Pilots' record is questioned

Is the record a myth? Two historians say it is.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
TUSKEGEE, Ala. -- Melissa MacDougal's junior high school project chronicles the history of America's first black military pilots so meticulously that it is displayed at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site.
The tribute says "the 332nd Fighter Group never lost a bomber to enemy fire" -- a claim that has been made in speeches, history books, autobiographies and newspaper articles for decades.
Now two historians say the pilots' record is a myth.
The pair, Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, and William Holton of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. say the group's combat mission reports show that a few bombers escorted by the airmen were shot down by German planes.
Today, about 130 of the original 994 Tuskegee pilots are alive, and many are upset by what they view as an assault on the airmen's distinguished military record.
"I think this is being initiated by people who want to discredit the fact that we were unique," said retired Col. Richard Macon, 85, of Detroit, who carried out 18 combat missions before being captured as a German prisoner of war.
The historians' findings overshadowed a recent ceremony for the airmen at the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery.
Congress had voted to award the airmen the Gold Medal, Congress' most distinguished civilian award, but as the men gathered to meet Gov. Bob Riley and launch a national fundraising drive for a memorial in Tuskegee, reporters peppered them with questions about whether they had lost any bombers.
Supported research
The controversial research has been supported by Warren Ludlum, a bomber pilot in World War II, who recently told The Associated Press that he was shot down by enemy planes over Austria in 1944 while being escorted by fighters piloted by Tuskegee Airmen. He said he was sure because he ended up in the same prisoner-of-war camp as one of the black airmen, Starling Penn.
However, that didn't convince Alan Gropman, author of "The Air Force Integrates: 1945-1964" and a professor at the National Defense University in Washington.
"The fact the two men were in same prisoner-of-war camp does not necessarily mean the Tuskegee Airmen were escorting those particular airplanes," he said, calling for more research.
A group of airmen plans to do just that.
Russell Davis, president of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. and a retired Air Force lieutenant general, said the men, who are in their late 80s, are too frail to travel to Alabama and Pennsylvania in the winter, but hope to examine the documents in the spring.
Despite the dispute, the historians, airmen and others agree that the group's legacy rests not on whether they lost any bombers, but on the broader role they served in challenging fundamental stereotypes about intellectual ability.
Part of experiment
The men who learned to fly in the small town of Tuskegee in east Alabama from 1941-46 and became the 332nd Fighter Group were part of a military experiment. When Congress forced the Army Air Corps to form an all-black combat unit in 1941, a prevailing stereotype was that black men were not capable of being fighter pilots.
"You have to understand there was a general assumption back then that black people did not have innate intelligence or courage," said Alvin Thornton, professor of political science at Howard University in Washington.