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"ATLANTA — Milton Pitts Crenchaw, a flight instructor who trained the Tuskegee Airmen - the first African-Americans to fly combat airplanes in World War II - has died in Georgia. He was 96.
Crenchaw died Tuesday at Piedmont Henry Hospital near Atlanta after battling cardiovascular disease and pneumonia, said his daughter, Dolores Singleton.
A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Crenchaw was among the last surviving instructors of the Tuskegee Airmen, Singleton said. He was among the original flight instructors in the program that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to train black pilots for war, she added.
"He began that whole flying experiment - I really think that's what it was because they didn't think it was going to work," Singleton said Wednesday. "For a black man to be able to fly, that's just like an astronaut now," she said.
The training at Tuskegee was the U.S. War Department's answer to a shortage of pilots, along with mechanics and other ground support personnel needed to maintain aircraft for battle, according to historical accounts from Tuskegee University and Tuskegee Airmen Inc., a national group that supports the airmen.
In an era when black military personnel were fighting segregation and being arrested at installations like Freeman Army Airfield in Indiana, the Tuskegee Airmen were integrating the U.S. war effort at the front lines.
"At the same time that black officers were incarcerated for resisting segregation at Freeman Field, for example, other black officers were earning Distinguished Flying Crosses and aerial victory credits by shooting down enemy airplanes in combat over Europe, while still other black cadets were learning to fly military airplanes," Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency wrote in a 2015 chronology of the Tuskegee Airmen.
".....>
"ATLANTA — Milton Pitts Crenchaw, a flight instructor who trained the Tuskegee Airmen - the first African-Americans to fly combat airplanes in World War II - has died in Georgia. He was 96.
Crenchaw died Tuesday at Piedmont Henry Hospital near Atlanta after battling cardiovascular disease and pneumonia, said his daughter, Dolores Singleton.
A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Crenchaw was among the last surviving instructors of the Tuskegee Airmen, Singleton said. He was among the original flight instructors in the program that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to train black pilots for war, she added.
"He began that whole flying experiment - I really think that's what it was because they didn't think it was going to work," Singleton said Wednesday. "For a black man to be able to fly, that's just like an astronaut now," she said.
The training at Tuskegee was the U.S. War Department's answer to a shortage of pilots, along with mechanics and other ground support personnel needed to maintain aircraft for battle, according to historical accounts from Tuskegee University and Tuskegee Airmen Inc., a national group that supports the airmen.
In an era when black military personnel were fighting segregation and being arrested at installations like Freeman Army Airfield in Indiana, the Tuskegee Airmen were integrating the U.S. war effort at the front lines.
"At the same time that black officers were incarcerated for resisting segregation at Freeman Field, for example, other black officers were earning Distinguished Flying Crosses and aerial victory credits by shooting down enemy airplanes in combat over Europe, while still other black cadets were learning to fly military airplanes," Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency wrote in a 2015 chronology of the Tuskegee Airmen.
".....>