Leahr and the interviewer talk about fishing.Leahr grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was a chauffeur and his mother stayed home to take care of their ten children. They were a poor family who did their best to get by.Leahr's great grandfather was a Civil War veteran who bought some land on the outskirts of Cincinnati at the end of the Civil War where a small black community was built up. The community was called Avondale.The community was in a Jewish neighborhood and many of the black community worked as domestics in the Jewish households. Leahr attended an integrated school. He attended classes with the Jewish children who lived in the same area.After finishing high school he attended classes at UC [Annotator's Note: University of Cincinnati].At Tuskegee, Alabama the pilots were able to check planes out on the weekends when they had time.Leahr graduated high school in 1938 and went into the service. He entered the service in 1939 or 1940. He was commissioned in 1943.Leahr always wanted to fly. He went to see Lindbergh [Annotator's Note: Charles Lindbergh] when he was supposed to visit Cincinnati.When he learned that an aviation base was going to be opened to train black pilots he tried to volunteer but he had trouble getting into the program due to a bad leg. His leg had been damaged in an accident. He had been classified 4-F and he had to go to Wright Patterson Air Force Base to protest and was allowed into the training school in Tuskegee, Alabama.Leahr had made up his mind that there were certain things he was going to do in life and flying was on that list.His draft board classified him as 4-F which is unfit for military service. He lied to his draft board and told them that he was a member of his high school track team.Leahr flew over 100 combat missions with his bad leg. He did have some trouble with it but he never told anyone. He did what he had to do and was eventually made a flight instructor.After the war Leahr was a flight instructor on B-25s. He had flown fighters during the war then trained on multi engined aircraft hoping to work for an airline after he left the service.

The training at Tuskegee was rigorous. There was a lot of hazing. Leahr believes that they were trained as good as anyone in the Air Force.Everybody in the program was gung-ho and wanted to see it succeed. The program was called the Tuskegee Experiment and was set up to see if black men could fly.Leahr had the disadvantage of having a bad leg and had to work a little harder.He experienced a number of incidents while at Tuskegee.When returning from a party in Birmingham he and his friends were pulled over by a local policeman. They were pulled over on a rural road in Alabama for no other reason than the color of their skin. When Leahr protested the police officer put his pistol to Leahrs head and threatened to blow his brains out using a number of racial slurs in the process. Leahr quieted down and states that he learned to keep his mouth shut after that.Leahr experienced a lot of racism in the military. At the time, the service was segregated and there was no integration between the races. There were black officers clubs and white officers clubs. When they went overseas they were assigned to a black base where they went after missions, and the white pilots went to the white bases.This segregation bothered Leahr but it was something he had to live with. By the time he had gotten overseas he was somewhat used to it.The training at Tuskegee Institute was originally for fighter pilots. Later on the Tuskegee Institute began training bomber pilots. Leahr wanted to make a career of flying with an airline so he returned to Tuskegee to learn to fly bombers then stayed on as an instructor but no airline was hiring black pilots at the time.The first plane Leahr flew was the PT-17. He was elated to be flying. The plane Leahr soloed in had been in a crash and the lower wing was painted a different color that the other wings. After soloing it was customary to buzz the field. When Leahr buzzed the field everyone saw the plane with the different colored wing and knew that it was him. He got chewed out for that but overall his experience at Tuskegee was good.

Leahr was shipped overseas in early 1944. He had graduated in Class 43-G [Annotator's Note: Class 43-G graduated in July 1943] then shipped over in April 1944. When they shipped over they were flying coastal patrols in P-39s. There was a group of Tuskegee pilots who had been there first and flew in North Africa. When Leahr arrived they moved into Italy and started flying long range escort missions in P-47s which they flew until they got the P-51 Mustangs.The P-47 was a big heavy airplane that was hard to fly but it could take a beating. It was like flying a truck. When they flew in formation around the bombers Leahrs bad leg would be trembling from pushing on the rudder pedals.Leahr was about nine when he hurt his leg. The doctor told him that he was going to lose the leg. He was in a wagon that his father had built. He had some 5 cent milk bottles he was taking to get cashed in and was hit by a car. The car broke some of the bottles which cut Leahr's leg. The doctors planned to cut the leg off at the knee.He was determined not to lose his leg and he did everything he could to keep it. He is now over 90 years old and still has it.Leahr got into quite a few scrapes and dog fights with enemy fighters. They would attack the German fighters if they tried to attack the bombers because that was their job.Their commanding officer was Benjamin O. Davis.Their job was to protect the bombers, not to go out and try to become aces and they did a good job.Leahr flew missions with then Colonel Davis. Davis was a strict man. He told his pilots that if any of them left to fight German planes and left the bombers he would kick them out. Leahr saw a number of men kicked out for not following the rules.Leahr mentions hearing that his fighter group never lost a bomber to enemy fighters. He does not know if that is true but he does not recall ever seeing any go down.Leahr was in the 301st Fighter Squadron. The 332nd Fighter Group was the only fighter group that had four squadrons. Most fighter groups had three.When they had to fly a mission they would be woken up at 3:00 or 4:00 o'clock in the morning and would go to breakfast. Then they went to the briefing. While in the briefing they could hear the bombers taking off and flying around. At the briefing they would learn where they would be going on that mission. Around 9:00 o'clock they would take off and rendezvous with the bombers somewhere near the target. They knew where all of the enemy airfields were and where the bombers were most likely to be attacked and about how long it would take the enemy fighters to get to them. That was their function all during the war.

An average escort mission would last for 5 to 6 hours but some lasted 7 hours or more. That was a long time to be in a fighter.On missions the fighters flew in a relay where different fighter groups would swap off the bombers at certain spots.Sometimes the 8th Air Force would fly missions down to Italy and would stay the night in the area where Leahr was based and would fly back the next day.Leahr's group used the P-39 to fly harbor patrols around Naples, Italy. When the 15th Air Force was established in Italy they replaced the P-39s with P-47s and Leahr's group began flying long range escort missions.Leahr's group received the P-51 in late 1944. It was a dream to fly after flying P-40s and P-47s. On his first flight in a P-51 he went into a dive and blacked out because he had to pull up so hard.The P-51 was so much faster that the P-47. The P-51 just seemed to cut through the air and was a whole new experience to fly.Leahr named his plane after his fiance and his mother. The planes name was Vina-Rose.Leahr never got any kills but did have some close calls and was in several fights. His plane was damaged a few times but never bad enough to force him to land.Leahr was friends with Lee Archer. They had been in the same class together. Some people claim that Lee Archer was an ace and others claim that he only had 4 confirmed kills. Leahr thinks that Archer got his last kill in New York.Leahr was also classmates with Colonel Charles Mcgee. At some point the class was broken up and Mcgee and some other cadets were moved up a class.Leahr was based out of Ramitelli, Italy. The conditions were kind of rough. They lived in tents. Leahr got leave and went to Rome. They got breaks once a month or so. There was also a rest camp the men could go to or they could travel around.

Leahr got quite a bit of mail from home. Mail was important to him. He had three brothers in the service. One brother was in the navy. One of them had some illnesses and did not stay in the service long. Another brother was in a cavalry unit. Leahr ran into him in Italy. When he learned where his brother was he made arrangements to meet with him and they were able to spend a few days together.Leahr's most memorable mission was when he got into a dog fight and his gun heater switch was not hooked up so his guns would not fire. He got into a dog fight and lined up on an enemy plane and pulled the trigger but his guns did not fire. He fell in with another flight. When he got back to base he discovered that the gun heater switch had been disconnected. When he landed his guns were covered with ice. This mission took place in the summer and his guns were still iced up.Flying long missions was not comfortable. Some of their missions were 6 or 7 hours. Leahr believes that he had finished his tour of duty and was back in the US when the war ended.Leahr left the service and their were no opportunities. He did not want to stay in the service. He wanted to be an airline pilot but none of the airlines would hire a black pilot even though he had hundreds of hours as an instructor on multi engine aircraft.Leahr went to work for General Electric working on development of jet engines and components.Leahr thinks it was important for the US to fight in World War II. He does not know what the world would be like if we had not. He was not happy about the way it was fought. The US was fighting against the Nazis yet there was still segregation back home. He always felt like a second class citizen. Looking back now he thinks it was worth it. The country has made a lot of progress since then.

Leahr believes that young people should be taught about what men like him went through. The racism and segregation he experienced was part of the country's history and everyone should know what it was like and know that they were able to overcome it. Having a black President of the United States shows that progress has been made and that attitudes are changing. If given the chance to go back and do it all again he would. His experience was a profitable one. Understanding America and the role African Americans played in fighting the war is important. Seeing that America can elect a black president it shows that progress has been made and America should be proud of it.Leahr ran into a man named Herb at an event in Cincinnati. They started talking about North Avondale School and Herb asked Leahr if he had gone to school there. Leahr replied that he had and asked if Herb had been in a certain teacher's class. Herb said yes. Herb went home and looked at his school pictures and saw that they had been in the same third grade class. During the war Herb flew bombers and on occasion Leahr flew escort for Herb's group. It is an amazing story.Fifty plus years later they toured the country doing talks at schools about their experiences.

The first plane Leahr flew was the PT-17 biplane. The plane he soloed in had been wrecked and the lower wing on it was painted a different color that the other wing sections. After soloing Leahr buzzed the airfield. Everyone on the ground saw the different colored wing and knew who it was. He got chewed out for what he did but that didn't bother him.

The interviewer asks Leahr to describe a typical bomber escort mission. Leahr states that they would be woken up at 3:00 or 4:00 o'clock in the morning. They would have breakfast then go to their briefing. At the briefing they would be told where they were to meet that bombers. They knew where all of the enemy airfields were and about when they would get to the bomber formations. Their job was to get to those points to defend the bombers. That was their job throughout the war.