Roger C. Terry (1921-2009) was a U. S. Army Air Forces officer in World War II. In his short military career, Terry compiled a record most people would classify as miserable: he was court-martialed for shoving a superior officer, convicted, fined, reduced in rank, and kicked out of the service with a dishonorable discharge. But Roger Terry was proud of what he accomplished in his short military career for the rest of his life.
Lt. Roger “Bill” Terry was one of the group of pioneer African American military aviators known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He was a 1941 graduate of UCLA, where he roomed with Jackie Robinson, the future baseball star who was himself court-martialed as an Army officer. Terry went on to train at Tuskegee and earned his pilot’s wings in February of 1945. He was assigned to the 477th Bombardment Group at Freeman Field in Indiana.
Roger C. “Bill” Terry (center) at Tuskegee Army Air Field, Alabama, December 1944. Source: National Archives
A Bomber Group the Air Forces didn’t want
The 477th was kind of an orphan child from the beginning. The Army Air Forces (AAF) didn’t really want it, feeling that it had been forced on them by political pressure. That was because everybody from the NAACP to Eleanor Roosevelt had been pressing for African Americans to be allowed full participation in the war effort, and the 477th was to be the first bomber group staffed by African American pilots and ground crews.
But in 1944 the American military was still a highly segregated institution. And when the 477th was activated in January of that year, its chain of command had no intention of loosening any of the traditional restraints of segregation. Though the 477th was staffed by black pilots and crews, its chain of command was to be strictly white.
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