
One for high individual, and one for high group.
They didn't want to see us take everything,
because after all, who are we?
We were the best, that's what we were,
but anyway, they had to cheat to do it.
- In 1949, Colonel Harvey and his team of Tuskegee airman
won the first Top Gun competition.
It was held at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada
and was a competition among all the squadrons
of the US Air Force.
Even though they won the competition,
the winners were listed as unknown for decades.
In January 22, a ceremony was held
at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada,
which was the site of the original Top Gun competition.
They commemorated this more than 70 years
after that competition.
But from this day forward, the Tuskegee airman
will be recognized as the winners of that competition.
- 1949, the event we're we're here to recognize today,
they did the initial Air Force
worldwide fighter competition.
332nd fighter squadron, the Tuskegee airman squadron
came here, and not only do they compete, but they won.
- Again, thank you.
Thank you.
That's a step in the right direction.
It's been a long time coming, but it's here.
It's here.
- What does it mean to you to be a Tuskegee airman?
- It was supposed to have failed.
Well, we didn't let it fail.
We just keep proving we're good.
And just keep proving it over and over again.
We're good.
And we're finally getting acceptance.
Finally.
Years late, but we're finally getting it.
- Well, you've opened the door for thousands
of people of color, not just in aviation,
but in all walks of life.
- Yes.
The forerunners of integration. (laughs)
But we didn't look at it that way.
We just looked at doing our job,
doing it to the best of our ability.
- So what would be your message
to the next generation, people growing up now?
- Aim to be the best.
Shut the TV off, go to school, learn, pay attention,
and aim for perfection.
If you aim for perfection, you will end up being the best.
- Well, thank you very much for coming down
and visiting with us.
This is one of the Behind the Wings episodes
that we will treasure.
I really appreciate your being here,
and I wish you the very best in the future.
- Well, thank you.
Thank you.
I have a long way to go yet.
- So that wraps up this episode of Behind the Wings.
So if you liked it, subscribe, like,
and give us your comments that way we can make more.
Now I got to get back to work.