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Tuskegee Airman Dies At 87

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The Associated Press

Published: June 27, 2008

ATLANTA - Lt. Col. Charles "Chuck" Dryden, 87, one of the first of the pioneering black World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died Tuesday in Atlanta.

Dryden's 21-year military career included combat missions in Korea and assignments in Japan, Germany and the United States. He retired from the Air Force in 1962.

About 1,000 pilots trained as a segregated Army Air Forces unit at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama during World War II.
Dryden was selected for aviation cadet training at Tuskegee in August 1941, only a month after the program began and four months before the U.S. entered World War II.

He was one of three men commissioned in April 1942 as a second lieutenant. Just five pilots had earned their wings in the program ahead of Dryden's class of three.
Dryden was a member of the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron and later the 332nd Fighter Group, which served in North Africa and Italy.

His P-40 airplane was nicknamed "A-Train," and Dryden titled his autobiography "A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman."

The book was published by the University of Alabama Press in 1997.

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