Attitudes toward blacks in the military heading into World War II were rooted in part in a theory that they were ill-equipped to handle combat. Those obstacles still ring clear for retired Lt. Col. Leo R. Gray when recalling the trailblazing Tuskegee Airmen, the first black pilots to train in the Army Air Corps’ Tuskegee Air Field in Alabama.

“In 1925, there was a study at the Army Historical Institute on Negro troops in World War I. It said Negroes were inferior to whites and that Negroes lacked the courage to engage in combat and lacked the ability to handle sophisticated equipment. This was the mindset of the military establishment at the outset of World War II. I think we demonstrated that was not right,” Gray said Saturday before an audience of about 200 who packed the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center.

Gray, a Boston native, enlisted in 1942 and was a part of one of the last groups of Tuskegee Airmen to join the war effort in Europe. He arrived in Italy in March 1945 and flew 15 missions through the end of the war with the 100th Fighter Squadron.

“We managed to destroy or damage 409 enemy aircraft,” Gray said. “We managed to destroy 111 aircraft in aerial combat and we lost 12. A 10-to-1 ratio is not bad for guys who aren’t supposed to be able to fly.”

The affable Gray traded war stories with a wry wit and easy smile, even when relating the daily struggles of achieving rank in the emerging U.S. Air Force before full integration of all branches of service took effect by executive order of President Truman in 1948.

Several base commanders were “bound and determined to maintain segregation in the U.S. military establishment,” Gray said, adding hushed court-martials resulted from improprieties involving squadrons of black servicemen.

“It was an interesting time,” Gray told his audience. “I think people should know that, even though we were pilots, we were treated as second-class citizens and there were many of us who had dehumanizing experiences trying to be citizens of this country.”

Gray said another moment previously thought lost to history was the Air Force’s first air-to-air meet in 1949, known as the “top gun” contest. Four pilots from the airmen’s 332nd Fighter Group came out on top, Gray said, but for more than 20 years all listings of the winning planes from the first competition began with the second meet, not the first.

“We’d say ‘What about the first competition. Oh, well, we don’t know who won the first competition,” Gray joked about the response from Air Force brass. Following an investigation, Gray said, the trophy was found “in the bowels” of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. “The record has since been corrected,” Gray said.

A career in the federal government beckoned soon after the war for Gray, one of the approximately 300 of the 994 advanced trainees at Tuskege who are alive today. Gray worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 30 years, where he was the first black agricultural economist hired by the department. Along the way, Gray earned a degree in agricultural economics from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s from the University of Nebraska. Numerous other honors associated with his military career and place in history with the Tuskegee Airmen have followed, including the Congressional Gold Medal from President Bush in 2007 and his appearance with fellow surviving airmen at the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January.

Despite the accolades and more attention in the media through a made-for-cable movie in 1996, Gray said he keeps the achievements of his fellow airmen in a more workmanlike perspective as he spoke to a mostly military audience Saturday.

“People talk about you as hero. I didn’t do any more than you guys are doing. I did what I was supposed to do; you’re doing what you’re supposed to do. Fifty years from now, they might be hailing you guys the same way people are hailing the Tuskegee Airmen.”

Artist Clinard Martin, a McComb native whose renderings of the Tuskegee Airmen’s aircraft are featured at venues such as the The Smithsonian and the World War II Museum in New Orleans, presented renderings to Vicksburg Junior ROTC Sgt. James Bowman and 412th Engineer Command Chief of Staff Col. David Hollands following Gray’s address.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com.