2/11/22 Tuskegee AL into Georgia

2/11/22 Friday

 34 degrees this morning.  We have breakfast and head to the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. We are fortunate that they are open Fridays and Saturdays.  We arrive a little early, but someone in the parking lot explains the layout.  The museum is located in 2 hangars at Morton Field.

We drive to an area overlooking the airfield where there are placards giving a brief story of this field.  More than 10,000 black men and women served as support personnel to the 992 pilots trained here; including navigators, bombardiers, mechanics, instructors, crew chiefs, nurses and cooks.

It was the 1940's and just about every area of life was strictly segregated.  Not everyone was supportive of Tuskegee.  The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 prohibited discrimination in training for military service  and it, together with pressure from the black press, civil rights organizations and even Eleanor Roosevelt, led to the establishment of the segregated 99th Pursuit Squadron in 1941. African Americans from all over the US came here to train. The first hangar has a brief film and then deals with the training aspect.  At numerous spots there are phones which you can pick up to hear individuals who were involved here speak.

 Tuskegee's Morton Field was used for primary training and the nearby Tuskegee Army Air Field was used for basic and advanced training. The cadets were housed at nearby Tuskegee Institute.

Training was rigorous and the airmen realized they had something to prove.  They became some of the top pilots in the US.  The second hangar talks of their accomplishments during the war, when their planes, tipped nose and tail in red, often escorted bombers. 

 

 They were so accomplished that they were often requested as escorts. 992 pilots were trained and 66 were killed in combat. Overall the airmen destroyed 251 enemy planes and received 150 distinguished flying crosses. 

The George Washington Carver museum in Tuskegee is closed for renovations, so we continue east into  the Eastern Time Zone. We visit the Eufaula Nat'l Wildlife Refuge on the Chatahoochee River. But they are doing a lot of controlled burns - hardly condusive to wildlife viewing.  We take a short walk and see one bald eagle.

 

Housing is ranging from trailer homes, to tumbledown, to gorgeous!

Hello Georgia!  We pass cotton fields, pecan orchards, and more of the pines that took over lots of plantation areas after WWII. The pines are planted at widths that allow quick growth and easy harvesting.

This small patch of cotton apparently didn't get picked, so we break off a piece to take home to show the grandkids.

This "sign" farm was an interesting distraction!

Next we took a little detour to see the southernmost covered bridge at Coheelee Creek.

Tonight we stop at a Walmart in Bainbridge, Georgia. Quiet night.