I went to see Red Tails Saturday and was impressed by what I saw.

George Lucas has made an excellent film that does a very good job of telling the story of the Tuskegee Airmen without trying to rewrite history.

The Tuskegee Airmen were all college educated men who participated in the Army Air Corps great experiment: could black men perform as pilots? They answered that question with a resounding yes.

There was a great deal the film actually left out. Operation Shingle- the units "Big Break" that gave the brass the confidence to use them was a little affair called the Anzio Landings. You may have heard of it. It started in January 1944 and fighting continued almost all year. It was the backbone of the Italian Campaign.

Where the Red Tails actually earned their fame was when they were given P-51 Mustangs and allowed to fly bomber escort missions. They excelled at this role and brought home more bombers than any other escort group.

It was during the raids of 1944-45 that the Red Tails escorted B-17 bombers of the 15th Air Force based in Foggia, Italy. My father was a flight engineer on one of those planes.

The integration of the American Armed forces is a much longer story but the Tuskegee Airmen were the pioneers that proved that blacks could excel even in highly technical realm of flying. There would be more tests to come in places like Korea and Vietnam and even into modern times as we settle the question that men should have a right to fight for their country regardless of their color or sexual orientation. The one and only one factor isn't race or sexuality but heart.