Fpost Moody was prepared to give up his life on the battlefields of Europe. What he didn’t expect was to give up his life on Lake Huron, off the coast of Michigan. But on April 11, 1944, that’s what happened when Moody, a Black Tuskegee Airman, was performing a training run with three other pilots in his P-39 fighter and his plane suddenly announced its arrival, crashing into the deep waters of the Huron. Fifty-four days later, his body washed ashore, but it was only 70 years after the accident – on April 11, 2014 – that divers discovered the wreckage of the plane.
The cause of the accident that killed the young lieutenant has always been a mystery. Ten years of salvage work and accident forensics, however, finally identified the cause as a failure in the forward machine gun switch – a timing device that pauses the firing of bullets in the split second when the propeller is rotating in front of the the gun barrel. In the case of Moody’s plane, the holes in the propeller proved that the switch had failed, condemning him to a tragic end before he even left to fight for his country.
Many other black men have made this journey and faced this struggle. From 1941 to 1946, approximately 1,000 African-American pilots were trained as Tuskegee Airmen prior to January 26, 1948, when Pres. Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, dissegregating the American armed forces. Now, Moody’s story, and that of the Tuskegee Airmen as a whole, is being told in a new way. National Geography Special, The real red tailswhich debuted on May 31. Told with archival film, footage of diving in Lake Huron and interviews with surviving airmen, the special is equal parts tribute, musical poem and historical object lesson – which tells the story of what the airmen called their double-campaign. V: victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home.
“I tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps and they didn’t want me. I had to be called up,” retired Lt. Col. James Harvey, who will turn 101 in July, told TIME. “The commanding general of the Air Force didn’t want us in his Air Corps.”
However, what the commander wanted and the country needed were two different things, and with the US mobilizing for a massive war on two fronts, the military could not afford to marginalize the war. 9.8% of the population that was black. Still, there were enormous obstacles to overcome, beyond the officially sanctioned segregation of the armed forces. As the film shows, a 1925 document on the fitness of black people for military service was appalling and relentless in its racism.
“He is,” said the ostensibly learned analysis of African-American men, “by nature subservient [and] mentally inferior.” He is “susceptible to crowd psychology,” “cannot control himself in the face of danger,” and lacks “the initiative, courage, and resourcefulness of the white man.”
It was the Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, who started the first black fighter squadron, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, in January 1941, in part as an attempt to get the black vote in the 1944 election. It harmed neither Roosevelt’s cause nor that of black Americans the fact that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt traveled to Tuskegee to be photographed on a plane with an African-American airman.
Even so, the fighting was difficult for the men of the 99th. Harvey recalls that even after establishing himself as a qualified pilot, he had to practice twice in a training plane just to prove he could fly, while white military personnel were not required to jump through the same hoop. His White Wing Commander once asked him what he wanted to be called, and Harvey looked at the man in astonishment. “I said, ‘I’m a first lieutenant, so how about Lieutenant Harvey?’” he told TIME.
In the documentary, Harvey also recalls training at the Tuskegee military base, which he describes as “a Jim Crow base in a Jim Crow town.” One day when he went into town, the sheriff made it clear how welcome his presence was, telling him, “If I find you back in town, I will blow your brains out.”
Still, Harvey flew and fought bravely for his country. He was at the dock preparing to embark abroad when news arrived that the war in Italy was over and that the rest of Europe would likely follow, so the men of his detachment remained in the United States. He did not see combat until the Korean War, when he flew 126 combat missions in just 89 days, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and numerous aerial medals. He came close to losing his life like Moody, during a mission when he was taking off at a nearly vertical angle after bombing a city and a burst of anti-aircraft fire hit the fuel tank at the tip of his wing.
“My wingman said he saw a big fireball the size of a basketball hit my tank,” he says. “Lucky for me I was transforming, or I wouldn’t be here today.”
But he is here today and that is a gift to history. Ultimately, Harvey served 22 years in the army before retiring to work for the Oscar Mayer company. This, however, was not his first choice. He originally interviewed to be a commercial airline pilot, but was told the company had an age limit of 35 and he was 42.
“I said OK, if that’s their policy, that’s their policy,” he says. Ultimately, this was not their policy. Sixteen years later, he spoke to a white pilot who was hired by the same airline at around the same time and was also over 35 years old.
“The light went on,” says Harvey. “They didn’t want passengers to enter the aircraft, look into the cabin and see a black person behind the controls.”
Given his decisions, Harvey would still be in control. The real red tails ends with him and another very elderly airman exiting a hangar, shot from behind, laughing about the fact that today they would take a nearby Cessna if they could. They can’t, of course. But while they may have flown for the last time, they have not spoken for the last time. The story they tell in the new documentary is that of a nation slowly, hesitantly and imperfectly coming to terms with itself and its history – and honoring thousands of its heroes in the process.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
