Wednesday, February 28, 2001

By Ron Jensen
U.K. bureau

Ron Jensen / Stars and Stripes Charles E. McGee, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, performs the re-enlistment of U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos Tilliman Monday at the U.S. Navy Europe headquarters in London.

LONDON — Charles McGee was never alone in the cockpit when he set out to do battle with the enemy.

He had fear, of course, as all pilots do when facing the threats inherent in their wartime duties. But he also carried the responsibility of his race, for if he failed — this black man for whom opportunity had come only begrudgingly — then some would consider that all black men had failed.

"There was that element," McGee said Monday. "It’s a motivator."

McGee didn’t fail, of course. He flew combat missions in three of his country’s wars — World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He won a chestful of medals and retired as a colonel in 1973 after 30 years in the U.S. Air Force.

"You want to do well just because there are those who expect something less," he said.

Such a career was thought impossible when World War II began. Blacks were not considered smart enough to handle the intricacies of flying. They lacked initiative and the moral capacity to command. Such was the conventional wisdom of the time.

But in 1941, with war raging in Europe, an experiment at the Tuskegee Institute — now known as Tuskegee University — in Alabama trained a squadron of black aviators. They became known as the Tuskegee Airmen and they served their country well in World War II, flying thousands of missions and downing many enemy aircraft.

The program continued until 1949 and pilots trained at Tuskegee helped build the Air Force when it became a new service.

McGee, who joined the program in 1943, is national president of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., a national service organization. He spoke Monday to about 200 people at the American Embassy in London as part of Black History Month. His visit was sponsored by the U.S. Navy in Europe, which has headquarters here.

"The only airplane I’d been involved in had been those paper airplanes that you flew in the classroom and denied to the teacher you had," he said as he explained his lack of experience when he joined the Tuskegee program.

But anything, he said, would be better than the infantry.

There were barriers. Such was the sentiment at the time, McGee said, that a squadron of black pilots was considered impossible because there were no black mechanics. White mechanics, it was thought, could not be asked to work on the aircraft of black aviators.

With men like Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., who would become the Air Force’s first black general, leading the way, the Tuskegee pilots proved their worth.

But that success didn’t end the discrimination. McGee stayed in the Air Force after the war and flew fighter aircraft in Korea. In the late 1950s, he considered leaving the military to fly commercial airliners.

"Commercial aviation wasn’t ready for black pilots in the late ’50s," said McGee, 81, who is now the father of a commercial pilot.

So McGee stayed in the military. He said he has flown 27 different types of aircraft. He eventually flew combat missions in Vietnam. In his remarks introducing McGee, Rear Adm. Stanley Bryant, the deputy commander of NAVEUR, said, "I told him he only had to fight in one war to be a hero of mine."

McGee doesn’t see himself as a hero. He is humble and speaks about himself only because he is asked. He said he avoided anger and frustration over the years because that would get him nothing.

"You can pick a fight," he said. "What do you gain?"

Instead, he and the other pilots went about their business knowing their success was the only thing that would change minds. It took many more years, but McGee, the father of three, grandfather of 10 and great-grandfather of five, said he now sees a military that has learned the lesson of Tuskegee.

"It is rewarding to see," he said.

But he said there is more to be done. The role of blacks in the history of America still is not explored in schools. Black role models in the public eye are almost exclusively limited to the worlds of entertainment and sports, giving young blacks perhaps a skewed vision of what is possible.

"They don’t see that for every Michael Jordan, there are hundreds who fail," he said.

The success of blacks in other endeavors, such as medicine and literature and academia, must be highlighted.

"We need to broaden that picture so that youngsters growing up realize, as I dream and aspire, I can achieve," he said.

Back to February's stories
Page Two news roundup
Stories from January, 2001
Stories from December, 2000
Stories from November, 2000
Stories from October, 2000
Stories from August and September, 2000
Stories from June and July, 2000
Home