The First to Enlist for Chanute's All-Black 99th Pursuit Squadron

My late husband Ellsworth Dansby, Jr., one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, spent his early years learning everything he could about flying. He would watch flies as they lifted off and banked into turns, and dreamed of the days he could do that also.

He became good friends with a pair of brothers whose family owned a plane. Their father had seen to it that they had flying lessons. One day when the parents weren’t home, Ellsworth visited and wanted to watch them fly. One of them took the plane up and, after he had landed, told Ellsworth, “Now it’s your turn.”

Ellsworth had never been in a plane in his whole life but he had read everything he could get his hands on. Besides, he was a 12-year-old kid who couldn’t pass up the opportunity or the challenge.  He hopped in and took off—alone, of course. It was a one-seater plane.  He had no trouble flying. However, he hadn’t read the part about landing. But he figured that if he flew the plane down to the ground and cut the engine, it would work. It did.

During the next few years, he flew whenever he could, and he became a very good mechanic.  There is a legend that I believe is true, that the old Mr. Charles Walgreen—yes, that Walgreen—landed in Lake Decatur in a pontoon plane that had some mechanical trouble. The mechanics available were called in and none could repair it. At that point, someone recalled that there was a black kid in Decatur High who could fix anything. Ellsworth was called out of class, worked on the plane, and had it running in a few hours.

Frustration seemed to dog his steps whenever he tried to pursue his flying dreams. He applied to every flight school in the country and they were enthusiastic to have him until they discovered he was black. He was turned down at every try, even though A.E. Staley, a friend of Mr. Walgreen’s, offered to pay his tuition.

As the clouds of World War II gathered, he was desperate to get into the Air Force, but of course he couldn’t because he was black. Then came the creation of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, a break that he and thousands of others had prayed for. He heard the news that an all-black unit was being created, got on his motorcycle and tore to Chanute Field in Rantoul, Ill., where he became the first enlistee. He was 27 at that time, the upper limit of the age for enlistment as a pilot, so he settled for being a mechanic. The 99th Pursuit Squadron members who trained as ground crew at Chanute went to Tuskegee, Ala., where they joined with the squadron’s pilots, and became the first unit of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. After he went to Tuskegee, he decided to stay on as a mechanic and became the first black Master Sergeant.

The 99th were aching to get into combat, but were left sitting at Tuskegee while the U.S. was in desperate need of more pilots. Prejudice on the part of the Army brass caused this to happen. After a great deal of pressure was put on high places, they were finally shipped to North African where again they sat, doing nothing. It seemed that no white outfit would attach them to their units.

One day, a plane carrying Field Marshal Montgomery of the British landed at their field. He demanded to know what they were doing just sitting there. When it was explained that no U.S. group would attach them, Montgomery said some pithy words about whose war it was anyway, and said he’d be glad to take them. They were then attached to the British and produced an enviable record.

When the invasion of Sicily took place, the U.S. had finally realized what they were missing, and from then on, the “Red Tails,” named because of the red tails on their planes, fought for their own country. The fame of their mechanics had spread all over the U.S. Air Force and planes from all kinds of units would fly in to have their repairs done by the 99th.