Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Tuskegee Trainer

 In a March 1941 inspection of the Tuskegee program, after her famous flight, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt cheerfully announced, "Well, you can fly all right."
 I had always presumed the Tuskegee airmen were a product of the needs of WW2 but the program had actually gotten underway in 1940. Although Eleanor Roosevelt and her pilot Alfred Anderson made their flight in a Piper Cub, the airplane the Institute used was the UPF-7 Waco trainer (designated the PT-14 by the USAAC).
 Six hundred were built, approximately 150 remain.

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