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Document created: 1 September 04
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2004

PIREP

Editor's Note: PIREP is aviation shorthand for pilot report. It's a means for one pilot to pass on current, potentially useful information to other pilots. In the same fashion, we intend to use this department to let readers know about air and space power items of interest.

Gen Benjamin O. Davis Jr.

American Hero

Col Alan Gropman, USAF, Retired*

*Dr. Alan Gropman is Distinguished Professor of National Security Policy at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC. A retired colonel, he served 27 years in the United States Air Force, including two tours in Vietnam where he accumulated more than 670 combat missions.

Gen Benjamin O. Davis Jr. is an American hero-a champion who abundantly demonstrated both physical and moral courage. We reserve the term heroes for those people who display physical courage because they risk their lives for something bigger than themselves-the greater good of their nation or their people, for example. General Davis certainly met this standard, many times over.

Inspired by flight at age 14, young Davis convinced his frugal father to pay a barnstormer to fly him over Washington, DC. From that moment on, airplanes captured his imagination, and he would later use aviation to promote military and social reform of the first importance. After coming of age, he decided that by helping bring victory to the United States in World War II, he could give validity to racial integration, choosing the skies of Europe as his battlefield and the airplane as his weapon. By proving that blacks could fly, fight, and lead with the same courage, dedication, discipline, and skill as whites-a notion utterly foreign to almost all whites in America in 1941-he would help destroy the myth of racial inferiority. This lie served as the foundation for segregation in the United States, and General Davis knew it had to be demolished to improve both the military and also the destiny of blacks in America.

To do so, he risked his life above foreign fields in distant skies against some of the most skilled and well-equipped flyers in the world-the fighter pilots of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. Just as importantly, he also had to stand up to, confront, and openly disagree with his military superiors when they tried to inhibit or destroy his Tuskegee Airmen. It is important to note that the Tuskegee Airmen-the pilots and their ground crewmen, who were trained to fly, fight, and maintain aircraft at Chanute and Tuskegee Army Airfields in the early and mid-1940s-shared General Davis's vision and courage. He succeeded not only because of his genius for command, but also because of all the other Tuskegee Airmen's dedication to the mission.

We honor General Davis for his physical courage-signified by the 60 combat missions he flew during World War II and the decorations he earned, which include the Distinguished Flying Cross and Silver Star-as well as his leadership of the Tuskegee Airmen. We also pay tribute to him for his open display of moral courage. Throughout his entire professional life, he held to the West Point creed of Duty, Honor, Country. General Davis devoted 43 of his 89 years to service to the United States, spending the entire time in aviation. He loved his country, and he loved to fly.

General Davis placed duty on an equal footing with West Point's other two virtues, clinging to it when he faced bigotry and discrimination, when he confronted a highly skilled enemy, and when he served his people and country, even though he could have chosen a much less arduous and infinitely less dangerous career. Sadly, the cadets at West Point from 1932 to 1936 shunned him completely because of his race-no one talked to Ben Davis except for official reasons during his four years there. He responded by adopting the credo of those who tried to drive him out-Duty, Honor, Country-and stood defiantly against their bigotry. The silencing followed him into the Army, continuing for several years after graduation. His lonely years at West Point symbolize his determination, discipline, resolve, and sense of duty-his moral courage. Knowing that the bigots wanted him to fail made him all the more determined to succeed, and he graduated in the top third of the class of 1936.

Honor? The cadets in attendance between 1932 and 1936 acted dishonorably, as did the leadership of the United States Military Academy. West Point violated its own code, but nobody there or in the Army intervened. General Davis knew he was fighting something bigger than the racism of young men in their teens and early twenties, but he remained -undaunted, standing up to intolerance with dignity and never relenting. His honor is unquestioned.

After graduating from flying school at Tuskegee Army Airfield, Alabama, General Davis took the 99th Fighter Squadron-which included the first of the Tuskegee Airmen-to North Africa where they suffered discrimination at the hands of the commander of the 33d Fighter Group. That colonel tried to exile the 99th from combat and prevent the establishment of the 332d Fighter Group and 477th Medium Bombardment Group-the other new units consisting of Tuskegee Airmen. General Davis fought for his men, taking on the commander and much of the leadership of the entire Army Air Forces-everyone who endorsed the group commander's bigotry. Davis, a lieutenant colonel at the time, openly and vocally disagreed with the commander of the Army Air Forces, a four-star general, who tried to destroy the reputation of the 99th and marginalize all blacks. General Davis won that battle in the Pentagon in a stunning display of moral courage.

In Italy in command of the 332d Fighter Group, he had the opportunity to change missions from ground attack to bomber escort. Successfully doing so would underwrite his goal of exploding the falsehood of racial inferiority by demonstrating the skill of the Tuskegee Airmen against the vaunted Luftwaffe. Their record under General Davis is unique. In 200 escort missions to heavily defended targets, the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber to an enemy fighter. No other fighter unit flying half the missions could claim such success. This triumph stands as a tribute to the dedication, skill, courage, and discipline of these men and to the tactical acumen and leadership of General Davis.

During the war, the Tuskegee Airmen also downed 111 enemy aircraft in air-to-air combat; shot down the second, third, and fourth enemy jet fighters to make their appearance in combat; destroyed more than 150 Luftwaffe aircraft on German air bases; damaged many German locomotives and much rolling stock; and sank a German destroyer and numerous river barges. Their achievements convinced several Air Corps leaders that segregation was unnecessary, and, therefore, an unconscionable waste. When the Air Force became an independent service in 1947, its chief of personnel studied the disutility of racial segregation, finding no basis for it either biologically or sociologically, and cited both the record of the Tuskegee Airmen and the leadership of General Davis to document the case for integration. Thus, the United States Air Force became the first service to do away with the costly, disruptive practice of segregation by announcing its intention to integrate in April 1948; it began the process in May 1949 and finished it two years later. By taking this action, the Air Force became the service of choice for talented blacks by an overwhelming margin. Racial integration worked smoothly, improved Air Force operations, and set an example for the other services.

Faced with the demands of the Korean War, the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps followed suit. In fact, the US armed forces set the example for American society by completing integration decades before the first black managed a major league baseball team or coached in the National Basketball Association. We live in a different America from the one of the 1940s because the armed forces-the school for the nation in the 1940s and 1950s-taught America how to make integration work.

General Davis proved essential to this transformation. His stellar performance at West Point and his outstanding deeds during World War II, as well as those during the remainder of his career in the Air Force and Department of Transportation, exploded the fabrication of racial inferiority. Furthermore, his awards for heroism and the performance of the Tuskegee Airmen under his command swept away the folklore that blacks lacked courage and would not follow black leaders. Finally, his effective, harmonious tenure as commander of the 332d Fighter Wing and base commander at Lockbourne Air Force Base, Ohio, between 1946 and 1949-during which time he led numerous civil servants, all of them white-destroyed the lie that whites would never work for a black supervisor. General Davis discredited all of these barriers to racial integration.

The general had a rich career after 1949 at the Air War College and the Pentagon; in Korea, Japan, the Republic of China, Germany, Korea, and the Philippines; and at United States Strike Command in Florida. After retiring from the Air Force in 1970 as a lieutenant general, he served as director of public safety in Cleveland and later in the Department of Transportation. His creation of the sky-marshal program drove the rate of skyjackings in the United States to zero in short order. General Davis received his fourth star in 1998, about three and a half years before his death. Clearly, he achieved much in his long life, but no accomplishment gave him more satisfaction than leading the effort to end segregation in the United States Air Force.

Indeed, nobody is more responsible for integrating American society than Ben Davis, who used the P-40, P-39, P-47, and P-51, as well as the skill and discipline of the Tuskegee Airmen, to do so. His proficiency in aviation demonstrated to all except the most bigoted individuals that race did not matter. As a final note, although General Davis certainly was not ashamed of being black-there was not a scintilla of self-hate in him-he disliked the term African-American and would not speak at events celebrating Black History Month, noting sadly that since descriptors of prominent white Americans did not include hyphens, neither should those that referred to him. Rather, like the title of his autobiography, he preferred to be known simply as Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American.

Bibliographical Note

The best source on Benjamin O. Davis Jr. is Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American: An Autobiography (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), which I refereed and made the first-cut edit. I also wrote a 15,000-word biography of General Davis for the Air Force Historical Foundation: "History on Two Fronts," in Makers of the United States Air Force, ed. John L. Frisbee (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1987). My cover story on Davis's promotion to general for the summer 1999 issue of Air Power History incorporates remarks by President Bill Clinton. The cover photo shows the president and Davis's sister Lenora pinning on his fourth star. Clinton is wearing the red blazer of the East Coast Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, presented to him that day by men who flew with General Davis in Italy during World War II. The best account of the achievements of the Tuskegee Airmen is Stanley Sandler's Segregated Skies: All-Black Combat Squadrons of WWII (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992). For another scholarly account, see Alan M. Osur's Blacks in the Army Air Forces during World War II: The Problem of Race Relations (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1977). One can also find numerous mentions of General Davis and his father in the monumental, scholarly, and objective account by Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1966). See also Morris J. MacGregor Jr.'s definitive Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1981). Less scholarly sources include Charles E. Francis's The Tuskegee Airmen: The Story of the Negro in the U.S. Air Force (Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1955); and Robert A. Rose's Lonely Eagles: The Story of America's Black Air Force in World War II (Los Angeles: Tuskegee Airmen, Western Region, 1976). For Davis's contribution to racial integration, see my book The Air Force Integrates, 1945-1964, 2d ed. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998). For the best one-volume account of blacks in American military history, read Bernard C. Nalty's Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military (New York: Free Press, 1986).

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Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.