African American Experiences

Gilbert Corgill

Gilbert Corgill:” One day in 1941 at my house in Cleveland, Ohio, I read that the government was offering pilot training gratis for those interested.” This is Gilbert Corgill speaking. He was a flight instructor at Tuskegee Airfield and a lieutenant during the war. He went through three phases of exams before entering the school. He stated,” To say that anticipated good news would be a lie. When you have had the door slammed in your face all your life because of skin coloring you look for the worst if nothing other than a defense mechanism.” But Corgill passed.

Major Robert Pits

Major Robert Pits: “The air force, being a segregated institution, saw to it that all of our classes were taught at Chianute Field; normally a person who was going to have my job was sent to Denver, Colorado, for such training.” This is Major Robert Pits, a intelligence officer of the 332nd. He was enlisted in 1941 as a member of a group that Robert Jones was also apart of. He was also one of the 300 enlisted black soldiers; also, he was in the first “all-negro” fighter squadron. He along with Robert Jones, were diverted to Montgomery, Alabama at Maxwell Field because the Tuskegee could not receive them. Robert Pits goes on with his experience saying, “The 332 nd Fighter Group arrived in Italy inn February 1944. We started out at Naples as a harbor patrol unit. After a few months the ‘wheels’ decided there wasn’t enough work in the area for a fighter group so we were shifted east of the Alps to Ramitelli. While this was going on, the 99th (Tuskegee Airmen), with the 12th Air Force division was doing close ground support work: strafing, dive bombing, this kind of thing.” Later in, Bill Campbell of the 99th division became the leader of the 332nd Fighter group. Around the same time, Pits and his group could not finish the mission at Ramilelli, because of fuel. The new S-3 officer stopped the shortage of gasoline quickly, which made the 332 nd a strong, well-knit, first class fighter group. Pits speaking again, “Captain Wendell Pruitt, perhaps we could say, was the maverick of the 332 nd. He was the only Pilot that B.O. Davis, Jr. never seemed able to severely reprimand.”(qtd. in Invisable Soldier

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Source: Motley, Mary P. The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, in World War II . Wane State University Press. Detroit, MI. © 1975
Images: National Archives & Records Administration. “African Americans During WWII” July 2005. http://www.archives.gov/research_room/research_topics/ african_americans_during_wwii>