I can't say if Calude Davis was one of them he is not listed on the offical roster, however, in 2006, they were collectively honored with a Congressional Medal of Honor. Print story below.
April 20, 2007
Schwarze Vogelmenschen at the Elysian Fields
They were there before Jackie Robinson but weren't there for glory or money.
"I came out of a good school that taught patriotism and citizenship," said Robert McDaniel. "We were taught that you fought for your country when your country needed to."
They were more than willing too although their white counterparts didn't believe they could fly. Congress forced them upon the military. The War Department didn't want them and set high standards that had to me met.
"You've got to remember this was in the early 1940's," McDaniel said. "They didn't want black pilots to fly. So they basically set it up as an experiment and even if they were able to teach them how to fly, they didn't think they had the courage to fight the enemy."
The Tuskegee Airmen did learn to fly and they did possess extraordinary courage to fight the enemy.
The Rangers honored seven members of the Tuskegee Airmen before Friday's game with the Oakland Athletics: McDaniel, Donald Elder, John Flanagan, Lloyd McKeethen, Claude Platte, Calvin Spann and Morris Whitley.
Their story is extraordinary. The Germans called them "Schwarze Vogelmenschen" or the Black Birdmen. The Allies called them the Redtail Angels because of a distinctive crimson paint job on the rear stabilizer.
Bomber groups would request Redtail ecort whenever possible without knowing that they were African-Americans. Their record was extraordinary. They were known to have been the only fighter group not to have lost a bomber to an enemy fighter group.
"We did our job and fought for our country with no fanfare," said Elder, who was a crew chief for the Airmen.
They might have gone done in obscurity if not for a 1995 Emmy-winning movie starring Laurence Fishburne, Courtney B. Vance, Cuba Gooding Jr. and others.
They might not have flown at all if not for Eleanor Roosevelt, who visited the pilots at their Tuskegee training ground in Alabama and reported back that they were indeed fit for duty.
But their exploits were truly legendary, not something that was made up in Hollywood.
"I flew 26 missions when the war ended," Spann said. "Germany, Yugoslavia, Italy, Hungary....We were supposed to fly 35 missions before we were rotated out. The other (white) units only had to fly 25 before they were rotated out. We had to fly 35 because we didn't have enough replacements."
They won two Presidential Unit Citations, 744 Air Medals, 150 Flying Crosses, 14 Bronze Stars and several Silver Stars. They were credited with shooting down 113 Luftwaffe Aircraft. In 2006, they were collectively honored with a Congressional Medal of Honor.
"Eventually we were in demand as pilots," Flanagan said.
They were during the war. Afterward, not one of them could get a job as a pilot in America. That might be the most extraordinary aspect of the whole story.
When the war was over and the Tuskegee Airmen had magnificently done their part in the victory over Germany, nobody was interested in giving them commercial jobs as pilots.
"I remember when we were sent to a base in Indiana for training," Elder said. "They had a big P.O.W base there for Germans. The German P.O.W's slept in barracks. We slept in tents."
They celebrated Jackie Robinson Day last Sunday in Major League Baseball. On Friday the Rangers honored the legendary Tuskegee Airmen who came before the legendary Hall of Fame infielder.
