Joseph D. Elsberry
*Joseph D. Elsberry was born on this date in 1921. He was a Black U.S. Army Air Force officer and fighter pilot.
Joseph Dubois Elsberry was born in Langston, Oklahoma. Elsberry was the youngest child and only son of Joseph Dean Elsberry, a teacher and civic leader, and Beulah Earle Meeks Elsberry, also a teacher. Before joining the military, Elsberry attended Langston University for three years and enlisted in the US Army in 1942.
Before 1942, African Americans were not permitted to become fighter pilots because of rampant racial discrimination in the US armed services. As the United States ramped up its involvement in World War II, the US military experienced a severe shortage of skilled, experienced pilots. Black newspapers and civil rights leaders, including the NAACP's Walter White, Judge William H. Hastie, and the Pullman Porter's union leader A. Philip Randolph pleaded with President Franklin Roosevelt to include Blacks in aeronautics and the United States Army Air Corps, the US Army Corps.
In response, the US military created an 'experimental' aviator training program for African Americans. The US Congress's April 3, 1939, Appropriations Bill, Public Law 18, paved the way by designating funds to train Black pilots at civilian flight schools. This program, initiated in June 1941, began in Alabama at the Tuskegee Army Airfield near Tuskegee Institute. As a member of the all-Black 332nd Fighter Group, Elsberry would be considered one of the greatest, fearless fighter pilots to have graduated as a Tuskegee Airman.
As a Captain, Elsberry led the 301st Fighter Squadron, which sank a German destroyer in Italy's Trieste Harbor employing exclusively 50-caliber machine guns. One of the famed "Red Tails," or "Schwartze Vogelmenschen" ("Black Birdmen") among enemy German pilots. Elsberry destroyed three enemy aircraft over France in a single mission on July 12, 1944, and a fourth aircraft on July 20, 1944, becoming the first Black fighter pilot in history to do so. He is only one of four Tuskegee Airmen to have earned three aerial victories in a single day of combat: Clarence Lester, Lee Archer (pilot), and Harry Stewart. Elsberry was one of three Tuskegee Airmen to have come close to achieving the US Military's designation of flying ace.
On September 10, 1944, Brigadier General Benjamin Davis Sr. awarded Elsberry the prestigious Distinguished Flying Cross. Elsberry received this award for single acts of heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flights on July 12, 1944, and July 20, 1944. Several prominent military leaders attended the ceremony, including Ira C. Eaker, Commanding General of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces; Nathan F. Twining, Commanding General of the 15th Air Force; and Dean C. Strother, Commanding General of the 306th Fighter Wing of the 15th Air Force.
After returning to Oklahoma, Elsberry relocated to San Francisco in 1962, working for Western Electric Company until his final retirement in 1977. On March 31, 1985, Elsberry had a heart attack and died in his San Francisco, California, apartment. He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 42, Grave 2804.
