PAPOY 2012, now with .35% less creepiness!

[CLARENCE 2015!]

Guess which one is yours truly-

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Picture from same event of us same three gentlemn... see if you can tell now

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See the resemblance?
That is me with my older daughter.... one of my life's greatest joys

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This is at a nearby Veterans Day BBQ- I am sitting behind one of the Tuskegee Airmen- what an honor!

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I am sitting behind one of the Tuskegee Airmen

How many of them are still left?

It recently occurred to me that the end of the Vietnam War is now longer ago than the outbreak of WWII was when Vietnam ended.

Good point- I hadn't thought of that. And I hear many different numbers for the Airmen... this gentlemen told me about 200 are still living

[CLARENCE 2015!]

And I hear many different numbers for the Airmen... this gentlemen told me about 200 are still living

That's quite a lot still, given how old they'd be and there were only about 840 in 1945 (ie the total number of men trained, a far-above-average number of whom were never sent overseas, minus their war dead).

And far fewer of those were actual pilots... the rest were mostly ground crew

[CLARENCE 2015!]

And I hear many different numbers for the Airmen... this gentlemen told me about 200 are still living

That's quite a lot still, given how old they'd be and there were only about 840 in 1945 (ie the total number of men trained, a far-above-average number of whom were never sent overseas, minus their war dead).

And far fewer of those were actual pilots... the rest were mostly ground crew

Nah, that's the number of those who were pilots ( / bombardiers / navigators. Bomber plane crew members) or at least completed such training but weren't used.

If you include the Air Force's Black ground crews, that's far more people. (I also found, skimming the wikipedia article a second time, the sentence "no one knows how many of the original 996 pilots and about 15,000 ground personnel are still alive".)

It is a very interesting piece of history... it sure was an honor to sit with one of these heroes during the program