Honoring Tuskegee Airmen

Jun. 1—Eighty years ago, on June 2, 1943, the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American military aviators in the U.S. armed forces, flew into battle for the first time.

According to "Fun Facts About the Tuskegee Airmen" on the North Central Institute website, between 1940 and 1946, there were 992 pilots trained at the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama. In their two years of combat, the Tuskegee Airmen flew more than 15,000 sorties on over 1,500 missions. They destroyed over 250 German planes both on the ground and in the air, and nearly 1,000 rail cars and transport vehicles. Because the tails of their planes were painted red, they became known as "Red Tails."

Many Tuskegee Airmen went on to have distinguished military and civilian careers as teachers, doctors, lawyers, congressmen and authors.

There are at least two regional families with ties to the Tuskegee Airmen.

Charles Edwards, the cousin of Tuskegee Airman William Lee Hill, lives in Anderson County.

"Growing as a kid, we knew he'd been in the war because he had sent my mom and dad pictures of him in his flight suit," Edwards said. "My dad was his uncle."

After President George W. Bush issued the Congressional Gold Medal collectively to 300 Tuskegee Airmen or their widows in 2007, Edwards began researching Hill and was able to obtain all of his military records.

Hill grew up in Huntington, West Virgin and started his training as a U.S. Army Air Corps Cadet in December 1943. After he received his wings, he was assigned to the 332d Fighter Group.

Hill was shot down twice during World War II suffering burns to his face and body. He has been given credit for shooting down an enemy Bf 109 in August 1944 while escorting B-24 Liberator bombers to Markersdorf, Germany.

Hill continued active service after the war and in 1947 trained to be a meteorologist. He served two additional tours overseas and achieved the rank of Major before retiring in 1964.

Tuskegee Airman Howard Adolphus Wooten was born in Lovelady, a city just south of Crockett.

An article by Andre Wooten for blackpast.org reports that Wooten's father was the principal of the African-American school in Lovelady and his mother was a teacher there.

The article shares that at the age of 17 Wooten entered Prairie View College on a football scholarship, he dropped out in 1940 and enlisted into the U.S. Army as a private assigned to a Field Artillery unit. He made Staff Sergeant in the 46th Field Artillery Brigade by January 1942.

At the age of 24, Wooten applied to Army Flight School in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1944 and graduated in December of the same year. He was assigned to the 15th USAAF Brigade as a fighter pilot in the 332 Fighter Group.

In January 1945 Wooten was reassigned to the 477th Bombardment Group where he was one of the select group of Tuskegee pilots who would train to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers. He was transferred to Mather Field, California for additional training, however, the war ended before he was sent overseas.

The article states that "Wooten mustered out of the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1946. He then decided to become an attorney and moved to Seattle, Washington with four brothers and a sister to get as far away as possible from "Jim Crow" Texas."

In Seattle, Wooten was hired as a production worker for Boeing Airplane Company and joined the Aeronautical Machinist Union.

When the Machinists Union went on strike at Boeing, Wooten joined the Painters Union and took work painting bridges around Seattle. He died in August 1948, at the age of 28, after falling 70 feet from a scaffold while painting the 12th Avenue Bridge at the base of Beacon Hill.

Wooten was memorialized by the U.S. Force when his WWII pilot photograph was chosen by an advertising agency to represent the famed Tuskegee Airmen. His photo was first seen on Air Force recruiting posters in 1990 and later adopted as the official image of the Tuskegee Airmen Foundation.

To see more interesting facts about the Tuskegee Airmen on page 11.