The Tuskegee Airmen on DVD

PBS Video revisits history with this title, the true story of a squadron of African American airmen who distinguished themselves admirably in World War II.

The tone is “They fought two wars: one against the Nazis abroad and one against racism at home,” and this indicates the editorial bent of the piece. This isn’t surprising coming from PBS, and, to be fair, it’s probably true to a great extent. After all, it was a different United States back then, a place where black and white Americans couldn’t even share drinking fountains!

The Tuskegee project was originally an experiment to see if blacks had the intellectual and physical capabilities to become pilots. And that sounds like a pretty racist premise, looking back from more than sixty years on.

Still, if it were all about racism, why would they have even bothered trying? One would think that, if it were truly all about racism, the black population would have been merely written off without even letting them try. So there must have been at least some white Americans people involved who weren't racists.

Anyway, it’s a compelling story, told mostly through the eyes and memories of surviving Tuskegee Airmen as they gather back at their old airfield. We get to meet several of these outstanding airmen and to listen to them you’d wonder why anyone could have ever thought they (and the rest of their "epidermal brethren") were of substandard intellect. They come across as smart, eloquent, strong and confident and perhaps it’s in good part because of men such as these that the barriers between the races eventually and rightly fell.

The Airmen went on to excel as combat pilots, both as “straightforward” fighter pilots and as escorts to US bomber streams. They eventually got to fly the outstanding North American P-51 Mustang, the Lexus of WWII fighters (or, as the kid says in "Empire of the Sun;" "P-51! Cadillac of the sky!"), which undoubtedly gave them even more opportunity to distinguish themselves: give a skilled person the best tools and they perform even better.

The DVD production has chosen to focus mostly on the men, via their reminiscences and some reenactments, instead of on the missions and the flying. This is okay unless you were really, really hoping to see lots of vintage airplane footage (which, being aviation freaks, we were!). So don’t go into this disc looking for action, adventure, or technology. It’s the human story, of extraordinary men who, like so many others of their generation and of all races, rose to an extraordinary calling and through their actions helped make the world a safer place for decades to come.

The DVD is good, though sparse. It’s presented in anamorphic widescreen (which is one area of television in which PBS is doing very well), 16x9 TV compatible, and the picture quality overall is excellent. There’s some vintage footage and some reenactments that are meant to look like vintage footage and these sections obviously aren’t up to the standards of the new footage (which, alas, is the least interesting since it focuses mostly on head shots), but that’s okay.

Audio is Dolby Digital “surround stereo” and it’s fine. Forget about surround or stereo, though; this is a mostly mono-sounding track and there’s nothing wrong with that when you’re dealing with footage from the days of mono.

Alas, there are no extras.

The Tuskegee Airmen, from PBS Home Video
60 min. anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1, 16x9 TV compatible), Dolby Digital Surround Stereo
Narrated by Ossie Davis
Produced and directed by W. Drew Perkins and Bill Reifenberger

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