Trained Hundreds Of Pilots That Flew For The Storied Unit

One of the last remaining instructors for the Tuskegee Airmen passed away at Piedmont Henry Hospital near Atlanta, GA passed away last week at the age of 96.

Milton Pitts Crenchaw was one of the original flight instructors for the program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to train black pilots in a segregated unit.

The Associated Press reports that, according to Crenchaw's  biography by the Butler Center of Arkansas Studies, he trained hundreds of pilots at the Tuskegee Institute in eastern Alabama in the 1940s. He "became a primary civilian flight instructor and eventually one of the two original supervising squadron commanders under Chief Pilot Charles A. Anderson. He and Charles Foxx were the first instructors for the first group of student pilot trainees between 1941 and 1946."

He later was instrumental in establishing an aviation program at Philander Smith College in his native Little Rock, AR.

Crenchaw's daughter Delores Singleton told the AP that he had been suffering from cardiovascular disease and pneumonia.

(U.S. Army photo)

FMI: http://tuskegeeairmen.org/