35 cents
VOL. 2/ISSUE 16
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2014
Tuskeegee Airman: ‘I didn’t realize the contribution I was making when I went into the military’ Patrick McCallister For Veteran voice
patrick.mccallister@yahoo.com
Hiram Mann
“We’re going to have at least (Mann), and we hope a couple of the Tuskegee Airmen with us,” Davis said.
Mann said the opportunity to meet Tuskegee Airmen is quickly narrowing. He’s 92. “I’m the oldest bracket now of
See MANN page 5
Are the enlistment bonus and nuclear test cheating revelations signs of widespread problems? Send your thoughts to: info@veteranvoiceweekly.com 9079
Hiram Mann just wanted to fly. He wasn’t trying to make history. He wasn’t trying to help change America’s attitudes toward blacks. But he likely did just that. Mann is among the storied Tuskegee Airmen. “I didn’t realize the contribution I was making when I went into the military,” he told Veteran Voice. Mann will tell his many thrilling, and sometimes hard-to-hear, stories about love, war, racism and grit in 1940s America at the annual TICO Warbird Air Show, March 14 to 16. That’ll be at the Space Coast Regional Airport, 355 Golden Knights Blvd., Titusville. “One theme, and we have a couple, is honoring the Tuskegee Airmen,” Ron Davis, public relations officer of the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum, said in a previous interview. The museum hosts the annual airshow. The Tuskegee Airmen are a legendary group of black pilots who flew and fought during World War II. The National Museum of the US Air Force has much history about the airmen at its website, www.nationalmuseum. af.mil. But there’s living history in Titusville: Mann. He makes frequent appearances at the Warbird’s functions, and is the subject of the book, “Tuskegee Airman Fight Pilot: A Story of an Original Tuskegee Pilot Lt. Col. Hiram E. Mann.”
the (Airmen),” he said. “The older men have mostly died off. I know of two or three older than me, but they’re more feeble.” As America prepared for the possibility of war in 1940, Congress enacted the Selective Training and Service Act. It partially eased racial discrimination in the military and opened the way for blacks to train for the Army Air Forces. The Tuskegee Institute, founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, got involved with training them. It was the only school where the black pilots trained during the war. Mann is a deeply patriotic fellow who loves the military. He served for 30 years. But he’s not afraid to call things the way he remembers them. “There were some rotten apples who did not want Negroes to fly and put all kinds of obstacles in their path,” he said. Mann added, “It was said Negroes did not have the mentality or ability to handle technical equipment like airplanes.” Much of that thinking, Mann said, was buttressed by institutionalized racism. “There was a war study,” Mann said. “The (United States Army War College) Class of 1925 wrote a paper on the Negro in combat in World War I. It said all Negroes were cowards. It said their brains were small. All of the statements in that study were negative toward the race.” But, Mann said, the black pilots in the 332nd Fighter Group had