Chillicothe, Missouri: As We Remember

Mr. Jeff Girres recently posted on our “Chillicothe, Missouri Remember When” Facebook Page a strong endorsement of the George Lucas movie (Red Tails) based upon the exploits of, and in tribute to, the Tuskegee Airmen of WWII. This led to an immediate discussion of Chillicothe’s own Charles Crain, one of the last Tuskegee Airmen.  It is obvious that he is loved and respected by his hometown. All that know Charles and/or his offspring were effusive in their praise! While I have never met Charles, it was clear to me that a history-based article on his legacy would be highly appropriate and consistent with the goals of this blog as outlined in my first entry. I fully intend to meet Charles the next time I come back to Chillicothe. I will shake his hand and thank him for his service to our nation. Here is the official trailer for Red Tails:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpA6TC0T_Lw

It so happens that the producer of Red Tails (Rick McCallum) has very strong area ties. I invite you to read his highly interesting story in a recent edition of our own Constitution-Tribune.

http://www.chillicothenews.com/topstories/x962223270/Tribute-to-Tuskegee-Airmen-Red-Tails

I had just published Danny’s soon-to-be classic blog entry “The Swan Lake Goose” seconds before finding Rick's  article.  As I recall from my childhood: Sumner, Swan Lake, and Fountain Grove are pretty mich interchangeable words when referencing that part of our area.   Now, Sumner has a population of 142.  Retired USAF Col. Roy McCallum (Rick’s Dad) owned property in Sumner for many years as well as other Brookfield area acreage prior to his passing in 2010. What a coincidence!

In WWII, dire circumstances required that extraordinary acts had to be performed by ordinary people to ensure the preservation of our way of life. To a person, they would likely say they were “only doing their job” and they had to do what they did. Consider for a moment what our world might be like had they failed!  Remember what occurred in Eastern China as a result of the Doolittle Raid? Most people are unaware of this dark episode in world history. You will find this chilling account a bit later on.

Glenn F. Thomas : Tail Gunner

Like Charles Crain, my Dad (Glenn F. Thomas Sr.) served in the Army Air Corps in WWII. It so happened that neither Charles nor my Dad were sent overseas to fight the enemy. Dad was the tail gunner on a B17 "Flying Fortress", his plane ditched on May 10th 1944 in a field near Dennison, Iowa.  It was to have been one of his unit’s final training missions. Though he survived, his back was broken as a result the bailout and he was hospitalized for months. Dad passed in 1965 at age 57, I miss him to this day. Dad never spoke of the crash, typical of most veterans of that time they didnt dwell on the war.  Again, they were just "doing their job" and after all a lot of buddies didn't make it back home. Recently, I found a blog entry that gave a very detailed account of a ditched B17 that had to be his! No crew names were mentioned in the Dennison news article so it can't be verified beyond all doubt.  Why no names?  Military security concerns may be one reason.  A famous John Ford movie about those times provides another possible answer:  "They Were Expendable (1945)."

Unlike my Dad, Charles and his race were fighting yet another war in this country. In that war of racial hatred and bigotry, the enemy was not always so easy to spot. Charles was the radioman on a B25 Mitchell medium Bomber as a member of the Tuskegee 477^th Bomber Group. The war in Japan ended prior to completion of 477^th’s training so they never saw combat.

The rest of this story is that a few racist, but highly-placed white Generals in charge of that unit were determined that the 477^th would never be allowed to face our enemies. Their belief was that such a privilege should only be afforded whites!  War typically brings out the best in us, but not always.

I will not dwell on racism here, Charles never has. Granted, these misguided bigots were successful in delaying the 477^th‘s readiness so they never faced our enemies. But their blatant disregard for their own military code and clear abuse of power were so extreme they were eventually relieved of their leadership roles.  An irony is that their pure hatred had unintentionally abetted one of the first victories of the modern American civil rights movement! TheTuskegee Airmen pilot's initial confrontation with their leadership  at an airbase near Seymour, Indiana and its aftermath was termed the “Freeman Field Mutiny."

Italy 1944

The resolve of the Tuskegee Airmen and other such segregated units to effectively serve our nation regardless of difficult and demeaning circumstances dispelled many long-held, negative myths about their God-given capabilities and their desire to serve!

Red Tail Pilots circa 1943

I have recently read many accounts of numbers of missions, awards, medals, etc. of the Tuskegee Airmen.  Although these numbers may differ slightly from author to author, there emerges one salient fact that cannot be rationally disputed. By any yardstick, the Tuskegee Airmen were one of the most effective fighting units in American military history! When those P51 Mustangs with their distinctive Red Tails began swarming about and tipping their wings to a battered bomber on their way to safety--- the bomber crews quickly came to realize that their chances to see another sunrise and eventually return to their loved ones had just improved! 

The Red Tails followed their orders to the letter: protect our bombers at costs! At the end of the day, their successes were measured in the number of bombers that returned safely and not the number of enemy “kills”.

At this writing, Red Tails has generally been panned by the self-avowed critics. Here is one well known magazine’s take of another movie about WWII  that you may find instructive and amusing.

  "Nothing short of an invasion could add much to Casablanca."- Time Magazine, November 30, 1942

Final Scene: We will always have Paris

 As many of you know, Casablanca is arguably one the greatest motion pictures ever made. My point is this, let the people that lay down their hard earned cash be the final and ultimate judge.

Recall what a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania paper said about President Lincoln's five minute "remarks" at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863: "We pass over the silly remarks of the President." 

Like many of us, I can recite his Gettysburg Address verbatim.  But it is a challenge to tell you what I had for my lunch yesterday!

B25 Mitchell (1 of 16) off the USS Hornet - Tokyo Bound

 History buffs may recognize the B25 Mitchell medium Bombers as the same planes used by the 17^th Bomber Group led by the then Lt. Col. James Doolittle and his Tokyo Raiders.  Our own "surprise attack" struck back at the Japanese homeland on 18 April 1942 in retaliation for Pearl Harbor. This audacious and incredibility brave mission cast doubt in minds of the Japanese people; told by their military leaders just 4 months earlier that the homeland was "untouchable".

Equally as important, the raid heartened and stiffened the resolve of Americans. Although little tangible, material damage had occurred to Tokyo, the Doolittle Raid sent a powerful, unmistakable message to the Empire of Japan:

“You started it---but we as a people both soldier and civilian, both white and black, shall have the Final Word--- so mark it down!”

As a personal aside, at this writing and sixty years after the fact--- I now understand the genesis of a phrase we continually used as we played “army” back in late 1940’s. We often cried out: Bombs Away!  Over Tokyo Bay!

Do you recall what I said earlier regarding the potential price of failure in WWII?  A well-documented fact now, but fortunately little known to US populace back then, is what occurred in Eastern China in aftermath of the Doolittle Raid. I inject this so you may begin to understand the unspeakable evil we were dealing with in just  the Pacific. In retribution for the Chinese people’s support in returning most of Doolittle’s bomber crews to safety, approximately 250,000 Chinese civilians (men, women, and children) were summarily murdered. The Japanese boasted of how easy it was to exterminate their fellow human beings using such methods as gas and germ warfare. They had turned Eastern China into a "killing ground" in order to  perfect their “leading edge” delivery systems! The Chinese people were little more than laboratory rats to be studied!

Little Boy (8/6/45) Hiroshima

Fat Man (8/9/45) Nagasaki

Thank God America did have the "Final Word” when the Japanese nation was introduced to a far more “leading edge” technology in early August, 1945.  We only had two bombs and the delivery systems were conventional; but the bomb load was highly unconventional! 

Some critics declare to this day:

But we killed as many as 250,000 innocents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on those two horrific days and the aftermath!  How could we do such a terrible thing?

Here is my response to our so-called "unethical acts."  The Japanese would have lost millions more people over a protracted time had the Allies invaded using conventional warfare. Yes, we would have prevailed eventually; but at a terrible, totally unacceptable cost.  Estimates of our military losses range from 250,000 to 1,000,000!

As more than three generations have passed, likely tens of millions of us would never have been  born.  Whether you use "back of an envelope" or use Monte Carlo Simulation with a million samples for prediction; it is likely that in 2012, America would not be the pre-eminent world power. Much like France of WWI, we would have lost a generation of our best and brightest.   "The Greatest Generation" might never have been!

I was going to briefly discuss the race between America and Germany to implement and drop the first Atomic bomb. We did not know it during the war, but the Nazis were at most a year behind us!  That even more chilling story and tangible threat to the Allies civilian population must wait for another day and a lot more study from this writer.

In closing, consider this recently-compiled data from Wikipedia:

From 22,000,000 to 25,000,000 military worldwide were killed as a direct result of WWII; included in the number were about 416,000 Americans, or about 1.8% of the total military deaths.

From 37,000,000 to 55,000,000 civilians worldwide were killed as a direct result of WWII; included in the number were about 1700 Americans, or  about  .0035%  of the total civilian deaths.

Grateful?  I know that  I am.  I look forward to posting Part II, a brief biography of Chillicothean Charles Crain: Tuskegee Airman.