If you’re like us and you know a little bit about the Tuskegee Airmen, a squadron of Black pilots, mechanics and support crew that went to war in Europe against the Nazis, you’ll almost certainly want to see this three-part series, Red Tail Angels, (trailer here) by the USAF that tells the whole story.
That story includes the fact that many saw the formation of the squadron in 1943 as “designed to fail,” and the fact that despite their triumphs in proving categorically that Black pilots were remarkable flyers, many challenges remained for these pioneering airmen both during and after their service.
All three episodes are available on YouTube. They include interviews with surviving members of the squadron, as well as never-before-seen footage and photography of these heroic airmen serving proudly and bravely, and in the words of one of the speakers, dispelling “the biases and generalizations that because of the color of our skin we couldn’t support our country in a technical area.” And dispel it they did.
