Dr. Russell F. Minton, M.D. states he was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1927; “I learned to fly as a very young man” by an instructor friend of his father who lived “two doors down in Ardmore, PA.” That black instructor pilot (Charles Alfred Anderson) later joined the Tuskegee Airmen and arranged for Minton (“he shooed me in”) at the minimum age allowed [17? 18?] to attend flight training, where he (Minton) was “in the last class in 1945.” Minton states that he arrived in Europe after the surrender.
Thereafter, he states he attended medical school [GI Bill?] and became a surgeon, serving — as the above extracts reflect — from 1959 (age 32) to 1968 (age 41) in the National Guard.
Can we double check the date of birth and be sure that there isn’t an earlier record of him as a Tuskegee airman lost in the mists of time?
By the way, my research indicates that the expression “Tuskegee Airman” can fairly be applied to any black man (then called “negro or colored”) who trained as an aviator during the time of official segregation of the armed forces by race, even though some training was conducted at airfields other than Tuskegee, AL.
According to two YouTube video interviews from 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16-4veOJFC4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MiNQ3vhA7c
Dr. Russell F. Minton, M.D. states he was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1927; “I learned to fly as a very young man” by an instructor friend of his father who lived “two doors down in Ardmore, PA.” That black instructor pilot (Charles Alfred Anderson) later joined the Tuskegee Airmen and arranged for Minton (“he shooed me in”) at the minimum age allowed [17? 18?] to attend flight training, where he (Minton) was “in the last class in 1945.” Minton states that he arrived in Europe after the surrender.
Thereafter, he states he attended medical school [GI Bill?] and became a surgeon, serving — as the above extracts reflect — from 1959 (age 32) to 1968 (age 41) in the National Guard.
Can we double check the date of birth and be sure that there isn’t an earlier record of him as a Tuskegee airman lost in the mists of time?
By the way, my research indicates that the expression “Tuskegee Airman” can fairly be applied to any black man (then called “negro or colored”) who trained as an aviator during the time of official segregation of the armed forces by race, even though some training was conducted at airfields other than Tuskegee, AL.