Posted on 04/01/2007 11:40:19 AM PDT by EveningStar
At least 25 bombers being escorted by the Tuskegee Airmen over Europe during World War II were shot down by enemy aircraft, according to a new Air Force report.
The report contradicts the legend that the famed black aviators never lost a plane to fire from enemy aircraft...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Well, not to argue degree ... but Pappy got a top ranking in that category.
Boyingtons AVG claims are no longer officially credited to his overall totals. I noticed this when checking the overall 'rankings' of our air aces.
"These men were complicit in a "symbolism over substance" pr stunt. The lie is the stunt.
They need to come clean fast, say mea culpa and now publish the record better. How many books are now wrong?
How many black history month propaganda films are now wrong but are NEVER going to be corrected in order to protect image over substance? Answer NONE."
Here is another link to a rewriting of history, it is about an award winning documentary that was revealed to be simply made up.
"It took a months-long campaign by veterans of the genuine liberator units to get PBS to disavow the 1992 documentary,"Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II," which falsely credited the 761st Tank and another African-American battalion (183rd Combat Engineers) with liberating Buchenwald and Dachau, the two largest camps freed by Americans."
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b125b384e8f.htm
Our Birmingham Black Sheep alum Harry Johnson apparently thought the AVG kills were still being credited the last time I read an interview with him, which has been a while back.
There was certainly a big stink about it and probably Pappy didn't help his case out too much considering the mutual aggravation factor he had going with Marine honchos. LOL
It would have been impossible for any fighter squadron not to have lost at least one bomber to enemy fire. The men are still heroes.
"They were used very early in the war, starting with the North Africa campaign."
They were sent to Africa, but never used there. They only continued training. In fact their first combat mission was not until the Sicilian invasion of July 1943 to attack the small island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Tunisia. This is at least a year into the ETO operations, which I would not call the very early part of the war, but rather the latter half.
April fools?
Seriously, AAA isn't particularly affected by the escort.
"The questions is, what took out those 20 bombers?"
Perhaps AAA or jets.
You did nothing wrong - whatsoever - in posting this article. I always doubted the "no losses" claim and am glad to know someone sat down and actully did the research. Why some people are getting so upset about this is beyond me. The truth shouldn't be so threatening to people. No one is harmed by the truth in this case.
Well, it's confusing. A lot of sites say they "entered combat" or were "ready for combat" starting in North Africa.
I am aware that the first mission where they actually engaged in combat was during the Sicilian invasion.
And I know that they got additional training in Morocco. But I believe they were considered a combat outfit at the time.
The no losses thing has been questioned for quite some time. And the truth about it has been known since at least last December:
Ex-Pilot Confirms Bomber Loss - washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/16/AR2006121600849.html
And probably long before that.
most of the bombers were lost to flack,still the fact is that they flew 200+ missions with no losses to enemy fighters(according to a blurb on the military channel)
AP's motto should be we never turn down a chance to denigrate our military so I would be skeptical of this article
Here's another snip from a review about Brokaws book about Johnnie Holmes that is not mentioned in the article you linked:
A case in point is the shocking story of Sgt Johnnie Holmes, who "encountered real, bitter racial hatred and segregation for the first time" when he arrived for training in Kentucky. Brokaw records that "Holmes is persuaded that Fort Knox dentists experimented on the black soldiers. He remembers being strapped in a dentist chair and getting his teeth drilled with no novocaine" (p. 195).
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ICK/is_2_14/ai_68507718
"In fact their first combat mission was not until the Sicilian invasion of July 1943 to attack the small island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Tunisia. This is at least a year into the ETO operations, which I would not call the very early part of the war, but rather the latter half."
Not really. The invasion of Sicily was one of the first ETO operations, if not the first.
"But I believe they were considered a combat outfit at the time."
I agree they were considered ready for combat, but they weren't used once they were deployed, which was my point of it being a tragic waste of highly trained and competent pilots.
"according to a blurb on the military channel"
Well, I wouldn't consider that an authoritative source. That is at best a secondary and more likely a tertiary source of information and probably not to be trusted. I would even question the accuracy of official records in the fog of war.
flak, i'd say.
Gotcha. And I agree.
"The invasion of Sicily was one of the first ETO operations, if not the first."
ETO was formed up and began deploying troops in the middle of 1942. Sicily was an invasion force, but US Army European operations were well underway for quite some time before the first invasion began.
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