Tearing Down

Some call it "setting the record straight". Some call it "telling the REAL TRUTH™". Some call it "Revisionist history". Some just ask, "Why?"

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A bomber pilot from World War II says he was shot down while being escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, an account that supports a recent report by two historians that the famed black fighter group, contrary to legend, did lose at least a few bombers to fire from enemy aircraft.

Warren Ludlum, who lives in Old Tappan, N.J., said that his B-24 bomber was shot down by enemy planes over Linz, Austria, in July 1944, while he was being escorted by P-51 fighters piloted by the Tuskegee Airmen.

The 83-year-old Ludlum, in a telephone interview Thursday, made clear that he has great respect for the Tuskegee Airmen and liked being escorted by them because of their aggressiveness. He said he knew he was being escorted by the Tuskegee Airmen on the day he was shot down because one of them, Starling B. Penn, was shot down at the same time and ended up in the same German prison camp as Ludlum.

Ludlum's story supports the research of William F. Holton, historian for Tuskegee Airmen Inc., who said recently that the legend of the all-black fighter squadron never losing a bomber to enemy fighters was incorrect, according to Air Force records.

Ludlum's "information jibes with my preliminary look at the data I have here," Holton said.

The historian verified that Penn was a Tuskegee Airman, that he was shot down at about the same time as Ludlum and that they were apparently in the same German prison camp. Penn died in 1999.

I fall into the category of asking "Why?" What is the purpose here? The Tuskegee Airmen will be now known as the squadron that lost very, very, very few bombers as opposed to none? That makes a difference how exactly? Forget the fact that the evidence being touted in the article would not stand in a court of law. Why is this important? Why is this necessary?

To take away another hero?