Nationalgi anthem. All of you who are able to, please rise. [inaudible] [inaudible] present arms. Oh, say, can you see, by the dawns early light what so proudly we haild at the twilights last gleaming . Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro the perilous fight oer the ramparts we watchd, were so gallantly streaming . And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air gave proof thro the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that starspangled banner yet wave oer the land of the free and the home of the brave . [applause] [applause] please join me in thanking the air force tc honor guard for that very special presentation in tribute to our nation. Please be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, i am the events director for the Richard Nixon foundation and its a pleasure to have you all here tonight. Thursday of last week marked the 75th anniversary of operation overlord, the largest sea, land invasion in history and the turning point of world war ii. A day remembered as dday. At the time to remember and honor the heroes of americas greatest generation in the heroes of world war ii. It is a time to remember the sacrifices made in the face of evil to protect our essential freedoms. If the time to show the tremendous respect appreciation and admiration deserved to the great warriors of world war ii and all who served. We are lucky to be among some of those great patriot tonight and will all of our veterans and current arm servicemembers stand and be recognized. [applause] [applause] please allow me to express a special thank you are not only myself but on the Richard Nixon president ial library and museum, Richard Nixon foundation and the nixon family. We are truly indebted to you. Thank you for your service. Pp [applause] a recipient of the distinguished flying cross. Tonight special guest speaker is one that won the title of hero. a title earned noter only a brod fighting in the skies high above world war ii theater of war but also at home as an africanamerican prevailing in the face of racism. At 17 years old Harry T Stewart junior signed up for war Service Volunteering before being drafted. He had tohe fit in a segregated rail car on the journey to basic training in 1943 but in two years time would be at the control of the mustang with the distinct makings many of his fellow servicemembers will get a sigh of relief especially when an escort in the belly of a b17 or be 24 bomber and the markings were of course named for the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American military aviators in history of the United States armed forces. The red tails. Ry colonel stewart was 40 blue 43 combat missions amassing an outstanding record which included being one of only four Tuskegee Airmen with three aerial victories in one day, amazingly taking down three german aircraft on april 1st, 1945. Moderating tonights discussion is retired air force colonel wayne and scott. Colonel scott served for nearly three decades as a communications and Computers Systems officer in the United States air force. As a Service Career took him to 19 different assignments at 11 tcations around the world that included tours of this quadrant commander responsible for the o 500 personnel. Colonel scott retired from the air force in 2005 to join [inaudible] where he served as project manager, senior project managerio excuse me, project manager, the Senior Program manager and Business Development manager. One of his notable projects was the arresting systems used aboard our aircraft carriers during landing at seas and still currently used to this day. Colonel scott retired this past march after spending, i believe, 13 years with the company. He retired this past month but remains incredibly busy with veteran initiatives across the Southern California area. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome colonel wainscott and colonel Harry Stewart. [applause] [cheering and applause] now that was appropriate. During my 29 years in the air force i was routinely taught that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Its a phrase that, in todays air force, means we are the greatest air force in the world because of those who went before us and the standards they set and the courage they displayed. I am honored to sit here tonight with one of those giants. [applause] ive had the opportunity to read this book cover to cover and it is absolutely fascinating. I was putting together the questions to discuss with colonel stewart and we could talk for two hours with the stuff in this book. I promise you we will not do that but i wanted to pick out just a couple of incidences in the book that i would like you to share with our audience. You see the photos going by on the screen and these are all about incidences covered in the book and the photos are in the book and we will just give you a taste of some of that here this evening. While the book is subtitled Tuskegee Airmens firsthand account of world war ii really did not include much more than that and you and philip began with a very detailed account of the early pioneers of black aviation. Their stories are fascinating but you have little direct contact with them. What started your interest in aviation . What made you want to fly . Im sorry, i think it started early when i was a baby in a crib. I was raised in virginia and my folks lived near Langley Field and the vented aircraft, at that time, flew over the house where i was and my parents would have me out in the crib and they would tell me, i dont remember, but i would look up at the airplanes and make all the gurgling sounds when i thought and airplane go by. At two years old my parents decided to move to new york city and they moved to queens, the borough of queens and the location was about a mile and a half from the local airport by the north Beach Airport 1939 and the name was changed to Laguardia Airport but there is a young teenager i use to watch the airplanes take off and i used to fantasize about sitting in the cockpit and having the controls and flying around. That engendered the dream of someday getting up in the air and flying an aircraft and itge stuck. The fascination started young and you were a 17 yearold High School Student when pearl harbor was bombed and you had read about the 99th squadron and you immediately went down to list and tell them you wanted to join the 99. I told them i wanted to join the 99th and recruiting sergeant said you will join whatever organization we want you tot. Left back anyway, i had to wait till i was 18 to be pulled into the service and the draft is going on at the time and it so happens that the very day that i was supposed to report to the Induction Center i received a letter in the bottom of it read arnold and i was general arnold at the time but it had his signature or rather his literate documents it was calling me into the service the same day i would have been indoctrinated through the draft. For those of you who dont know the history that would be general arnold went on to be the first chief of staff of the United States air force. March of 1943 you reported to basic training for the air corps in mississippi. I was stationed there twice during my career but you had c o travel back through the south be reintroduced to the racism and bigotry that her father hader taken your family out of. This was the first trip south that i had after two years after moving to new york where i was two years old and i dont think not to create i dont think i was anything west of the hudson river as of that time but anyway i got on the train at pennsylvania station, downtown new york and with me were some of the neighborhood kids that i grew up with and it was very much interracial neighborhood there so all except one of the kids were white and we went as far as washington dc and the train stopped in washington dc to change engines and the conductor came back in the car we were in at the time pointed to me and said youll have to go up to the front car that the jim crow car. rightparenthesis said and had warned me about this and said what it would be like in thats where i had to go. I know the youngsters said will go up with you and the conductor said no, its for the white people back here. He has to gole to the car for te colored people which is the jim crow car. We will talk more about indians like that and their impact on your life. Youre going through basic training and one of the things you have to complete their before you can move on to tuskegee is past a flight physical. Yes. But when you are four years old you contracted polio connect yes. And you lost some of the use of your right leg including your reflexes for mac yes. How did you get to a flight physical . I think it. [laughter] i knew that but i wanted him to tell the story. Its great. They have the test with the achilles tendon here and the rubber mallet and they hit the achilles tendon and of course your knee jerks and i think i overplayed it and almost kicked the doctor off the podium so i think when i kicked my leg there and of course if you find out i had atrophy in the cast of my right leg there that prevented me from certain movements or maximizing certain movements. But that got you to tuskegee. Yes. So, you started at tuskegee in december 43 in a class of 75 cadets. Yes. But by june of 44 only 26 finished. Thats correct. How old are you or how old were you when you started there . I was 18 when i started. And you okay, you were talking downstairs one of your vivid memories from that was your very first solo. Tell us yes, well i threw a plane called cornell and it was an all plywood aircraft, lowing, open cockpit in tandem and i forget Something Like 175horsepower or Something Like that butr i received seven hous instruction in it before the instructor thought i was capable of soloing the craft. The difficulty i had in first find the aircraft was i had not been in flight or been in an aircraft before at the time and i was a little surprised because it did not react in trying to flight was not the same as i had thought it would be. When we were kids we used to push we used to call them [inaudible] and they had a wooden cross beam wheels but if you wanted to go left you push your right foot in and it went like this and if you wanted to go right you pushed your left foot and it would turn like that. The plane was just the opposite. I had difficulty overcoming left and the instructor would say give me a left turn and i was pushed to the other side there that i had but i overcame that and finally after the end of seven hours the instructor said taxi me over and thats a large structure underground that tells you what direction the wind is coming from and he got out of the cockpit in front of me there and stood and started to pass the buckle where he got up and i realized what was happening that he would do for me so i told him do it the way you do and that was it. The force i did and when i broke ground it was just a new sensation that i got it overwhelming feeling of pleasure and a compass meant a an advancement and the plane started gradually going up into the air and i saw the pattern like the instructor told me to kand i taxied by the team to tae it back around again and that was my aviation soloing by myself airborne at that time. What an incredible experience. Eighteen years old and did not even have a drivers license. Did not have a drivers license. From new york and they had the Rapid Transit system in new york so you didnt really need a car. Again, june 44 you finished and had gone through with over 200 hoursra at this point and ia series of different aircraft including the 86 on the screen right there and eightysix. After some fighter intro training in the p40 in early january of 45 you arrived at the 332nd Fighter Group in italy. Yes. You get qualified to fly the p51. Yes. And you go by your First Combat Mission that night yes. Tell us about that. I flew the First Combat Mission and there was nothing like it. [inaudible] Something Like five or 600 farmers that would be involved and we were one of the seven Fighter Groups that were assigned to escort for the bomber groups, they were both b17 and be 24s and of course for the mission they would not run into it but they stretched out for a period of distance ofa maybe 100 miles but my squadron was going to escort the last of the bombers going over and i was relegated to not only been in a position of the last squadron to escort the bombers but with the last member last flight and which is called. Tail and charlie. Yes. I remember taking off and i was a little befuddled as to just what we to turn except that i was fine on the element leader and just did whatever he did. Then we got on the course and climbing out and going up into germany and asked for the bomber to start reaching a certain temperature and altitude and they would start [inaudible] they go over the white condensation trails they have and each of these 600 bombers had four engines and they began when they reached that atmospheric height where the stick place they started building each of these engines and putting streamers and i could see this for miles, 50 miles in front of me and it was just a beautiful site but then the fighters that were in front came over and they maintained the same ground speed and the fighter was so much faster than the bombers and they were doing as turns over the bombers so there was this ballet in the sky of these paper trails and it was a stream going ahead and then the streams of the fighter planes going above them and it was awesome. It was a site we will never see again because well never put a force like that in the air again. Thats the last of what we will see as far as the big bombing raids. One bomber now can do as much damage with its payload as all of those bombers during the entire war. Thats a sight to behold and a site i will never see again. It brings back the memories back incredible. Thank you. So, lets see. You are you were stationed in italy and blue 43 combat missions in 1945 and the most memorable one, i think, we will say was april 1st smack the memorable one was april 1st, 1945 which also happened to be Easter Sunday and we were on a mission to up near vienna, austria and the entire three squadrons assigned to escorting a Certain Group of bombers but however, the air was quite peaceful at the time there and there wasnt much activity save for the bombers dropping their payloads there and we were dispatched to make a fighter sweet in that area around the danube and in vienna there. The later sweep was to involve the opportunity what we call opportunities [inaudible] gisabling the freight trains and moving traffic and enemy aircraft if necessary and we were looking for trouble. Trouble found us. It was a horde of german fw 190 and we were attacked by them. There were seven of us and it was quite a horde of them. I dont remember how many but three of us got shut down and one of them got shut down in his plane was damaged enough for him to try to make it home and got as far as friendly territory in yugoslavia and landed there without any incident. The second private that was with us was shut down and killed instantly. The third one was named Walter Manning from philadelphia, pennsylvania. His aircraft was disabled and he had to bail out and we were around [inaudible]. We landed a mob of civilians pick them up and delivered him to a ogle jailhouse for confinement but two nights later another mob formed and they took walter out, beat him up and then hung him from the lamp post. That is not to claim that this was an dignity reserved for the members of the Tuskegee Airmen but this happened to a lot of our airmen, especially among the bomber crews that went down near the territory and you can understand the sympathy of the civilians where the bombings had taken place. Incidentally, not last april 1st but april 1st a year ago i was invited by the austrian government to come over and participate in a memorial to the second lieutenant, Walter Manningec, who was lynched at te time there. They felt as though it was their obligation to show their [inaudible] as far as the mob doing that to walter and gave him a very dignified remembrance there and i was pleased to have been invited over to participate in the ceremony. That is a memorial to the Walter Manning on the territory of that former german airbase it is that where the memorial yes, thats exactly right. I forget inn german how to pronounce the airbase now but it was in austria, the airbase they are. Finally, honored for his bravery as well. Yes. In that battle you were credited with shooting down three german aircraft. Yes. For that you were awarded the distinguished flying cross. Yes. The war in europe and in may of 1945. Thats correct. You returned to the states in september 1945 decorated war herote. How are black servicemembers treated upon their return . Not much recognition except for the black press. I would say there was little recognition and as far as social atmosphere of the country i returned to the same old, same old. He it was the exact same as it was when i left to go in the service and the changes did not start taking place four years after our return. Yet again, we can talk about how some of those things were rectified later on in your life. You remained in the 32nd and as it transitioned to the air force one of the things you learned is that flying isnt only dangerous when youre in combat and so, march 20, 1948 you had a little engine trouble. Yes, a little engine trouble over [inaudible] in kentucky. [laughter] hhad to bail out and my aircraft dove into the ground, p47, it smashed into the ground 100 yards from the cabin who is a western singer now of lorettaf lynn. [laughter] i parachuted about half a mile away and i was up on a hillside on a mountainside and some little girl saw me coming down to the clouds and told her daddy about it and she was about five years old at the time. Pardon me. He got a horse, yes, thank you. He got two horses and was on one of them and pulling the other horse behind him. And came up the mountainside and i had broken my leg and hit the tail when he bailed out and broke my leg so i was sitting in ie outcrop of the rocks beyond when he got here he yelled hello and of course, in a panicked voice yes hello, im here. He came over and of course, when he came within eyesight of me where he could discern very well he was startled and i guess i was the first among few black men he had ever seen this black man falling from the sky in a parachute. [laughter] would anybody believe you if you said that you saw that happen . [laughter] i was just concerned myself knowing i was in kentucky and wait in the backwoods there. Anybody could, you know, do anything to me and say we found a guy and thats the way he was when we found him, you know. Anyway, we greeted one another and he helped me boosted me up on the horse there and that there was a parade going through the countryside down the trails of the horse so we got to the open highway there where i could be taken to the county hospital and of course, once they got me in the fed in the hospital there was a line of people outside the door to go ahead and to see this apparition and say is it true, you know. The mayor of the town and all that sort of stuff. Years later it was around after the year 2000 after 48 after year 2000 i got this call from this fellow, danny blevins, who said im the town historian and i heard about your bailing out over Butcher Hollow back in 48 and i wanted to know if this is really Harry Stewart and i said yes and i said they were assuming the rumors about the incident and i wanted to find out and write aab story about i. So i said is that right, put out the rumors. He said the rumor was that a black man stole a b52 [laughter] and was making a bombing raid on our town and they called the United States fighters up and they shot him down. [laughter] so, i thought that was really something. I fell off my chair laughing at the time but just to show you how it all ended up. One year later i was invited down to homecoming down [inaudible], kentucky, butcher sollow, and was made there there parade marshall in eight red 51 months they and the whole town and countryside turned out to see me and it was quite a pleasurable experience. [applause] i tell you this book is full of so many incredible Great Stories and make 1949 air force starts in air force wide gunnery competition because they want to help pilots keep their skills sharpened and this was for anyone familiar with air force that was the forerunner to the competition called gunsmoke which was air ground competition and another called william tell air competition. They were combined back in the late 1940s. You are one of four pilots selected to represent the 332nd in that competition. You went out to North Las Vegas airport space which is not [inaudible] air force base to the take part in that competition and how was your team received as part of that competition . I would say that with coldness but indifference. I imagine what would happen is general vandenberg was then commanding general of the air force decided he would like to resurrect a competition that was held before world war ii among different Fighter Groups to see who was the best in handling their weapons and find their aircraft and decided to resurrect to that competition and called on all 12 groups that was under his command in the continent of the United States at the time and asked them to send their three best pilots plus an alternate to las vegas, nevada to compete and have weapons and find competition out in the desert confines in the area and by the way, id like to digress and say that is also you have seen in the movies called top gun and i want to say tom cruise was not the First Top Gun that there was. [laughter] you are looking at a member of the first team but i want him to finish the story. Anyway there were three to compete in one alternate and these 12 Group Representatives came out to las vegas before may of 1949 and the competition started may to and completed on may 12. It involved aerial gunnery at 20000 feet and at 10000 feet, skip bombing, dive bombing, rocketry and i think there were a couple others i cant recall right now but at after ten days of serious competition the winner was announced and the winner, yes, it turned out to be the Tuskegee Airmen. [applause] now, some felt they do not belong there and watch the photos you saw them standing next to what crude they belong to and i was the trophy. There was an interesting story about that trophy because around 1994 air force magazine printed a list of the historical winners of this gunnery competition and in 1949 it said unknown. Somebody had to provide some documentation to prove who one that. Yes. I happen to keep the records of what we have the gunnery with scores on the competitions and that type of thing in the former commander of my squadronn had called me up and i was a civilian at the time and i said harry, have you seen this article and the air force magazine and [inaudible] the winner of the 1949 which was the first competition after the war was unknown and i said thats not true now go ahead and send you the documentation to show you its true. E. A search was put on for a number of years as to what happened to this trophy and they went to the air force and all the way up the command to ask what happens to the trophy and there were Different Reasons given but there still was not any trophy and then a historian young lady by the name of [inaudible] she had a suspicion about something and she went to the air force base in dayton, ohio and sure enough to make a long story short found the trophy in a box in the warehouse there and once the she informed the air force about this whether they knew it or not they took it out of the box and framed it and put it on display at the air force base in dayton and still on display here today. My daughter and i happen to pass by s their last august on our wy up from driving from atlanta and we went to take a look at the museum there and there it was sitting up there in a case very prominently. Thank you to our audiovisual folks. Thats a photo of the trophy there and it was lost for decades and it is now on permanent display as part of the Tuskegee Airmen exhibit at the air force museum in dayton, ohio. I personally will go see it. [applause] one more thing i will circle back to. Very early on we talked about you are going to laguardia field and how he became the start of your love a fight and you wanted to become a commercial pilot. When you first left the air force, active air force and went to the reserves, 1950 you had hundreds of hours of flight time at that time and you went to two commercial airlines looking to be hired as a pilot and in spite of the fact they had advertising running that they were looking for pilots they told you they do not need it. S they do not except at this time africanamericans as crewmembers or pilots but one airline denied outright that they were seeking any pilots and they werent seeking even though it was in a section of the employment ads and the paper at the time. The other airline the manager of personal decided that he wanted to explain or rationalize the airlines position for not accepting black as air crew members or pilots there and he tried to give me an analogy by saying look, imagine yourself as a passenger and he says not to you but imagine a passenger sitting in the seat on the aircraft and this black man walks by and walks into the cockpit and starts the engines to kick this place off. You imagine that person wont fly in the airlines again were certainly not this airline. Thats the rationale. That was his explanation. Yes. Now, that was at the time twa and panamerican those two airlines, both long gone now. Yes. Delta airlines and American Airlines the major u. S. Airlines today theyve made good on that. What did they do . They felt they owed something through the fact that the airlines had been prejudiced and demonstrated racial bias in the past so they started employing pilots in the airlines there until today you have africanamericans flying in the cockpit and in every Major Airline that we have, including some of the Service Airlines like fedex and ups and that type of thing. To dramatize a little bit of the situation we have today i was on my way from detroit, michigan somewhere and delta has a hub at detroit there and when i entered the aircraft and their i turned to my left and looked to see who was in the cockpit and believe it or not there were two African Americans in the cockpit copilot and pilot and even more wondrous in a surprising and one that brought tears to my eyes is that you are both female. [applause] i think the phrase there is weve come a long way, baby. [laughter] i believe Delta Airlines first followed by american both give you recognition. They gave me a very nice proclamation and painting of one aof their airliners along witht was a letter from their Vice President of operations and thanking me for my past services with the government in saying with the air force and saying that theres nothing they can do about it now with my age concern but they would just like as a token of my honor and that type of thing award me a pilot swings of the united aircraft, not united aircraft but Delta Airlines as a captain and the same with American Airlines. Finally, after all those years honorary Airline Captain of both delta and American Airlines. There is so much more to the story. One of the phrases that i think epitomizes what your life has meant to all of us and the phrase was used a couple times made reference to winning the double v and the double vehement victories over italian areas him abroad and over racism at home. This is all life that has been dedicated to successfully overcoming those. Before we open it up to questions from our audience what specific thing would you like to see so they can take away tonight . Specifically, i would like to concentrate or point my efforts to the use of the nation and certainly of all races there but just to give youf a little background 81 years old and we were delivered to the Tuskegee Airmen museum in detroit and these work [inaudible] that were declared obsolete by the air force school in Colorado Springs but they just wanted to get new aircraft and they were giving them to various museums throughout the country. The Tuskegee Airmen received four of these aircraft and have been delivered by contract pilots and [inaudible] once they were set down the Tuskegee Airmen who belong looked at the places in out what we do with them and i said, well i use to fly and i said maybe i can dust off my license and get qualified as a commercial pilot and motor writers which i did. I got my commercial pilot rating and started flying the gliders and what i did with that ability was take up the neighborhood kids and fly them on weekends and try to indoctrinate them to the feel of aviation and hoping this might inspire them to get into the field of aviation anywhere from flying flight members or other allied fields in aviation there. Thats what i did with myself at the time there in my effort in trying to cultivate some desire and the kids to aspire towards higher things and goals in life. At age 81 he started that. [applause] i joined the club called ufo, not the on the dynamite flight objects but the unified flying octogenarians. [laughter] i did that include those kids up until the time i was about 88 years old and i felt it was time for me to go ahead and pack it in and just did not feel as if i should go any further than that. Its one of those things and thats what i did. An incident if id could steal some of the time here i like to tell you about it was more a pleasure of mine taking these kids up then their pleasure and i remember i would take as many as maybe six or seven of them up in one day for a 15 minute ride or a 20 minute ride but one of the tricks i would pull on the last student to go up and there were anywhere from nine years old to 15 years old or Something Like that but it was a plane sidebyside twoseater and the kid would be sitting on my left it there because i flew in the right seat because of the weight and balance but anyway, what i would do go to the last kid and take him back to land and i would tell them im kind of tired and i said its been a long day and i said youre handling that stick and paddleso really well and youre holding that straight and level. Ill make a bargain with you. D hold it straight and level like that and i will grab myself aon little nap. [laughter] the kids eyes got just like that. You know . He would run up to his parents when he got on the ground and i say he let me fly the plane by himself and then he went to sleep up there. [laughter] thats the fun i had. Good times and bad times. Can we take questions from our audience. Sure i can. First, lets get a round of applause for the kernel. [applause] he has agreed to take a couple of questions. One quick note, you may have noticed we have a signing set up to my right and will move that out of this room up to our front lobby because its a little warm in here. We will move that signing up to the front lobby. Books are for sale to my left. You can get them here or at the museum store. I am holding in my hand a beautiful model of up 51 mustang that one of our guests brought and its a beautiful model. Ive never been this close to a real p51 mustang and im sure there a beautiful plane. Could you tell us what would like for you, the transition, from training the various models you flew and transitioning to the p51 mustang. Is a powerful aircraft. Its a powerful aircraft and carried a maryland engine in it. It went anywhere from 1500horsepower up to close to 2000horsepower. The empty weight lands about or weighs about 7000500 pounds with all its armor on and goes close to 10000 pounds. Firepower has six 56 caliber machine guns and 900 rounds and each squeeze of the trigger if you hold the trigger down all of the routes can be expended within 30 seconds. You dont have much time to fire on it there. The aircraft has a Service Ceiling of 40000 feet and top speed of about 475, 460 miles an hour. Ive never been that fast in it. Ive been about close to 400 and it and thats about it but i flew 43 missions in that aircraft and all i can say it was like getting from the training playing it was like my arms and legs became an extension of the aircraft in my arms became the wings and my feet became the rudders and it was like the aircraft that i melded into one system and it was just a joy to fly. I had very much the honor of again flying it within the past year. I was down in atlanta about six months ago with my daughter and given an offer to go up into a p51 like you see their. It wasnt the single seat like that but they had modified it so in tandem there was another seat and a another set of controls. When i went up with the pilot there he let me take it off and let me climb to altitude and of course, the first thing i had to do was clear myself and then did a slow roll and by that time it just those two knocked me out enough where i said take me back to the field. [laughter] first question from the audience. Front row to your left, sir. Colonel stewart, what made you such an outstanding shot . I did not think so. I think i was lucky. No, really. Im serious. The two aircraft that i fired on their there was zero to flexion, deflection being rather than shooting at an angle where you had to interpret the lead to the aircraft in that type of thing i was directly beyond the aircraft and i just had to put my sights on it. And i had them. With las vegas and the gunnery with top gun never again. I was having a good day. K thats it. [laughter] i think we all know better than that. Luck does not happen that well that often. [applause] colonel, back row to your right, sir. I wanted to know is it true that after the United States military put the Tuskegee Airmen in charge of defending all the bombers that we did that that youd United States did not lose one bomber because of what theyd true. Is that true . Yes, they lost 27 bombers in fact that they were protecting but it was the best record loss that was in the 15th air force in that theater at that time. We lost far fewer than the other Fighter Groups protecting the bombers. If i recall the average was 46 but they lost about half of what was normal. As far as the other question concerned we flew escort mainly for b17s and be 24s. Each of these bombers had ten crewmen aboard, thats pilot, copilot, navigator, bombers and gutters. That was a tremendous responsibility to protect these bombers as best we can from incursions from enemy fighters. It was our job to stay with the bombers and if any fighters try to intercept the bombers it was our job to interdict those fighters and keep them from hitting the bombers there. Are. Our job was to protect those ten men on each aircraft to the best of our ability. To add on to that, they did rapidly earned their reputation for their extreme success to protect those bombers to the point the bomber groups were requesting specifically the 332nd to be there escort. Lieutenant Lieutenant Colonel who was the commander of the 332nd actually repainted this aircraft to say by request. [laughter] he was a tough one. He graduated from west point in 1932. Number 35 in a class of 300 some. I dont remember the exact number. Before he was an west point he was put under the silent treatment and groomed and eight alone and was able to come out superior. They tagged him to become the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen were 332nd Fighter Group when it was formed. He was tough but fair and i remember when he chose the three of us. In 1949 he called us to his office and said with his magnificent and booming commanding voice gentleman, i think this is a splendid opportunity foris the 332nd and im wishing you godspeed as far as yourr participation and let e admonish you if you dont win, dont come back. [laughter] theres a great story in the book you have to read about the flight from the air force base in ohio. I wont spoil it by telling you. Buy the book. Center section back row we have time for one last question. The last question. First of all, thank you for your service, god bless you for that. Ive always been curious how the nickname originated. All of the aircraft in world waworldwar ii haveworldwar ii t on them and that was to promote or enhance the problem of radio silence the enemy could always pick up your intercoms or broadcast between the aircraft and possibly use that to your detriment. They were all charged with painting their tails a distinctive color. The Tuskegee Airmen it was rad. The 52nd Fighter Group is yell yellow. It wasnt something that we did or you know, something of a disgrace or anything like that. It was strictly for repetition. Thank you very much lets give them a round of applause. The subject of the book join us in the front lobby, get your book signed. Goodnight. [applause] g now it gives me great
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