MovieChat Forums > The Tuskegee Airmen (1995) Discussion > Did The Tuskegee Airmen Really Sink A Ge...

Did The Tuskegee Airmen Really Sink A German Destroyer???


I love this film! But you have to admit that it ... as well as the Lucas film (Red Tails) ... perpetuates many myths about the Tuskegee Airman. One that I clearly struggled with was how could a little P40 take out a German Destroyer with out the use of bombs. Just doesn't seem possible.

The following is from a website that I found about the myths in these two films that puts the Destroyer question into perspective.

The myth that the Tuskegee airmen sank a German destroyer

The 332nd FG mission report for June 25, 1944 notes that the group sank a German destroyer in the Adriatic Sea near Trieste that day. The pilots on that mission undoubtedly believed they had sunk a German destroyer, but other records cast doubt on whether the ship actually sank and its nature.

Research indicates the ship in question was the TA-22, an ex-Italian destroyer converted to a minelayer and used by the Germans. It was not actually sunk in the attack but was so heavily damaged that it never saw further action and no longer posed a threat to Allied operations.


The website I mention is pretty good and I suggest anyone who enjoyed this as I did should check it out. It seems very fair and balanced!

http://ghostgrey.gaetanmarie.com/articles/2012/Nine%20Myths/Nine%20Myths%20about%20the%20Tuskegee%20Airmen.htm


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Adding to this discussion ... I would like to re-post a post made by Scott Pierson in August 2007. It is pretty amazing!!!

Gwynne Peirson was my best friend--and my father.

The reason the whole thing happened was because my father and Wendell Pruitt--returning from an escort--were low on fuel. They came out of a fog bank, flying low, and the destroyer was right in front of them. They couldn't go around the plane and expose their bellies, nor could they go over and expose. Both Dad and Pruitt opened fire to get the crew confused--they hoped everyone would be confused long enough for them to get past the ship and run.

When a seabound vessel is attacked, it's supposed to secure all hatches on deck. When Dad told me the whole story, he said he remembers his tracers hitting the water, walking up the side of the boat, and going into an open hatch on the deck--then the ship going boom. I've seen the gun cameras, and that's what happened. The bullets went in and got the magazine of the ship.

Odd last piece of the story. After my dad left the Army Air Corps, he became a police officer in Oakland, California. He was there for 23 years, from 1947 to 1970. His last six years in OPD, he started working on his degrees in Social Criminology. When he retired, we moved to St. Louis where he started a security program for the downtown projects the city had at the time. One of the projects was named Pruitt-Igoe. Because of the debate about whether Gwynne or Wendell Pruitt had blown the destroyer up, Pruitt's hometown had named one of their housing projects after him. Of course, it's also ironic--at least to me--that there is a mural at Lambert Field in St. Louis called "Black Americans In Flight", and while my dad is in it, Wendell Pruitt is not.

Scot Peirson
23 August 2007

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