7:15 AM | *Remembering the Tuskegee Weathermen*

Lt. John Willis briefs a B-25 aircrew before a mission in the summer of 1945. (Credit: U.S. Air Force, 557th Weather Wing.)

Overview

Running for his third presidential term, Franklin Roosevelt made a 1940 campaign promise to allow for the training of African American military pilots. In cooperation with the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama which was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, the Army created a program in 1941 to induct and train what would eventually amount to more than 14,000 airmen, of whom about 1,000 would become pilots; the others became navigators, bombardiers, radio operators, administrators, support personnel - and some became weathermen.

Discussion

Much has been written about the Tuskegee Airmen, the U.S. military’s first African American pilots who were trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. The flying units had to be staffed with weather officers and because the Army was segregated, the new assembly of black aviators would be joined by a contingent of black meteorologists. In March 1942, the Tuskegee Weather Detachment was born.

Gen. Charles McGee, 100, a veteran and Tuskegee Airman, attends African American Pioneers in Aviation and Space Family Day on February 8, 2020 at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Va. (Credit: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

At that time, there were no black meteorologists in the U.S. Weather Bureau, so the Army recruited black men with a background in science who could be trained in meteorology. Charles E. Anderson, who originally wanted to be a pilot, was a good fit, having studied chemistry in college. “Flight crews were out of the question because my eyesight was not good enough, so that meant that I had to do something on the ground. I could have gone into engineering but my background in math and chemistry seemed to be exactly the kind of background that they were looking for [in] meteorologists, so I applied,” he said in a 1992 interview for the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Oral History Project.

(Credit: Gerald White, Jr/Air Power History Magazine, Summer 2006)

Anderson went on to attend the Meteorological Aviation Cadet Program at the University of Chicago, learning alongside white students who were also preparing to join the Army Air Forces. Anderson’s colleague Archie Williams also wanted to be a pilot initially. And while he knew how to fly a plane — Williams was a civilian flight instructor at Tuskegee — and he was in fine physical condition — the former track star had won the gold medal in the 400-meter in the 1936 Olympics — he was nearly 27 at the outset of the war, too old for military flight training. Because he had studied engineering at UC Berkeley, Williams was ushered into meteorology — although he continued to train pilots at Tuskegee. “While I was there, I had three jobs. I was a weather officer. I was drawing weather maps, making weather forecasts, and teaching intro to flying,” he said in a 1992 interview with UC Berkeley.

Two observers prepare a forecast in 1945 in the weather office at Godman Field, Ky. (Credit: U.S. Air Force, 557th Weather Wing)

In all, there were 14 Tuskegee meteorologists which accounted for just one-fifth of one percent of all weather officers in the Army Air Forces - a percent that greatly underrepresented the black population as a whole or even those who served. Ultimately, Charles E. Anderson would become the first African American - likely anywhere in the world - to earn a PhD in meteorology at MIT. He went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he became the chair of the meteorology department. (Coincidentally, the first woman in the United States to attain a PhD in meteorology, Joanne Simpson, was in the same war-time meteorology program at the University of Chicago in 1943 as Charles E. Anderson and they were actually in the same class). Other notable Tuskegee weather men included Wallace Reed who started in 1941 and became the first African American weather officer for the Air Corps Weather Service.  Additionally, Robert Preer would become the first African American to enter the desegregated Air Force. While these notable airmen found a place in the service, many more qualified black men were left on the sidelines. 

The Staff of the Tuskegee Weather Station circa 1944. Air Force Weather History Office, Air Force Weather Agency, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska (Credit: U.S. Air Force, 557th Weather Wing)

Retired Air Force historian Dan Haulman in an interview said this of the Tuskegee airman “of the 179 bomber escort missions, they lost bombers to enemy aircraft on only seven of those missions.” He added that they only lost 27 bombers in total, while other groups lost 46 bombers on average.  He said that accurate weather forecasting was critical to their success, as pilots needed to know what conditions to expect on their missions. “Just as the black pilots proved that they could fly military aircraft in combat as well as the white pilots, so did the black weather personnel prove that they could perform meteorological functions as well as the white officers,” he said.  The Tuskegee Weathermen were pioneers in both the American armed forces, as well as the civilian world. By proving that black Americans could undergo the same rigorous academic and military training as their white counterparts, the Tuskegee Weathermen laid the foundation for numerous generations to come.

(Credit for information in this article goes to Jeremy Deaton/Washington Post, Paul Goodloe/The Weather Channel, Gerald White, Jr/Air Power History, Summer 2006, USAF, Air Force Historical Research Agency).

Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Arcfield
arcfieldweather.com

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