Monday, June 28, 2004
By Greg Bischof of the Texarkana Gazette
"Both of my parents were teachers and I was going to college so I could learn to teach mathematics," Crockett told a group of relatives during a family reunion Saturday in Texarkana. "But I dropped out of junior college because I didn't have $6 to pay for college tuition."
Now, at age 85, Crockett looks back on the decision to joined the Army. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1970 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Crockett enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in August 1940. Crockett was later selected in competition to be Model Soldier of his regiment (the 349th Field Artillery) and was subsequently assigned as an aviation cadet to Tuskegee Army Air Field. Crockett received his pilot's wings and commission as a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps on 25 March 1943.
The Texarkana area native, along with about 991 other Tuskegee Airmen who earned the respect and gratitude from white airmen whose lives they helped save 60 years ago in a segregated U.S. military system. But back in 1940, Crockett only wanted to teach math. As a matter of fact, he wanted a doctorate in mathematics. To achieve this, he enlisted in the Army for three years-a popular way back then for young men to raise money for college tuition.
In August 1940, Pvt. Crockett went to Fort Sill, Okla., where he became part of the segregated 349th Field Artillery Regiment. Serving in the first field artillery regiment for blacks provided him with a $21 a month salary. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, torpedoed Crockett's plans for a post-service college education. While still in Fort Sill, Crockett, who by then had become a sergeant, was applying for officer candidate school. But economics changed the path of his military career when the U.S. Army Air Corps, posted a sign that said "Be a pilot, bombardier or navigator and earn $245 a month." At the time, the base pay for an Army second lieutenant was $210 a month. So Crockett opted for the Air Corps.
Up until the 1940s, the Air Corps had refused to admit blacks. But in January 1941, the War Department announced it would set up an air unit for training black pilots in cooperation with Tuskegee Institute, a black college in Alabama. This occurred after Yancey Williams, a Howard University student filed a lawsuit against the War Department for admission into an air training center. The government awarded the Tuskegee Institute a contract for the primary training of black flying cadets.
Crockett went in as an aviation cadet staff sergeant in August 1942 at Tuskegee Army Air Field. The base was located in the heart of a region that harbored the strongest resistance to any kind of civil rights for blacks at that time. The base was also segregated completely, with white officers in command. But for Crockett, the location proved to be an additional incentive for striving even harder to succeed. There was really no place to go off base for social activity and this gave him more time for studying. The intensive study and rigorous military flight training paid off as Crockett graduated on March 25, 1943.
The Army Air Force eventually formed the 332nd Fighter Group, commanded by then Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis. Jr., and attached it to the U.S. 15th Air Force stationed in North Africa and Italy during the war. Montecorvino Air Base near Salerno, Italy became the 332nd's stationing point in January 1944. The group's makeup included the 100th, 301st and the 302nd fighter squadrons. It was later joined by the 99th Fighter Squadron, which Davis originally commanded. Crockett was in the 100th.
Crockett started flying combat in the P-39 Air Cobras, but eventually flew the more modern and maneuverable P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. "We once flew 107 missions during a four month period," he said. "The P-51 was by far the dream aircraft, because if could fly better than any other."
At first the men of the 332nd, who were eventually named the "Red Tails" because the tails of their planes were painted solid red, started off on strafing missions - destroying enemy supply convoys and railroad traffic. But they eventually distinguished themselves flying escort missions for B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bomber formations. Their successful missions shattered the myths of racial inferiority heaped upon them in the U.S. military.
"The 15th Air Force was starting to lose a lot of bombers and that's when our group started escorting the B-17s and B-24s to targets in southern France and as far out as the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania," Crockett said. Davis, their leader, stressed to the airmen that their job was to defend the bombers first. His strict orders paid off as the Tuskegee airmen earned the distinction of never having lost a single bomber to enemy fighters while they flew escort for the formations.
The Red Tails' combat service climaxed with a raid on the Nazi capital of Berlin on March 24, 1945. "On that mission, the P-38 Lightnings escorted the bombers for the first 600 miles of that 800 mile flight," Crockett said. "It was our job to escort our bombers the final 200 miles to Berlin. That's where we saw the first German Messerschmidt Me 262 jet fighters and we shot down three of them."
Before the war's end, the Tuskegee Airmen flew more than 15,000 combat missions, including more than 200 bomber escort missions. They shot down, destroyed or damaged some 409 enemy aircraft and more than 950 enemy ground transportation units of all kinds including trains, trucks and armored vehicles. The group lost at total of 66 pilots who were killed in combat, along with another 32 shot down and taken prisoner. In 1944 and 1945, Crockett himself flew 149 combat missions- nearly three times the number of missions required of any pilot during in the air war in Europe. The lack of black replacement pilots forced many airmen like Crockett to serve well beyond what was required.
Born in Aug. 31, 1918, in a three-room, wood-frame home near the Holman community in northeast Miller County, Crockett grew up in an area where a few blacks owned their own farms. Most lived a harsh and bleak existence. Many blacks were farm hands and railroad workers who lived in wooden box cars and usually worked from sunrise to sunset. Crockett's parents, William and Lucinda, were both public school teachers. They taught him and other children in a two-room school building near Mandeville, Ark.
When Crockett was 14, his parents sent him to Little Rock to live with his older sister, a nurse. There, they believed he would get a better education in the city's larger public school system. Crockett attended Little Rock's Dunbar High School which could hold more than 1,000 students.
After World War II, Crockett remained in the U.S. Air Force, which became its own separate branch of military service in 1947. He went on to serve as a flight staff officer during the Korean War where he flew 45 more combat missions. "By then, the Air Force had the new F-80 Star Shooters," he said. "We could fly 22 miles in one minute."
Besides Korea, Crockett also participated in some military atomic bomb testing in Marshall Islands in the central Pacific in 1951. His medals and decorations include: Distinguished Flying Cross Air Medal (with four Oak Leaf Clusters), Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal (with one Oak Leaf Cluster). He was twice awarded the Soldier's Medal for bravery in extricating pilots from burning fighter aircraft.
Crockett is a holder of a "Mach 2 Card", having flown in the F-106 at twice the speed of sound on 2 June 1959.
Crockett held various command and staff positions, including those of squadron and group operations officer; flying and safety officer; squadron commander; and radiological safety officer on atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific in 1951. He is also a graduate of U.S. Air Force Command and Staff College.
Crockett was Commander of the 332nd Fighter Squadron. The 332nd Fighter Interceptor Squadron was based at Mc Guire Air Force Base, and was part of the 25th Air Division. Major Crockett commanded the squadron from January 1954 through September 1957. He left Mc Guire Air Force Base for the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base. He later returned to Mc Guire as Director of the F-106 Category II Program in July 1959.
He retired from the Air Force in 1970 after 28 years of service on flying status. He is still able to still play tennis with other senior adults. Back in 1995, Crockett was honored for his service with the Tuskegee Airmen by being inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. In 1998, he was one of a few Tuskegee Airmen on hand for Davis' pinning ceremony making him an Air Force general.
Crockett told a group of relatives Saturday that the best advice he could give kids today is to "stay in school, make good grades and when the door of opportunity opens for you, always be ready," he said.