The Man Called Brown Condor (35 page)

By 1941 Germany and Italy controlled virtually all of Western Europe. Only Great Britain remained unoccupied, standing alone against Hitler at a terrible price. In the United States, though the public was still in an isolationist mindset, the Roosevelt Administration ordered thousands of new aircraft while the Army Air Corps was establishing new training bases as quickly as possible. Judge William Hastie, an aide to Secretary of War Henry Stimpson, fought, begged, and fought some more for the establishment of a particular Army Air Corps training base. He finally got it. Judge Hastie was black and the base he had fought for was built at Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1941. It was located ten miles from Tuskegee Institute's Moton Field and named Tuskegee Army Airfield. After graduating from primary flight school at the Tuskegee School of Aeronautics under Chief Anderson, volunteer students were sent to the Army Airfield for advanced training in AT-6 and BT-13 aircraft.

The Air Corps sent Major Noel F. Parrish to Tuskegee Field as director of operations to replace Colonel Fredrick Kimble. Kimble was a strict segregationist who had ordered the white officers not to go to the base theater because they might have to sit next to a black and put twin water fountains around the base marked “white only” and “colored only.” Major Parrish, a pilot, was white, as were all the staff officers and flying instructors there. He was a Southerner who had graduated from high school in Cullman, Alabama. He had been brought up under segregation but was raised by his minister father to treat all people with dignity. The first thing he did was do away with the humiliating water fountain signs. He found there was little recreation for the black troops so he arranged to bring in entertainers like Joe Louis, Louis Armstrong, and Lena Horne. He formed a football team. The morale of the Tuskegee Airman soared.

Parrish's primary assignment was to turn young black men into fighter pilots. Many members of the Army Air Corps didn't give him very good odds for success. He suffered a lot of jokes from fellow officers. High-ranking members of the Army Air Corps in Washington had tried their best to prevent the establishment of the program. His friends generally thought he had drawn an assignment that would dead-end his career. (They were wrong. Noel Francis Parrish would reach the rank of Brigadier General.)

Parrish related an incident that happened shortly after his arrival at Tuskegee: “A black pilot landed his own plane at the field. His name was John Robinson. I had heard of his flying in Ethiopia. He introduced himself and conveyed to me how proud he was to see the new Army Air Corps program at Tuskegee. He was sharp. I was very favorably impressed by his quiet, sincere manner. He was a no-nonsense, skilled pilot. Robinson set the bar. He erased any doubts I had. I got on with my assignment with confidence.”

Eight months later, the first five graduates of the Advanced Flying School at Tuskegee Army Airfield received their wings. One of them was Benjamin Davis, Jr. By the end of World War II, more than six hundred pilots had graduated from the school. The segregated 99th and 79th Pursuit Squadrons were combined into the all-black 332nd Fighter Squadron and took part in the invasion of Sicily and the battle for Anzio. Once in Italy, they escorted bombers on missions reaching all the way to Berlin. It turned out that the bomber crews they protected didn't care what color the pilots of the 332nd Squadron were. “They could fly like hell and shoot straight.” They were so good, bomber outfits started requesting the Red Tails, so called because the tails of the 332nd aircraft were painted bright red. Eighty-three pilots of the 332nd earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Two of them were later awarded the rank of general, Benjamin Davis, Jr. and Daniel James, Jr. Daniel “Chappy” James went on to become the first four-star black officer in United States history when he was appointed Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). None of the members of the 332nd fighter group knew the debt they owed John Robinson without whom there would have been no Tuskegee Airmen. John was to play another unsung role in the development of the Tuskegee Airmen.

John Robinson did not stand idly by after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war against the United States. He immediately volunteered his services to the Army Air Corps. The AAC told Robinson he was too old to fly combat, but at least someone in the war department in Washington had sense enough to interview Robinson for his knowledge of the effects of strategic air tactics. After all, he was the first American to encounter the deliberate terror-bombing of civilians by modern aircraft, the first to be on the receiving end of up close blitzkrieg warfare used by Mussolini in Ethiopia prior to Hitler's invasion of Poland.

John wanted to contribute more than just talk of his war experiences. When told that at thirty-eight he was too old for the Air Corps, Robinson told them he could still help the war effort. “I can tear down an aircraft engine and put it back together blindfolded. I taught aircraft mechanics at Curtiss-Wright and at my own school of aviation.” He had CAA Aircraft and Engine Mechanics certificates to prove it.

The Air Corps needed more aircraft mechanics than pilots. Thousands of aircraft were on order, hundreds waiting for delivery. They would need mechanics to keep them flying. The Army Air Corps realized they needed Robinson and others like him for a very special reason. The armed services were segregated. Because the black squadrons were to be strictly segregated, it followed that the aviation mechanics and ground support troops assigned to maintain their planes must also be black. (Segregation was carried to the point that even their flight surgeons had to be black.) This presented a problem. Where would they get qualified black instructors to train them?

John Robinson recommended many black previously trained aviation mechanics. Based upon his recommendations, they were immediately hired as civilian aviation mechanics instructors and assigned to Chanute Army Airfield in Illinois. They were to train the first two hundred fifty black aviation mechanics in the Army Air Corps to support the Tuskegee airmen. Upon arrival, Robinson and his group were introduced to the Army Air Corps aviation mechanics curriculum and indoctrinated in the army methods of training. They quickly gained the reputation of knowing what they were doing. They settled down to train the mechanics that would keep the Tuskegee airmen flying. Once again John Robinson was playing a direct part in the development and support of Tuskegee airmen.

New army airfields were being constructed throughout the country. One was Keesler Army Airfield at Biloxi, Mississippi. The demand for Negro mechanics and other segregated squadron support troops grew quickly. Robinson accepted an assignment as a civilian instructor at Keesler Field where he could be close to his home. (By the end of the World War II, some seven thousand black troops had been trained at Keesler Field.) John was put in charge of twelve other black aviation mechanics and instructors transferred from Chanute to Keesler.

John arrived home to Mississippi in his usual inimitable style, driving a 1941 Cadillac convertible, one of the last pre-war automobiles built. The US auto industry would stop making automobiles for the duration, turning out trucks, jeeps, tanks, and aircraft instead.

Following the establishment of Keesler Field in Biloxi, the Gulfport Army Air Field was quickly built twelve miles west of Keesler. At Gulfport Field there was a need for training mechanics on the radial engines of C-47 transport planes, as well as B-25 and B-17 Bombers. Because of a critical shortage of aviation mechanics instructors, John was asked to pick a couple of instructors and transfer to Gulfport Army Air Field. He was happy to do so. He and several other black aviation mechanics and instructors were already living at his mother's boarding house in Gulfport. One of the men John selected to instruct at Gulfport Field was his close friend, six-foot, six-inch tall Jim Cheeks, a pilot and aviation mechanic who had come down with him from Chanute.

Upon arrival at Gulfport Army Air Field, they were a little surprised to find they would be teaching white students.

Jim Cheeks recounted,
“
Segregation was the rule, not just in the South, but in the armed services overall. We had no trouble teaching young white air corps men aviation mechanics. They and the maintenance school officers found we knew what we were doing and respected our ability. We were turning out damn good mechanics. But in the mess hall where we ate, they built a six-foot-high white wooden lattice screen around a table where John and I ate. We could see all the white soldiers in the mess hall through the screen and they could see us, but I guess that met the rule of segregation. In town we couldn't go but to one movie house and had to sit in the balcony of that one. Restaurants were closed to us except for the Negro restaurants like Pal's Café and Happy Jack's Café in the Big Quarter and clubs in north Gulfport. None of that bothered John. He paid no attention. He had been raised there and thought little of it, didn't let it get to him. He knew the girls in town and we had fun, lots of fun, and I sure remember John's momma's cooking, but that segregation setup bothered me. As it turned out, we weren't in Gulfport for too long. Seems somehow it got to Washington, to a US Senator from Mississippi named Bilbo, that down there in his state Negroes were teaching white boys. At least that's what we were told by our supervisor who said he was not happy to see us go. We received orders to transfer to Offutt Army Air Field in Nebraska. Damn if I didn't miss Gulfport.”

D
ISTANT EVENTS WERE TAKING PLACE THAT WOULD AFFECT BOTH
John Robinson and Jim Cheeks. On June 13, 1940, a certain “Mr. Strong” had been taken aboard a Short Sunderland flying boat that took off from Poole Harbor, England, and landed in the harbor at Alexandria, Egypt. There, a certain “Mr. Smith” disembarked the flying boat, boarded a Royal Air Force plane, and was flown to Khartoum, Sudan. Haile Selassie was back in Africa. He was there to encourage his people, fighting as guerrilla warriors, to join the British and Allied forces and drive the Italians out of Ethiopia. On January 18, 1941, Emperor Selassie crossed the Sudan border into Ethiopia near the village of Um Iddla, four hundred and fifty miles northwest of Addis Ababa. There began a hard march that saw him enter his capital of Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, five years to the day after he had been driven from his country.

Six months later, November 1941, allied forces comprised of troops of the British Army, British Commonwealth Nations of India, Sudan, East Africa, and South Africa, a small commando outfit from the British Mandate Palestine, Free French and Free Belgian units, and Ethiopian irregular forces under Haile Selassie forced the surrender of most of the two hundred fifty thousand Italian soldiers in Ethiopia—most, but not all. About forty thousand Italian troops with various native Italian East African Askaris troops retired to mountain strongholds and began scattered but effective guerrilla warfare against the British and Ethiopians that would not end until October 1943.

A short time after that, John Robinson received a communiqué from Haile Selassie asking if he would assemble a small cadre of pilots and mechanics and return to Ethiopia to set about building a new Ethiopian Air Corps. It was a message John had been waiting for. He knew that the flying school business at home would never be what it had been when thousands of trained pilots returned home after the war. He accepted the emperor's offer. The question was how to carry it out.

Robinson arranged for five black pilots, all of whom were also aircraft mechanics, to travel with him under contract to Ethiopia. Their names were James (Jim) W. Cheeks, Andrew Hester, Edward Jones, Haile Hill, and Joe Muldrew. The group knew that starting an air force from scratch and teaching flying and aviation mechanics in Ethiopia would not be easy, but they had no idea that just getting there would be a great adventure in itself.

In December 1943, war raged across Europe and the Mediterranean. In May the Germans and Italians under Rommel had been defeated in North Africa and Italy had surrendered to the Allies on September 8, 1943. The Italians may have surrendered Italy, but the Germans had not. Hitler sent troops into the country to contain the Allies. German aircraft out of southern France and northern Italy were still a threat over the Mediterranean, as were U-boats.

The first task Robinson faced was to find a way to get his group to Ethiopia. There would be no luxury ocean liner to take the group merrily across the Atlantic, into the Mediterranean, through the Suez, and down the Red Sea to French Djibouti the way John had traveled pre-war in 1934. John first tried the Army Air Force transport and ferry service (AAFBU) that had established a South Atlantic route to fly aircraft and supplies via Recife, Brazil, to African and Eurasian continents, but every pound of freight and every cubic foot of space was precious. None was available for Selassie's intrepid black American aviators and their heavy load of tools and equipment.

Room was finally found for John and his entourage aboard a British merchant ship in one of the many convoys streaming across the North Atlantic with cargos to supply England for the planned invasion of Europe. The happy group was not particularly comforted to hear that although the U-boat threat had been greatly reduced, it had not been totally eliminated. One might think that John, Jim, and the rest, being pilots, would not suffer from seasickness, but they did. Blazing through the ocean at the breakneck speed of nine, sometimes ten knots, the long, stormy, cold voyage across the North Atlantic was miserable enough in itself, not to mention the terrible food, or that the convoy twice received U-boat warnings mid-Atlantic.

Upon their safe arrival in England, there was hardly time to tour London, much less the British Isles. Selassie had made arrangements with his British ally for the immediate transport of Robinson's team. They and their load of tools and equipment were quickly put aboard a British C-47 Dakota dressed in civil aviation livery. (They would have to refuel in neutral countries that did not allow military aircraft.) The twin-engine workhorse took off from a field in southwest England for an eight-hundredmile flight to Lisbon in neutral Portugal. After refueling and spending the night they took off on the second leg, another eight hundred miles to Algiers. From Algiers it was nearly one thousand miles to Benghazi, Libya. The next leg was eight hundred miles to Cairo, Egypt. The last leg was the longest and stretched the range of the C-47 to the maximum: Cairo to Khartoum, Sudan.