Stuff You Should Know - Tuskegee Airmen: American Heroes

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

The Tuskegee Airmen braved racism and brutally tough training in order to secure their spot in American history as the first African-American military pilots. Listen in today to the story of their determination and heroism. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.

So this is Stuff You Should Know about the Tuskegee Airmen. That's right. One of our, I know every year we try to do a Black History Month podcast, at least one. And it didn't mean to keep everyone unsuspense this year, here at the end of the month, but this one, we were getting this one put together.

Yeah, this is a good one. Yeah, and it's, I mean this is, we typically like to do stuff that's like a very little known history. I would say Tuskegee Airmen does not fall into the little known category. Not at all. It's still undersung, I think,

even after two not very good feature films. Oh, did you see any of them? The only one I'm familiar with is, I think it's just called the Tuskegee Airmen, and I kept confusing it with Memphis Bell. Yeah, Tuskegee Airmen was an HBO movie with Larry Fishburne and others. Malcolm Jamal Warner, I think.

Yeah, yeah. Could see in him. Sure. Always, but I mean, that one was okay, but I think better than the Red Tails movie. Was it? Yeah, Red Tails just wasn't very good, which is a shame. Sure.

But speaking of shame, let's talk about how the Tuskegee Airmen retreated. Just to get started, we should kind of briefly go over like the history of African-Americans in the military because where we really pick up with our story, the interwar period between World War I and World War II, the military was very much segregated still officially, just like America was, it was law.

Segregation was law at the time. But that's not to say that African-Americans hadn't served in the military in the US previously in some pretty substantial roles too. Yeah, I mean, dating back to like when they were not even considered Americans, like when, I mean, I keep wanting to say black Americans, but they were not considered that,

like during the Revolutionary War on both sides actually, as you'll learn in a short stuff about black loyalists. It's interesting that slaves fought for and against the revolution, really interesting, all the way up through, and we should do podcasts on a lot of these things, but they fought in the War of 1812. They fought as the Buffalo soldiers

in many of the conflicts against Native Americans, all the way up through World War I where they joined the army despite the fact that there was segregation at home and in the military, notably the Harlem Hell Fighters who fought with the French. And even though Americans did not fully recognize that as an accomplishment, the French government did, ironically.

Yeah, if that sounds kind of weird to you, the American military had an all black regiment and said, here, you take them to France, and France was like, sure, we'll take them, we'll use them, and awarded them the quadra-gaire for heroism and combat, which is like, if you'll remember our Native American Code Talker episode, France, especially in World War I,

had kind of a history of awarding and recognizing bravery among minorities that were just totally shunned to the United States, you know? Yeah, and I mean, there was even a study conducted by the Army War College in 1925 about the fitness and suitability of black soldiers in the military, and it was just, it was brutal and racist and, you know,

just said the worst things you could imagine about the lack of fitness for a black man to serve for the Americans in the American military. Yeah, and I think this Army War College study was basically just an official position paper that summed up the sentiments among military officers and most of the military at the time, that they just wanted to get it down

on paper as like an official position so that it wouldn't be eroded that they could say this is the military's official position on black people, and essentially what it said was black people are not intellectually capable of receiving like theoretical training, they can probably be, you know, worked into like combat troops,

but it's gonna take a lot more effort and you really have to dumb it down, and then maybe you can organize them into a combat troop, but really we don't have high hopes for this, so we should probably just not mess with the whole thing and just keep it in all white military. Yeah, and that was in 1925, and despite all of this, there were still black soldiers

who achieved in the military, most notably in the reason we bring this gentleman up, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. in 1940 became the first black general in the U.S. military. He figures prominently in the Tuskegee Airmen story in that his son, Benjamin Davis Jr., well, we'll tell you what he did, but he figured very prominently

in the formation and story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Yeah, he's huge, he's one of the leading figures, and he gets most of the glory in the press and everything, but there were plenty of others who served quite valiantly quite valiantly. Yeah, so that's like the briefest of summations. I definitely think we should do one on the Buffalo soldiers at some point.

Totes agree. Like, I don't understand why Bob Marley drew that line between Prostas and Buffalo soldiers. I'm not kidding. Like, I know it sounds like a hilarious thing that Josh would say, but I have always, always wondered that. What is he talking about?

Were they Rostas or something like that, or did they have the spirit of the Rostas or vice versa? I'd love to get to the bottom of that. All right, let's do it. Okay. All right. I'm excited. So that brings us to World War II,

and like you said before, segregation is still the law in the United States. Racism was rampant and still is in a lot of places in this country, but back then very much rampant. And despite all that, there were still plenty of African-Americans who wanted to be in the army and wanted to fly planes.

And this was pre-Air Force. It was called the Army Air Corps. Yes. And we should say like this was extremely prestigious to be in the Army Air Corps. It was far and away the most prestigious branch of the military, although it wasn't technically its own branch, it was the most prestigious part of the military

because it was widely considered. And rightfully so, you had to be really, really sharp, really smart, really quick on your toes, and just really large and in charge basically to fly planes in the military. It was still pretty new. It was a fairly new thing.

And the whole world, but also the U.S. really looked up to aviators at the time because this is at a time where if you flew across country, you just made history kind of thing. Right. So to be a part of the Army Air Corps, that's a sweet plum right there. Yeah.

And so we move over to Alabama at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee. And this was a place where if you were a black American and you wanted to go to college and get a higher education, it was a great place to start. Founded in 1881 by Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington. And during this period, they had something called the Civilian Pilot Training Program,

which is, it was established basically to get a pool of pilots with experience, people who could train pilots in the United States. And there were black colleges participating in this program and Tuskegee was one of them. Yeah, Howard University also had a program. There were also, like by this time, there was some black aviation history

that had been established. And it was small, but it was really proud and rightfully so because if you were an African American and you said, you know what, I really look up to all these pilots too. I want to go be a pilot. The first door you went to got slammed in your face. The next door you went to slammed in your face.

And again, like the idea that black people couldn't learn how to fly a plane. So how are you going to let one fly a plane or try to teach them? What's the point? It's also probably pretty dangerous and expensive. Like you could not as an African American get into a flight school.

And so some of these earliest African American pilots and aviation history in like the, say like the 20s, the early 30s, like some of them were self-taught. There's a guy named C. Alfred Anderson who taught himself how to fly and land planes because no flight school would teach him. No white pilots would teach him.

He had to save up by his own plane and teach himself. And he became a legend. He's known as the father of black aviation in America. Yeah. And there's a, like you said, a very small but proud list. Bessie Coleman was a black woman who went to France to learn to fly. She was black and Native American.

Yeah, we should, she should get her on episode two. In 1932, James Banning and Thomas Allen became the first black pilots to fly across the U.S. from L.A. to New York. And they as well, at least Banning, could not go to flight school. So he basically found a white pilot who would give him private lessons,

which is pretty remarkable. And the cool thing about this story is it costs a lot of money to fly across the country at any point. Right. So they would stop in black communities and raise money basically and say, hey, get, you know, donate some cash.

You can sign our airplane. And that will allow us to buy fuel to get to the next stop as we go across country. Yeah. So they became the first black pilots to fly all the way across the U.S. as a result, which is, that's pretty great. But it was like, it was stories like this

and people like these who were profiled in the black press at the time. I don't want to say, I guess the press was pretty much segregated, at least for all practical purposes. Yeah. African America had its own press and I guess the standard establishment press

was just writing stories about white people only or things that related to white people. So African Americans had their own press. So stories of people like this spread throughout the country and inspired like whole new generations of pilots. And it also inspired, like you said, the Tuskegee Institute and Howard University

and some other private schools like one formed by Cornelius Coffee and Willa Brown in Chicago to actually start training black pilots. And so this is already established by the time the drumbeat, the earliest drumbeat to World War II started. And the U.S., led by Franklin Roosevelt said,

we need to get the civilian pilot training program going because we need a pool of people who already know how to fly in case we need to turn them into military pilots as well. Yeah. And the idea here with these, with the black journalists and newspapers was, here's what we want. You know, there's the V for Victory slogan and campaign.

Let's start up something and get the word out called the double V campaign, which is basically victory in Europe, but also for black soldiers, victory at home and trying to make a dent in discrimination and racism. If we go over there and we can fight and we can fly planes and serve our country, maybe that might make a difference when we come back home

that we were, you know, distinguished with our military service. So that was the double V campaign, trying to get victory at home against racism as well as in Europe on the ground with the military. And none of this might have happened had it not been for one Eleanor Roosevelt. And maybe you should take a break there.

Oh, nice cliffhanger check. Yeah. What does Eleanor Roosevelt have to do with all this? We'll find out in just a minute. We're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks man.

you through life step by step not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy you may be thinking this is the story of my life just stop now if so tell everybody yeah everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye listen to Frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts alright Chuck so I mean I'm just gonna say it Eleanor Roosevelt give it up yeah man I mean she was a great lady in a lot of ways but what she did in the case of

the T's eventual Tuskegee Airmen was she visited Tuskegee they had a training airfield called Motenfield M-O-T-O-N yeah because remember this is like they're they're they're flying program that they already established yeah so she visits she's watching the pilots take off fly around land and she was like could I get in one of those planes that is a bitch in Eleanor Roosevelt man and they said sure so she went up with an African-American pilot she went up with that C. Alfred Anderson the self-taught father of aviation yeah and everything went great and she had a apparently a good time went back home

and got in her husband's ear and was like hey these these guys can fly planes they're doing a great job they're fit for military service so let's let's get this thing going in earnest and he did so in January of 1941 so here's the thing this is what I'm unclear on like it's it's doubtless that Eleanor Roosevelt played a role in making sure that this this actually happened that that African-American pilots were eligible to fly for the US military the Army Air Corps right but the timing of it I can't quite suss out either the the US military said yeah we're going to establish a black pilots training

program at Tuskegee in January 1941 and then Eleanor Roosevelt showed up a couple months later to make sure that this actually happened or she showed up and then they established it I can't quite suss that out but either way she's a pretty cool lady like she went down and saw for herself and then came back and said hey we really should make this happen or she knew that this was happening but also could see people just dragging their feet so she went down to shine light on the whole process the project and it kind of took off from there if you'll forgive the pun either way she played some sort of pretty cool

role in getting it going yeah and when it first started there was sort of a joint affair between Tuskegee and the Army Air Corps as far as providing funding and equipment personnel they all sort of chipped in a little bit there were flying a few different planes for training one biplane the Stearman PT-17 eventually they were able to move over to the Tuskegee Army airfield a few miles away from Moton Field where they had access to the P-40 Warhawk and then they were like now we're talking right but also I mean the initial primary training at Moton Field was this kind of quasi-university military training

almost like an ROTC air training program and then once you graduated from primary you moved over to the Army Field and you were full on on a military base in military life yeah and this like this this wasn't the first time that black pilots tried to apply like pre Tuskegee they were applying recruits were applying and getting rejected every time they tried to get into the Air Corps eventually the NAACP got involved a lawsuit was filed and even after that when they started admitting black men into the Air Corps it was 10 cadets every five weeks so they were you know it looks like they were purposefully just

sort of stymying the process right red tape and bureaucracy to still not allow them to train yeah and initially so that that lawsuit was by a Howard University student named Yancey Williams who wanted to be a just straight up Army Air Corps cadet and the NAACP backed back the lawsuit and the result was apparently the the military saying okay we'll just start a segregated all black pilot program where the NAACP and most black leadership wanted just integration in the Army Air Corps so they were like okay fine we'll take it but we're not like this is not what we were we're going for but we'll take this

it's better than nothing I guess yeah that's probably a good way to put it but the program starts up internist however few cadets they were allowing it started to build up these men are getting trained men from the north came down and this is you know this is in Alabama during the Jim Crow era and there are there's one documentary called they fought two wars which basically was like you know they're getting trained they're serving their country and then they go out like on the weekend maybe for a little R&R and then they're met by the southern whites of Alabama who basically you know treated them exactly

how you would expect there was even a petition to end the program just because they were like there's so many black men in our town now we don't want them in our community right surely something bad will happen to our community because of this there was also apparently at least one incident where black military police were disarmed by white locals around Tuskegee civilians yeah who just refused to recognize that they had any authority over them whatsoever military police or not and the the at the time this this happened early on the commander of the of the base Ellison James Ellison major James Ellison was he

protested very loudly and very vocally and said this is messed up I won't stand for this and they said hey Ellison yeah we need somebody who is on the side of the recruits but maybe not quite so much of a true believer so you come over here with us and we're gonna relieve you of your post and instead they brought in a guy named Colonel Noel Parrish and he was maybe a little less gung-ho about civil rights and equality and desegregation he very much withstood and stood up with the segregationist policies of the military didn't fight against it but within this framework he's very much credited for being very

fair very even-handed and giving like full-throated legitimately good quality training to these black recruits at Tuskegee like he wasn't they weren't getting like sub par or less than adequate training compared to their white counterparts elsewhere they were getting just as good training to be trained like he was taking it seriously and he was being fair about it so he's he's respected for for that to to have overseen this this this project I guess fairly rather than he very easily could have gone to the other side and dragged his feet to or put up unnecessary roadblocks and obstacles too but he

didn't yeah and one of the I guess you could call it one of the silver linings of the segregation in the military was there was already a the 99th pursuit squadron was already established which were black cadets to get training on maintenance and tech support for for the for the air patrol so they were already in place so by the time Tuskegee gets rolling and these cadets are being sent in to learn to fly they were like let's just give them the 99th pursuit squadron so it was basically an all-black unit from the maintenance to the to the technical support to the pilots that were training

obviously not the instructors but I get the feeling you know from research that that lent some sort of a it kind of led to camaraderie and that they had their own guys on the ground and training you know oh yeah yeah for sure I mean like it was an all basically an all-black squadron and not all the commanders or trainers were white like that my favorite guy chief Alfred Anderson he was the ground commander in chief that self-taught father of aviation yeah he he was the head of the the ground commanders at Tuskegee so there was a mix but one of the things I think you kind of hit upon that gets overlooked is

when you talk about Tuskegee and the Tuskegee Airmen you're talking about 400 to 500-ish pilots fighter pilots typically that are thought of as a Tuskegee Airmen but there were so many more people that made up like this whole project this whole movement basically that I think there was something like 12,000 like people trained in aviation through the that are really technically Tuskegee Airmen right there they are considered so and they get overlooked a lot because the fighter pilots get all the glory sure but I mean these are all these people played a huge significant role in the whole thing yeah so we

mentioned at the onset the first African-American general Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and that his son figured prominently yeah so that's Ben Jr. he comes in he went to he followed in Dad's footsteps he went to West Point where you know despite it was sort of like a lords of discipline sort of scene there oh man I forgot about that book yeah man that was good good movie I make brutal to watch but a really good movie but Davis basically went to West Point didn't give him a roommate made him eat by himself they say that he was like literally not spoken to by anybody unless they absolutely had to speak to him yet he

persevered through all this he graduated and went to teach at Tuskegee instead of going to command for enlisted troops so it was a bit of serendipity that he ended up there I think kind of right at the same time this Air Corps began which is really really kind of cool yeah one of the first things he did was as he was I think he became the commander of the 99th Pursuit Squadron he also was one of their first graduates he was in the first class to graduate from flight school there so I I don't know that he had much flight training prior to that but he went and learned to became pretty distinguished as a pilot either way but

he he was immediately assigned the 99th Pursuit Squadron he was in charge of it which is pretty cool right so as the as the the Tuskegee Airmen started to distinguish themselves which we'll talk about more in a minute Davis kind of became distinguished as well because he was leading the whole show yeah and you know he he had been through West Point he knew what the deal was he was like he knew that there was a lot more riding on this than just forming an air squadron he was like black people all around the country are looking at us they're banking on our success we have to like we have to be better than the best and so he was

really tough he tough but fair but he would not put up with with anything that took away from their ultimate goal which was to be the best airmen in the country black or white apparently there were black pilots who would wash out of the program that historians say like you know if that was a white pilot he would have been allowed to keep going like that's how high the standard was that Davis set for the Tuskegee Airmen right well it wasn't just Davis I think I think they were saying like they were unfairly not given their wings whereas a white pilot elsewhere and another base undergoing training wouldn't have washed

out so some of the pilots that that did wash out probably did and because they were being held to unfair racist standards not necessarily by Davis but by some of the white commanders and trainers you see what I'm saying yeah but I saw where Davis was very quick to give someone the ouster if they didn't think they were living up to their position yeah so the upshot of that though Chuck was that the the people who graduated from this program at Tuskegee were really really good pilots yeah I mean really good pilots they were just held to whether fair or unfair higher standards they had to prove

themselves more than say their white counterparts at other bases and so the ones who actually did manage graduate were just as good as it got but what sad is for the people who washed out they might not have washed out of some of the other programs yeah like if they had been white elsewhere in another program so that in and of itself is kind of demoralizing but what really gets is when you step back and realize like the the men who were going through pilot training program were the face of black America yeah and so not only were they being watched by you know by racist whites and supportive whites too but

but say from what racist whites to just watch for them to fail I think Henry L Stimson who was the secretary of war said sure we're gonna give him a shot but I expect nothing less than disaster to be produced by this and I think he meant like literal disaster like planes crashing everywhere kind of thing so not only did you have like that kind of observation going on you at all time you also carried with you the hopes and dreams and expectations of black America and not just black America and something big and amorphous and vague like that but your family and your church group and your community back home were all like

pulling for you but also really expecting everything from you and if you graduated that was huge and if you washed out I'm sure that was equally huge in the other direction yeah so March 1942 was when the first class of cadets graduated it would take another like four months or so five months to get enough pilots you know graduating through the program that they were a full fighter squadron and the early results you know they were they were very high ranking US officials that were pretty impressed early on including that secretary of war Stimson that you you talked about that predicted disaster

yeah he had a change of heart yeah he visited Tuskegee and said the outfit looks as good as any I've ever seen major general James Julio said from results so far obtained is believed that the squadron will give an excellent account of itself in combat and that it will be a credit to its race and to Americans everywhere and despite this it still took a long time to get the full confidence to actually send them into the theater of war in Europe well yeah and I don't even know if it was confidence I think well I guess it was confidence in a way but there were other commanders of at the time they

called them air forces where it was like squadrons and groups just put together like a huge mass of of Air Corps subdivisions were called air forces at the time so if you were running the show in an Air Force you'd be like I don't want them I don't want them and all of them were saying I don't want them you they couldn't give them away so they were just stuck in America while the United States had already joined World War two and was all fighting in places like North Africa and the Mediterranean yeah and I think you know I don't know if this is confirmed but some say that Eleanor Roosevelt it got in her

husband's ear once again and finally in what April 1943 they got their first orders the 99th to go to North Africa in 1943 which was what is that like two years after the first graduated class yeah so you know the upshot to this though is they're still training this whole time right right they're just getting better and better in training but can you imagine like having to sit around and wait now I know waiting for the water to get out there yeah so some of the first assignments they got when they were running sorties off of North Africa they were there was an island called Panatella I believe in a knee

camp it's Pantelleria Pantelleria wow that was way off thank you for correct yes Pantelleria was occupied by the Italian army and they gave up they surrendered the island without any ground forces having to land because the Tuskegee Airmen were bombing them so bad they were sent on dive bombing campaigns and that usually consists of attacking a ground position whether it's like some sort of transport like transport planes and an airfield or rail cars or you know gas or water infrastructure just stuff to make the enemy rather uncomfortable or unable to operate in this place that they've

occupied and it very rarely requires any kind of aerial dogfighting like we think of with fighter pilots it's more just attacking the enemy where they are rather than trying to battle for domination of the skies that's what a dogfight is it's what fighter to fighter combat is yeah so this is different so you're not going to encounter other fighters typically so you're not going to have as many kills they don't count like blowing up a set of rail cars as a kill you have to shoot another fighter plane out of the sky and that's what they really count when you're a fighter pilot but if you're

not being assigned those kind of sorties you're not going to rack up kills like that so everybody understood this this was fine but apparently somebody was talking to the press back in America and ended up getting a story out of Time magazine that questioned the 99th fighter squadrons bravery because they've been flying all sorts of sorties but where were all their kills all these other white pilots had all these kills where was the Tuskegee airmen's kills and the the context of that wasn't put into that that magazine so what the rest of America read was the Tuskegee airmen are cowards and all of a sudden

Benjamin O. Davis jr. finds himself being called back to Washington to explain why his squadron are being called cowards in the national press that's right so let's pick that up right after this message because things changed in January of 1944 on the podcast Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces we're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s we lived it

and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it it's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever do you remember going to blockbuster do you remember Nintendo 64 do you remember getting frosted tips was that a cereal no it was here do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist so leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you

back to the 90s listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass the hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road okay I see what you're doing do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this I promise you oh god seriously I swear and you won't have to send an SOS

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all right so the Tuskegee Airmen are over there doing these you know they're dropping bombs they did get a little bit of fighter to fighter action but not enough you know to ward the press off this is despite the fact that they had virtually you know they were still segregated you know what they usually did was say here let's mix in these these new guys with some experienced guys and they can sort of mentor them and help them out because it was segregated they kept them separate and yet they still persevere through all this like you said before the break Davis comes home to the US to sort of battle these

reports and then things took a real change in January of 1944 there was a patrol unit of 12 planes flying over Anzio and they spotted these German fighters just like like Maverick and Goose in Top Gun although they were just training right there's never any real battle in Top Gun right no they there wasn't a battle but they did engage that mig remember he flew upside down and flipped them off and took a Polaroid so dumb so they're doing a sequel to that you know like a sequel with Tom Cruise and yeah really yeah yeah and it's exactly what you think it's Tom Cruise is now the veteran instructor and a

young Maverick comes under his watch no boy young Maverick gonna be I don't even know I'm not even sure but it's I'm sure it's one of those deals where you know Cruz gets to say like I was you yeah I'm gonna toss Christian Navarro's hat in the ring how about that I think they've already cast it but you never know maybe maybe we've got some pull Chuck and we just influenced yeah Christian if you're listening we're rooting for you my friend so they see these German fighters these 12 planes and they're like let's go get them fellas and they get into a dogfight pretty legendary dogfight and they record five kills in about four or

five minutes no losses no losses that's a big one too yeah and it was a very big deal for the 99th after that and this was like after these reports had come into the US they weren't like they were fairly dejected but that made them hungrier than ever and this is why they sort of flung themselves headlong into this attack and they made the news and they became known all of a sudden as these pilots that would really go after the Germans they have a high kill rate and it was a big deal yeah so there's two other things so not only were they were they not being assigned missions typically that would rack up high kill

rates so how can you criticize them for that but secondly when they were in North Africa in their first assignment they were given really old really obsolete planes and they were when they did engage German fighter pilots they were out outclassed as far as the planes are concerned and they were still taking out Germans and dogfights so like they had a lot going against them and still managed to prove themselves and then something really big changed they got transferred over to the I believe the 15th Air Force and the 99th the 100th the 301st and the 302nd the four Tuskegee fighter pilot squadrons were

all brought together under the 332nd fighter group under the command now of Benjamin O. Davis jr. is a colonel at this point yep who and then placed under the 15th Air Force and the the Benjamin O. Davis jr. and the guy who headed up the 15th Air Force they they had the same philosophy for the kinds of assignments that the Tuskegee Airmen would be carrying out from now on which were bomber escorts and it was don't leave the bomber squadron like when you're escorting bombers that's the point you don't you don't peel off and chase after any other jets that are like any German jets that are coming

toward you and there were German jets but German fighter planes and you don't chase them away you just stay with the bombers that's your point and that's another thing that's not like you're not gonna rack up a ton of kills in that respect yeah I'm sure it was tough like especially given their reputation they wanted to go shoot down German planes exactly and Davis is like no man you gotta like you got to be disciplined and these these bombers are under threat and you got to stick with them and so as a result of this they developed like a really great reputation for for safely escorting bombers to their destination I

mean if you're part of a bomber fleet you're flying behind enemy lines to go bomb a city or an oil refinery or something like that and the purpose of these planes is not to shoot other planes out of the sky it's to drop bombs so you need fighter jets to escort you fighter planes to escort you to these drop sites and shoot away any other planes that are going to try to shoot you out of the sky so it's pretty hairy but it's also like you're protecting the bombers that's the point so the reputation that they developed Chuck would actually became legendary there was a false a false myth that generated around

it but one that even when you peel away the myth and look at reality it's still pretty impressive yeah and the other thing that helped too was in 1944 you know we mentioned that they were flying I mean they weren't obsolete planes they were just not as good as what they were flying against right they finally get the P-51 Mustang and they were like now we're talking dudes like this is this is go time really cool airplane one of my favorites of all time is that 51 Mustang that's the world war two fighter plane that everybody thinks of yeah I mean it's it's I want to use words here I can't use on the show to describe it

because I get so excited about it but it's pretty sweet so they now finally had and you did mention the jet you know the me the me 262 from Germany was the first jet that used in combat like that and if you look at this thing it looks like I would rather have the Mustang this thing looks dangerous to me it may well have been I don't know much about it oh you mean to be like the pilot of it yeah I mean it was just an early small jet like I can't I don't know it was probably pretty scary to fly or maybe it was great I don't know I'm sure it's thrilling but the 332nd now with their P-51s they start painting their you know

we mentioned the movie red tails that came comes from what they did on their wing they painted their the tail of their plane red and that they became known for that it was very distinguishable from the air and there were a lot of bomber pilots who were like we want these red tails because these guys are awesome and some of them didn't even know that they were black pilots they just knew that they were red tails right and and again the red tails had developed a really good reputation for escorting bombers to their bomb sites and what was their rank what did they lose I know the for many many years they

said they never lost a bomber which is not true they didn't one of the newspapers in Chicago the Chicago Defender published a story in 1945 that of more than 200 bomber escort missions the Tuskegee airmen never lost a bomber yeah they is in people not the right but that was the that was the myth that developed that they never lost a bomber that is basically impossible over something like 200 missions yeah but that's the myth that stood for like 50 60 years something like that and then finally in a story in with the Air Force like actually dug in and did that the shoe leather work on it and found no

actually they did lose some bombers they lost something like I think 26 or 27 bombers but out of like the 200 something missions that is still a ridiculously small amount yeah and that other squadrons and fighter groups in the 15th Air Force they average something like 47 so almost double what the Tuskegee airmen saw in losses so they they had paltry losses but yeah the idea that they just wouldn't have ever lost a bomber is it's it's impossible you just couldn't not lose a bomber over that many missions yeah so you know we all know how world war two ends spoiler alert the the allies the allies did

their job and so the Tuskegee airmen start to get sent home like with other troops over the years and here's the you know that the double v campaign they were hoping they come home and they are more accepted and they might even be revered they might get good jobs they might become commercial airline pilots none of those things happened very sadly that did not equate to a quality back home which is one of the true like black eyes on this country's history you know yeah some of them I mean yeah that was it should have just automatically triggered well they shouldn't have this should have never happened in the first

place right like dragging feet on segregation and making african-america jump through these hoops like this rather than just integrating like making a segregated air air core squadron first and letting them prove themselves like that and then once they prove themselves still not opening doors or anything like that it that it should have never happened but the fact that it didn't happen automatically is pretty pretty shameful it did they it's not like they weren't successful though oh for sure they laid the groundwork and they laid the foundation and they began the momentum for a lot of people say the

civil rights movement that the what they the groundwork that they laid the the way that they changed America's minds about black people in general like oh they actually can fly planes and oh they can shoot Germans out of the sky and oh look at this they can actually do better at bomber escorts than white counterparts right that change in mentality that they were able to take advantage of in this circumstance in history that changed everything so they were very much successful in that it's just shameful that that they had to just keep fighting and keep pressing on it this was really just the first step

rather than the last yeah for sure but I mean I think that wording is is perfect it was the groundwork absolutely the foundation foundational groundwork was laid as for Colonel Davis he after the war in 1948 is when Truman ended segregation in the military Colonel Davis advised on that integration and had a great career he retired in 1970 and in 1998 very cool was made an honorary general of the Air Force four-star general so he'd made it to lieutenant general before he retired yeah and I think a four-star lieutenant general and then Clinton advanced him to general so he was a four-star general of the Air

Force after retirement that's right yeah pretty great story yeah it is a pretty great story there is also something called the Freeman Field Mutiny which is kind of happening in the off to the side the the Tuskegee Airmen also formed a bombardier group a bomber group of bomber pilots that never saw any action but saw a lot of racism and segregation in back at home during training and there was one event that's called the Freeman Field Mutiny where they basically protested segregated officers clubs segregated and unequal officers clubs and the way that they protested it through basically civil disobedience but

in the military at a time when you could be executed for disobeying and direct order which they were given they stood up for their civil rights and that's another way that that another thing that's pointed to as laying the foundation for the civil rights movement peaceful civil disobedience and that actually came out of the Tuskegee Airmen's story as well absolutely good stuff good stuff check this is a good idea to cover this one yeah I mean this was long overdue but like I said I don't think we had an article on the House of Worksite so we just went out and had it commissioned on our own nice work well

let's see if you want to know more about the Tuskegee Airmen apparently go watch a couple so-so movies there's some documentaries out there one of them is called they fought two wars which is perfectly titled and there's also I think an American experience is a lot of stuff start reading go to Tuskegee Alabama do all that stuff okay yes and since I said do all that stuff it's time for listener mail I'm gonna call this the tits project hey guys just listen to the elephant episode and Josh mentioned that typically groups of birds and deer don't actually know each other like elephants and recognize one from the

other however I just read an article in a recent Audubon magazine I know he said typically but I wanted to point you towards this study that is really interesting the with them tits project in Britain it is a very long-running study where they're looking at the relationships between tits in Britain and they have found that they run in social groups and appear to have friends I highly recommend giving it a read apparently these guys must recognize each other and I actually read it and that's why I'm recommending it because it's a really great article it's it's called it's from Audubon magazine Audubon

dot com or I'm sorry dot org the surprising connection between birds Facebook and other social networks huh very cool article so that is from Miranda and Duluth Minnesota nice you can go read that and have fun fun fun on the Audubon magazine until daddy takes your laptop away weird that was great Chuck I don't think we can improve on that so we're just going to say if you want to get in touch with us you can join us on all of our social media networks go to stuff you should know calm it's basically the clearing house for links to find us hanging out on the social meds and you can also send us an

email send it to stuff podcast at that's the at symbol how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com on the podcast hey dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show hey dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces we're going to use hey dude as our jumping off point but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s we lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it listen to hey dude the 90s called on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or

wherever you get your podcasts hey I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody yeah everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts