Wendell O. Pruitt
*Wendell O. Pruitt was born on this date in 1920. He was a Black military pilot.
Wendell Oliver Pruitt grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, as the youngest of ten children to Elijah and Melanie Pruitt. He attended Sumner High School and Lincoln University, becoming an Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity member. Already a licensed pilot, Pruitt enlisted in the Army Air Corps Cadet Flying Program as a Tuskegee Airman, eventually graduating and being commissioned as a second lieutenant on December 11, 1942.
After flight school, Pruitt was assigned to the 332nd Fighter Group, then stationed in Michigan. The 332nd was transferred to the Mediterranean theater in late 1943, where Pruitt flew the P-47 Thunderbolt. In June 1944, Pruitt and his occasional wingman, 1st Lt. Gwynne Walker Peirson, landed direct hits on an enemy destroyer that sank at Trieste harbor in northern Italy. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for this action. Thereafter, the 332nd flew the P-51 Mustang as their primary fighter aircraft. He teamed with Lee Archer to form the famed "Gruesome Twosome," the most successful pair of Tuskegee pilots in terms of air victories.
Pruitt flew seventy combat missions, was credited with thirty enemy kills, and reached the rank of captain. Pruitt was one of the Tuskegee Airmen pilots with at least thirty confirmed kills during World War II. Wendell Pruitt was killed, along with a student pilot, during a training exercise in Tuskegee, Alabama, on April 15, 1945. After his death, his name and William L. Igoe were given to the Pruitt–Igoe public housing complex in St. Louis.
