11/11/2021
(NOVEMBER 11, 2021) VETERAN OF THE DAY – Today, we honor Colonel Carl C. Johnson, Army Fighter Pilot, 95, Ashburn, Virginia.
As a boy, watching the mail plane fly down the Ohio River from his hometown of Bellaire to Cincinnati, Carl C. Johnson was fascinated by aircraft. But it wasn’t until high school, when he and a football buddy asked about enlisting in the Army, that he thought of becoming a pilot.
“My friend, who was white, received a notification, and they didn’t call me,” recalled Johnson.
“I first then felt discrimination.” In college at Ohio State, he was drafted and tapped for what was then called the Tuskegee Experiment, ultimately known as the Tuskegee Airmen.
Comprised of almost 1,000 pilots and many thousands more support personnel, this unit escorted mostly white bomber pilots in combat, with an above-average success rate, when the US military was segregated.
The training was rigorous, and Johnson was one of 12 in his class of 119 to make it to phase four. He completed his training in a unique program for pilots from China, then a United States ally.
After graduation, along with his Tuskegee Airman wings, Johnson received “Chinese wings” from Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek for helping communicate instructions to the Chinese flying B25 twin-engine planes. “I was an instructor for them,” he recalled.
A decorated Army pilot in the Korean and Vietnam wars, Johnson later became deputy director of the Pittsburgh International Airport in the 1970s.
“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org
