Red Tailed Angels

View 718 Monday, March 19, 2012

It is spring and tax time. And I am far behind.

The legend of the Red Tailed Angels

I’ve seen a few articles lately stirred up by the “Red Tails” movie, and a couple of letters: the Tuskegee Airmen did not have the perfect escort record generally claimed for them, and they were inefficient compared to other escort groups. The claim often made is that no bombers escorted by the 332^nd were ever lost to enemy air action. Few claimed that no bombers they escorted were ever shot down, although some accolades say as much, unlikely as that might be – there’s not much an escort fighter can do about flak. Especially if you’re going to Ploesti, or Berlin.

It turns out neither claim was true. The 332^nd did lose some of their bombers to enemy air action, nor should anyone be astonished at that. The Luftwaffe was pretty thin and green by the time the Tuskegee Airmen got well into the bomber escort business, but it still had some good pilots left, and they were defending their homeland against bombardment from the sky. They fought hard.

In the early days, the 99^th – the first of the Tuskegee trained fighter groups – was mostly given ground support missions (which fighter pilots have always hated) and when given escort missions were often excluded from the mission briefings. The real glory days of the Tuskegee Airmen came with the formation of the 332^nd (which incorporated the 99^th), and they got the red-tailed P-51 Mustangs in July 1944. Not long after that they went to Ploesti. Ploesti had the best flak defenses USAAF encountered during the war.

They lost some bombers, of course. Most to ground fire, but some to enemy air action. The claim that they never lost a bomber to enemy air action apparently originated in a Chicago newspaper and was picked up and echoed by other journalists. It made a good story, and I never questioned it; but it isn’t true. Over the course of their engagement about 25 bombers were lost to enemy action. It’s hard to get exact numbers, but one back of the envelope calculation shows about 750 US bombers lost to enemy air in the Mediterranean campaign and about 13 fighter groups operating there: that works out to 58 bombers lost/fighter group. Of course that’s too high since we don’t know what kind of bombers, but from all the evidence I can find, the 332^nd had a very low loss ratio, and they didn’t get the easy missions.

It is also true, as some recent articles point out, that the the 332^nd had a far lower kill count than many other escort squadrons. As far as I’m concerned that is no criticism: That’s the major reason for their formidable reputation as escort fighters. If you’re after kills, you relentlessly chase down damaged enemy aircraft. That generally leaves you well behind the mission, probably with your wing man. The point of escort missions isn’t to kill fighters. That was the big mistake that the Luftwaffe made in the Battle of Britain. The purpose of escort missions is to get the bombers to their targets – and to bring them home again, after the enemy has staged his fighters to cover the return route. On the way in there are many potential targets and the interceptors can’t cover them all. They may have to fly a long way and have less attack time before they have to land and refuel. When the bombers are on the way out it’s easier to know where the bombers are going, and to stage pursuit planes along the way. The fighters are fueled and ready and the pilots are fresh. The bombers and their escorts have been halfway to Hell – particularly if the target is Ploesti – and now they have to come home again. And if your fighter escorts have been off killing damaged aircraft, the interceptor units get Aces, but fewer of the bombers get home again.

The pride of the Tuskegee Airmen was that they didn’t abandon their bombers. They didn’t get as many kills, and overall they lost more of their own fighters than they shot down, which is why some claim they were the least efficient escort group in the European theater; but they stayed with the mission, and they brought their bombers home. That’s the mission.