Five down and glory.

Obit watch: Lt. Colonel Lee A. Archer (USAF, ret.).

Lt. Colonel Archer was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, and is believed to be the only black ace.

Archer was acknowledged to have shot down four planes, and he and another pilot both claimed victory for shooting down a fifth plane. An investigation revealed Archer had inflicted the damage that destroyed the plane, said Brown, and the Air Force eventually proclaimed him an ace pilot.

(Title hattip: here.)

Edited to add 2/4/2010: See here for notes on an important correction.

For those expecting more thoughts on Salinger: here’s the LAT obit. Beyond that, I have nothing to say; I’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye, for reasons other than censorship. My parents were very proud of the fact that they never censored my reading, and it was Huck Finn, not Salinger, that became the subject of censorship battles when I was in school. I basically just missed reading Catcher when I was the right age to be caught by it; any desire I might have had to read it now has been killed by listening to Lawrence talk about it. (I’m trying to talk him into posting his thoughts on Catcher, but he hasn’t. Yet. When he does, I’ll throw up a link.)

Edited to add: Lawrence’s thoughts on Salinger are now up.

One Response to “Five down and glory.”

  1. […] you may recall, this directly contradicts the WP obit, which states he was credited with five victories by the Air […]