Tuskegee colonel sez 'Tails' nails it - New York Daily News

Craig Warga/New York Daily News

Tuskegee Airman Col. Charles McGee says the new film "Red Tails," about the all-black squad charged wtih escorting World War II bombers, was spot on.

Tuskegee Airman Col. Charles McGee said the battle scenes in the new movie “Red Tails,” were spot on â€" right down to the shade of red paint used on the warplanes.

“I feel it was very well done,” McGee, 91, said Wednesday of the George Lucas film starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

“The combat scenes were just tremendous. So much of the story was told in such a short time. There’s a lot of history in there.”

Members of the Tuskegee Airmen â€" the all-black squad charged with escorting bombers during World War II â€" gave their seal of approval to the “Red Tails” movie, out Jan. 20, which chronicles their battles against Nazis in the air and segregation at home.

McGee, who was a technical consultant on the film, said the tails of the Airmen’s jets were painted fire-engine red so bomber pilots could tell the difference between the Airmen’s P-51 fighters and the Nazi’s Messerschmitt warplanes.

“Up there, in the altitude, the P-51s and a Messerschmitt looked about the same,” said McGee, of Bethesda, Md., who was in town for the film’s premiere Tuesday night. “So the 15th Air Force put out a directive that each of the fighter groups would be identified. One was yellow-tailed. One had checkerboard. One had candy stripes. We became the red tails.”

Nancy Leftenant-Colon, 91, of East Norwich, L.I., a nurse who was stationed with the Tuskegee Airmen in Columbus, Ohio, from 1946 to 1949, said the battle scenes in “Red Tails” made her realize what her brother, Lt. Samuel Leftenant, a Tuskegee pilot, went through when his plane went down on a mission to Berlin in 1956.

“It was a little sad for me when the fellow was killed,” she said. “I thought about my brother. I thought, ‘This is the way he went down.’ They did a fantastic job.”

McGee hopes the film inspires kids and teaches them the Airmen’s heroics and sacrifice.

“We hope what youngsters get out of the story, is that under some dire circumstances, we prevailed,” he said. “We performed successfully and we opened doors that they don’t have to fight to.”

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