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Local aviation hero....Indiana


renfield
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I have lived most of my life within 20 miles of Brazil Indiana and never knew this! This was not taught in Indiana history class and that bothers me. This man was a true hero and should be more well known. There is a nice monument on the side of highway 40 but blink and you will miss it. If it was not for my research I would never have know this man lived so close to my home town.

Steve

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From what I know of our local history it was not easy for a young black man in this part of Indiana in those years. He must have been a great man.

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Thx Steve, for this tribute to a local legend in Brazil IN. I have had the priviledge to visit this site several times as a local veteran myself and I was quite impressed. Earlier this last summer I took part in an air show at the Hulman air field in nieghboring Terre Haute Indiana by the Missouri CAF Red Tail Squadron in cluding a B-25 and a P-51C with a mobile trailer video show depicting the hisrory of the Tuskegee Airmen including some information about Major Hall. Here is a link to the local story, http://tribstar.com/...rt-this-weekend . Also, right across the street from the memorial in the pictures is the Clay Co. Museum are the uniform and medals donated by Sgt Nicosin of E Co. 506th PIR 101st Airborne Div and WW II Nazi artifacts taken from the infamous Eagles Nest. Not meaning to hi-jack your thread I added of Sgt Nicoson unifrom and artifacts. Dan

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Johnny Signor

Great to know about and let others know about it and his service !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I met a few of the TAM at a show in Pennsylvania at the MAAM show and a few locally , Hiram Mann was a P-51 pilot , I ahve a video by him and I had it autographed .

Johnny

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It is right in front of City Hall, that is east of the Court House several blocks down on the south side. Right on highway 40. As dlp797 stated right across the street from the museum. I would bet more people know that Orvil Redenbacker was from Brazil than Major Hall. I had driven by this spot literally hundreds of times until I spotted the P-40 on top of the monument. It just amazes me this was not in my Indiana history class. I talked with two people that grew up in Brazil, one 21 and one 27 years old and neither one of them knew of Major Hall. That is unforgivable. Jimmy Hoffa they know but not a true man of courage and dedication.

Steve

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Johnny Signor

yeah , schools really have dropped the ball so to speak when it comes to WW2 history , I'm 53 , and when i was in school no matter which one I went to from elementary all through the grades all they were hung up on was the "colonial" and "civil war " era , I was literally sick of hearing about it , like that was all the US ever had happen!

 

Too much of the latter era history , not just WW2 but before and after is being neglected and is a shame in my opinion .............................................

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I did some more research and found out he ended the war with 3 confirmed victories. The highest scoring African American pilot had 4 victories. If he took his P-40 up against a FW-190 he must have been a very good pilot.

Steve

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I did some more research and found out he ended the war with 3 confirmed victories. The highest scoring African American pilot had 4 victories. If he took his P-40 up against a FW-190 he must have been a very good pilot.

Steve

 

 

Thanks for the update! One thing that surprises me, even beyond the schools not teaching about him, is that I can't find any Indiana publications that feature or even mention him. Of course, there may have been something in the local county historical magazine, but I can't find it. Part of that may be that he relocated outside of Indiana after the war.

 

There had to be enough public support to have the monument built, so there had to be some awareness of the man.

 

Of course Indiana provided men for the Flying Tigers, Doolittle's Raiders, and other well known groups, but you hear very little about them.

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yeah , schools really have dropped the ball so to speak when it comes to WW2 history , I'm 53 , and when i was in school no matter which one I went to from elementary all through the grades all they were hung up on was the "colonial" and "civil war " era , I was literally sick of hearing about it , like that was all the US ever had happen!

 

Too much of the latter era history , not just WW2 but before and after is being neglected and is a shame in my opinion .............................................

The main problem with it is two fold, first is now state and federal curriculum guidelines basically dictate what we teach and over the last several years with standardized testing there is less and less room for adding in or going more in depth on any topic. At our school now, we have these curriculum maps, which basically break down to a monthly guideline of what to teach....and you need to be matching up with that map with what's going on in your classroom. I used to bring in all of my WWII US GI equipment, weapons, uniforms, and do a little lesson for the US History students once they got to WWII, but I haven't done it in about 4-5 years now. Main reason is the history teachers told me that they don't spend as much time on WWII anymore and also they don't have a day to do that now with the curriculum being so jammed packed. It's a shame, but I feel it too, and I'm a Physics teacher. The other part of it is that not every teacher is into WWII or the wars as we might be. Some teacher might be really into the renaissance or early European history, so when they get to the other parts, they are less into it and they also might be not as knowledgable on it. I don't think anyone leaves things out on purpose, and I'm sure there are some teachers who downright do a horrible job even of what they do teach on the subject, but it's not as if every teacher feels WWII was the most important time in history or has the background that we might. Couple that with the strict almost weekly map of what we should teach, and that's how it goes unfortunately.

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By the way, it's very neat finding a 'hometown' hero like that. I am working on a 1/48 scale P-51B that I will put in Red Tail markings to go with a small display I have, and I just did some reading on the group.....one of the thing I found was that when Lee Archer claimed his 5th kill, his first kill was officially re-evaluated as a shared kill, so therefore he did not reach Ace status at that time.

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I understand what you are saying Waltz41 about the teachers working under time pressure and can not cover everything. I was lucky enough to have a great English teacher who would help me find books on whatever subject I was interested in at the time. He went out of his way to help his students. We just have to encourage our children to read outside of school for their own education.

Steve

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At least the students of Adams Elementary School in Lincoln, NE will know about the Tuskegee Airmen. The school is named to honor Lt. Col. Paul Adames who flew in the 332nd FS and became a teacher in the Lincoln Public School after he retired from the Air Force in 1964, and retired from teaching in 1982.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Steve (renfield),

this is off topic but related to a post from last year so I hope you and everyone else does not mind me interjecting this now. You posted a picture of a B-17F called the impatient virgin (http://www.usmilitar...-b-17-pictures/). Did you ever find any information about it? My dad was a pilot with the 388BG/560SQ and his planes were called the impatient virgin and impatient virgin II. I would be very interested to find out what you know about that picture.

 

jerry

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Johnny Signor

The main problem with it is two fold, first is now state and federal curriculum guidelines basically dictate what we teach and over the last several years with standardized testing there is less and less room for adding in or going more in depth on any topic. At our school now, we have these curriculum maps, which basically break down to a monthly guideline of what to teach....and you need to be matching up with that map with what's going on in your classroom. I used to bring in all of my WWII US GI equipment, weapons, uniforms, and do a little lesson for the US History students once they got to WWII, but I haven't done it in about 4-5 years now. Main reason is the history teachers told me that they don't spend as much time on WWII anymore and also they don't have a day to do that now with the curriculum being so jammed packed. It's a shame, but I feel it too, and I'm a Physics teacher. The other part of it is that not every teacher is into WWII or the wars as we might be. Some teacher might be really into the renaissance or early European history, so when they get to the other parts, they are less into it and they also might be not as knowledgable on it. I don't think anyone leaves things out on purpose, and I'm sure there are some teachers who downright do a horrible job even of what they do teach on the subject, but it's not as if every teacher feels WWII was the most important time in history or has the background that we might. Couple that with the strict almost weekly map of what we should teach, and that's how it goes unfortunately.

Yeah , I know schools have budgets etc and rules to follow, but good grief WW2 was in my opinion and I'm sure other forum members would agree that it was one of the Major pivital happenings in this country , had we lost , where would this nation be right now????????

To brush aside this important part of our nations developement is a big lax in proper teaching of our country's background and what made it what it is today !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

And if the teachers don't know about it, shame on them as they should , no excuse as far as I'm concerned as they're mostly old enough to have been taught themselves in school about it , unless tha lack thereof goes back further than I realise ....................

 

Just my opinion ..............................

Johnny

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  • 1 year later...

I thought I would bring this back up to the top. I just picked up a uniform coat with an interesting tie to this monument. In a vintage clothes shop, I fund the coat that was worn by Ted Englehart who was instrumental in the funding of this monument to Charles Hall. Both Englehart and Hall were from Brazil, Indiana and both were trained in class 44-D which is marked in Englehart's coat. Englehart remained stateside as a flight instructor.

 

Here is a story about Englehart's involvement in the monument: http://www.thebraziltimes.com/story/1318454.html

 

And here is Englehart's coat

 

 

 

 

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As I reread the article above, I am wondering if the reporter misinterpreted Mr. Englehart. If I am correct, all of the Tuskegee pilots did their advanced training at Tuskegee Army Air Field (TAAF). I can't find any information on white pilots also training at TAAF. Maybe at a nearby field, but not at TAAF. Also Hall had his first kill in 1943, almost a year prior to Englehart's training. Am I missing something?

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