"Red Tailed Angel" (signed by 4 Tuskegee Fighter Pilots)

Captain O. Pruitt, considered one of the 332nd’s best pilots, was credited with shooting down 2 Bf 109s, He-111, and destroying eleven on the ground. On June, 25 flying P-47s Captain Pruitt, and Lieutenant Gwynne Pierson, jointly sank a German destroyer using only the machine guns of their aircraft. This was the only such sinking in the entire war, and a most important victory for the Tuskegee Airmen. Pruitt won the Distinguished Flying Cross with seven clusters.

After serving a successful combat tour in Italy, he was sent back to the States and assigned as an instructor in Tuskegee, Alabama. After failing to be reassigned back to his old outfit for a second tour, it’s ironic this pilot ended his days in a training accident, his AT-6 failing to pull out of low altitude roll. It was April 26th, 1945, that both he and his student were killed......just days before World War 2 ended. A public housing project (Pruitt-Igoe) was named in his honor after his death.