Marines’ First Black Pilot Looks Back on Love Affair With Flying

WASHINGTON —  In 1944, at the height of World War II, 12-year-old Frank E. Petersen Jr. watched with wonder as the huge B-29 bombers lifted off from Forbes Field not far from his Topeka, Kan., home.

His love affair with aviation had begun, but the realities of the time suggested that it would be unrequited. “We as blacks were always able to glimpse but not really allowed to get our hands on,” Petersen said.

Few of even the most liberal-minded residents of his community then would have dreamed that Petersen would become the Marine Corps’ first black pilot, in 1952, and finally the Defense Department’s senior-ranking aviator. He has held the honorary designations of “Silver Hawk” in the Marines and “Gray Eagle” in the Navy, sort of military equivalents of being labeled a dean.

Retiring This Month

In July, Lt. Gen. Petersen, at 56 the corps’ only black active-duty general, relinquished command of the 7,010 military personnel and 5,930 civilians at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va. This month he will retire, bringing an end to a 38-year military career.

He has gained more than the usual visibility at Quantico because he was the convening authority for two of the most publicized trials in recent Marine Corps history, including the racially charged Lindsey Scott case and Clayton J. Lonetree’s espionage trial, which he described as “very emotional and very difficult.”

In a recent interview on the base about 45 minutes south of Washington, Petersen chronicled the life of a man who seems to accept, though reluctantly, his role as a pioneer.

Being described as the first or only black to accomplish a goal “carries with it a stigma,” he said. “It means that race is still important in America. It hurts me as an American that in the year 1988 black is still important.”

The square-jawed, 6-foot-1 Petersen said he left home to get away from a “prejudiced, segregated environment” in which he saw few opportunities. In June, 1950, he joined the Navy as a seaman apprentice, serving as an electronics technician, but at the time he was not considering flying as a military career.

“Quite frankly, I didn’t even know blacks were allowed into the (naval aviation cadet) program,” Petersen said.

After he learned of his eligibility, he said, he was somewhat afraid of accepting the challenge. However, “when someone says that you can’t do or shouldn’t do something, I go ahead and try it to see why the person didn’t want me to do it,” he said.

Petersen credits his success in large part to his background. His mother, Edith, graduated from Kansas University, and his father ran a successful electronics business. Frank Petersen Sr., who came from St. Croix, Virgin Islands, taught his four children to “contest life” at every opportunity and never to sell themselves short, Petersen said.

Based on his accounts, Petersen would require all the wisdom his family had sought to instill. Although he enlisted two years after President Harry S. Truman banned racial bias in the armed services, Petersen’s flight and officer training took place in Pensacola, Fla., at a time when racial restrictions and hostility were a way of life.

Petersen described going to bars and restaurants with his fellow cadets and being ordered outside or told that he would not be served. “I knew that I couldn’t win if I were to tackle that, as opposed to getting my wings,” he said.

In 1952, he and a fellow black cadet decided to take a bus from Pensacola to nearby Mobile, Ala. Although segregation was not legal for interstate travel, the bus driver told the black passengers to sit in the back. Petersen confronted the driver, who stopped the bus and called the police.

“A crowd began to gather, and I looked around and there was a young black kid of about 12 leaning on a baseball bat with the biggest grin on his face I’d ever seen,” Petersen said.

‘You’ll Make It’

The Navy Shore Patrol arrived and put Petersen and his fellow cadet in a police wagon. After driving two or three blocks, the wagon stopped. One of the patrolmen unlocked the door and called Petersen “Frank.”

“That shocked me that he knew my name,” Petersen said.

“ ‘I know who you are. I know you’re about ready to finish up . . . ‘ the patrolman said. ‘Keep your cool, you’ll make it.’ He let us out and he walked away. That was a white officer.”

Petersen said one of his instructors reported that he had performed inadequately during a solo flight, but others intervened and he won his wings.

“Even though you had guys trying to do a job on you, you still had people who were there to make sure the system worked,” Petersen said.

Petersen went on to fly more than 350 combat missions in Korea and Vietnam, where he flew the F-4 Phantom fighter. He received several medals, including the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

When he returned from Vietnam in the early 1970s, he found a country still grappling with civil rights, an issue made more complex by the war in Southeast Asia, which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had publicly denounced in 1965.

“I had wanted him (King) to be above criticism,” Petersen said. “I wondered if Martin were betraying me. I was confused.” But Petersen said he put the confusion out of his mind because he had no choice. “We didn’t ask to fight; we had to fight.”

The high number of casualties among black soldiers in Vietnam had become a heated issue in public circles and on U.S. bases. After Petersen returned to the states, a group of black Marines went to Petersen and asked him to help plan the assassination of a high-ranking white officer. He recalled that the men said their future did not matter because they “were going to die anyway” in Vietnam.

Petersen said he told the men that they had to decide which one would pull the trigger. No one volunteered. Petersen said he reported the plot, which effectively ended it.

Aide for Race Relations

Petersen was subsequently assigned to work as an adviser and special assistant on race relations to the Marine Corps commandant. “Part of the problem was that nobody wanted to talk about the problem” of racism, he said. “It was easier to whisper about (it) than to talk about out loud.”

Although there has been resistance to changing years of discriminatory habits, Petersen said he thinks that “the military, in terms of racial harmony, is now ahead of civilian society.” There are 195,719 Marines, 36,882 of whom are black, the corps says. Of 20,163 officers, 960 are black.

Those numbers did not protect Petersen from racial controversy, however, when he found himself in command at Quantico in 1986.

Scott, a black Marine, had been convicted by a military court in 1983 of charges that he raped a white woman; civil rights activists insisted that the prosecution was racially motivated. The nation’s highest military court overturned the conviction on the basis that Scott had received an inadequate defense. It left to the convening authority--in this case Petersen--the decision on whether to retry Scott.

Ordered New Trial

Petersen, caught between Scott’s supporters and a military justice system that thought it had a good case, ordered a new trial. The decision was difficult, Petersen said, because he believed that he had a “debt to society and to the individual.” Scott was acquitted.

Petersen said his decision to leave active duty and pursue a corporate job in the aviation field, preferably in the San Francisco area, has nothing to do with Scott or anyone else. It is just that, because of medical problems, he can no longer can do what he loved best about the corps: fly.

Has his career meant anything to blacks? “As much as I would like to philosophize and say that it hasn’t, it has made a difference,” he said. He told of a young black corporal who screeched his vehicle to a halt and ran up to Petersen, saying: “I just want to shake your hand.”

“I said: ‘Thank you,’ ” Petersen said. Then, in a command voice that would bring even a civilian to attention, he added: “Marine.”