“Red Tails,” a big-budget movie opening today, tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen — a team of African-American pilots who flew combat missions in World War II.

The late George J. Iles would have enjoyed seeing the film.

Iles, a Quincy native, was a member of the famed unit, known for flying planes adorned with red tails. The black fighter pilots distinguished themselves by not losing any of the heavy bombers they escorted into aerial battles in occupied Europe during the early 1940s.

Iles went on to an illustrious military career before he retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1973. Iles and his wife, Jola, spent most of their retirement years in Marysville, Calif. He died in 2004 at age 86. She died a year later.

In a 2002 interview with The Quincy Herald-Whig, Iles, then 84, recalled how he faced discrimination while becoming the first black man from Quincy to earn a pilot’s license — an accomplishment that paved the way for him to join the Tuskegee Airmen.

“Quincy was a segregated town,” he said. “Up to the eighth grade, we all had to go to Lincoln School,” an all-black elementary school that was eventually shuttered.

After graduating from Quincy High School in 1935, Iles worked thee years in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He then used his savings to enroll at Quincy College, where in 1939 he completed a civilian pilot training program created in preparation for war. Iles was awarded his private pilot’s license.

Eager to fly, he joined the Army Air Corps, which was segregated at the time. However, a new training program for prospective black pilots was being launched at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

“I wanted to fly, and there was no place to fly except in the military,” Iles said. “So when they started the black unit, I thought that was what I needed.”
The Tuskegee Army Air Field was built specifically to train black pilots, who were housed in separate quarters because of segregationist policies. Iles was one of 990 black men to graduate from the institute and one of only 450 graduates who flew into combat overseas.

When the Tuskegee program was in its infancy, many racist doubters predicted the training effort would fail.

“One of the reasons that they had given for not letting blacks in the air previously was that we didn’t have the intelligence or the aptitude required for flying,” Iles said. “We were determined to prove them wrong.”

That’s precisely what happened — as evidenced by the 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses and Legion of Merit awards earned by the Tuskegee Airmen.

Iles’ military experience included a two-month stint as a prisoner of war. Upon returning from his 23rd escort mission in February 1944, Iles’ single-seat fighter was hit by enemy fire over Germany. Iles managed to land the crippled plane in a field. While walking away, he was captured by German soldiers and taken to a POW camp in Nuremberg. Later, as American liberators started advancing into Germany, the POW camp was moved elsewhere and Iles was ultimately rescued.

Iles went on to become an instructor for black cadets at Tuskegee and later got involved in military intelligence during the Korea and Vietnam wars.

Iles said one of his proudest moments came in 1948 when President Harry Truman signed an executive order that finally ended segregation in the military.
The success of the Tuskegee Airmen “had something to do with that,” Iles said. “We proved that we were not better than anybody else, but we were not worse than anybody else. We were Americans, and we wanted to be given an equal chance to prove that we could do the job. And I think that we did prove we could do the job.”

Now the unit’s accomplishments are being showcased around the country in a film produced by George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame. It’s too bad Iles isn’t here to see it. He could have provided an insightful review.

— ehusar@whig.com/221-3378