Dozens of Black pilots disappeared during WWII. Who are the men still lost?

Summary

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Up First from NPR

Episode: Dozens of Black pilots disappeared during WWII. Who are the men still lost?

Date: April 12, 2026

Host: Ayesha Rascoe
Guest: Cheryl W. Thompson (NPR Investigative Correspondent, Author of Forgotten: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen)

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Episode Overview

This episode of "The Sunday Story" on NPR’s Up First takes a deep, personal look at a largely overlooked chapter in American history: the disappearance of 27 Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Investigative correspondent Cheryl W. Thompson discusses her new book, Forgotten: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen, exploring who these men were, what happened to them, and the lasting impact on their families—many of whom never received closure or acknowledgment from the U.S. government.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Legacy and Recognition of the Tuskegee Airmen

• The Tuskegee Airmen are widely celebrated as pioneering Black aviators in WWII, having helped win the war and shift American attitudes toward race and service.
• Presidential recognition: In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee Airmen.
  • “The Tuskegee Airmen helped win a war, and you helped change our nation for the better. Yours is the story of the human spirit...” — Cheryl W. Thompson reading President Bush’s statement (00:36)

2. The Forgotten Missing Airmen

• Despite honors, not all Tuskegee Airmen made it home. Twenty-seven went missing in action overseas.
• Their families felt abandoned by the government, never receiving information, support, or closure.
  • “To have crickets, you know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them.” — Cheryl W. Thompson (01:22)

3. Cheryl W. Thompson’s Personal Connection

• Cheryl's father was a Tuskegee Airman in flying school (though he never became a pilot because of difficulties landing—a detail she connects to her own cautious driving habits). (03:55)
• Her interest in the missing airmen arose from hearing stories as a child and her journalist’s curiosity, culminating in years of research and interviews that led to her book.

4. Humanizing the Lost: Who Were the Missing Men?

• Many were very young (fresh out of college; youngest 20, oldest 28) and from modest backgrounds all over the U.S.
• They were “starry-eyed men who just wanted to serve this country and do something good.” (06:36)
• The book uses letters and family stories to show their hopes, ambitions, and lives before war.
• A touching excerpt from a love letter by John Henry Chavis to his mother about his fiancée, Cookie:
  • “I’m still a very lucky guy... When are you gonna congratulate me? I’m sure you’re happy over my having such a perfect girlfriend. Who writes like that now, right?” — Cheryl W. Thompson, reading Chavis’s letter (08:08)

5. Loss, Grief, and Unanswered Questions

• The tragedy behind youthful hope is underscored by military bureaucracy, lack of follow-up, and ambiguous circumstances about deaths or disappearances.
• Families often got only a telegram, then official death notice a year later—rarely with any further details or recovery of remains.
• Fellow pilots sometimes organized search efforts, but postwar attempts by the government were minimal or delayed by years.
  • “If somebody went missing, you had to file a report... if they went down in enemy territory, the government’d say it was too dangerous... but then after the war... I’m not sure what they hoped to find after all that time.” — Cheryl W. Thompson (10:12)

6. The Weight of Segregation and Government Neglect

• Thompson and Rascoe discuss the likely role that racism played in the lack of urgency and care—these were Black men serving in a segregated military, and their families were left unheard.
  • “I absolutely think that plays a role for sure... The stories [the pilots] told me about how they were treated was just unimaginable. They did not want you there, period.” — Cheryl W. Thompson (11:20)

7. Lasting Impact on Families

• Many families never moved on, still hoping for news, decades later.
• Traumatic for both parents and children: Some lost sons; children grew up without fathers, forever shaped by the absence.
  • “She says, you know, I’m still waiting. I’m hoping that one day, you know, somebody will knock on my door and say, we found your dad.” — Cheryl W. Thompson, quoting a surviving daughter (14:41)

8. Lack of Government Action

• Of the 27 missing, only two families have been contacted in recent years about recovered remains.
  • “The government has just totally ignored them.” — Cheryl W. Thompson (15:05)
• Despite high-profile ceremonies and White House proclamations, the story of the missing has been glossed over.
• Families long for simple acknowledgment.
  • “To have crickets, you know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them…” (16:32)

9. What the Public Should Know

• These men were much more than war heroes; they were sons, fathers, husbands, friends—each with a rich, individual life, erased by both war and society’s neglect.
• The book seeks to ensure they are remembered as whole people, not just symbols.
  • “They had people who loved them, who cared about them, who never, ever forgot them. And now... they have no closure.” — Cheryl W. Thompson (17:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I always think, gosh, I should have paid closer attention when I was a kid to the stories...” — Cheryl W. Thompson (04:39)
• “Who writes like that now, right?” — CWT, after reading Chavis’s letter (08:16)
• “They never got over it. Right. They never got over. Some of them still have siblings, and they’re in their 90s now...” — CWT on families’ lasting grief (13:45)
• “That’s a good question. That’s a question you should pose to the government and ask them, like, what are you guys doing? Why hasn’t this come up?” — CWT (15:39)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – 01:28: Introduction, overview of Tuskegee Airmen, forgotten missing
• 03:35 – 04:45: Cheryl’s personal connection and start of project
• 06:09 – 07:50: Humanizing the missing men, their youth and lives before war
• 08:08 – 08:32: Reading and discussing Chavis’s letter
• 10:12 – 12:02: Bureaucracy, lack of urgency, effect of segregation
• 13:16 – 14:56: Impact on families, enduring grief
• 15:05 – 16:32: Government neglect and family longing
• 17:22 – 18:30: Hopes for public understanding and historical memory

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Conclusion

This episode of "The Sunday Story" offers a deeply personal, heartbreaking, and essential examination of the loss of the Tuskegee Airmen who never returned from WWII—and the families who still wait for answers. Cheryl W. Thompson’s research and storytelling transform these lost aviators from statistics into vibrant, beloved individuals and challenge listeners to remember both their sacrifice and America’s failures to honor them fully.

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Transcript

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Aisha.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

I'm Ayesha Rascoe, and you're listening to THE Sunday STORY from Up first, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. Today, the Tuskegee Airmen are celebrated as American heroes, black men who fought in World War II for a country that was still brutally segregated. Eventually, these men who shattered the color line as combat pilots would be awarded some of the nation's Highest honors. In 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

The Tuskegee Airmen helped win a war, and you helped change our nation for the better. Yours is the story of the human

[Ayesha Rascoe]

spirit, and it ends like all great

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

stories do, with wisdom and lessons and hope for tomorrow.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

But some never got to see those tributes because they never made it home and their families felt they were forgotten by the US Government.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

The families I got to know, I think would be happy with someone knocking on their door, picking up the phone, saying, you know what? We haven't forgotten about your dad. We haven't forgotten about your brother. We haven't forgotten about your uncle something. But to have crickets, you know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl W. Thompson is the author of a book that published earlier this year. It's called Forgotten the Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen. It tells the stories of 27 black airmen who went missing during flights overseas, leaving their families forever changed and still looking for answers. When we come back, I sit down with Cheryl to talk about her personal connection to the airmen and what she learned over years of research about who these men were. We'll be right back.

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[Ayesha Rascoe]

we're back with the Sunday Story. I'm here with Cheryl W. Thompson. Cheryl, welcome to the show and thank you for being here.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Hi, Aisha. Thanks for having me.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

I know that you have a personal connection to the Tuskegee Airmen. Tell me about that. And is that why you decided to write the book?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

So, yeah, my dad was a Tuskegee Airmen. You know, there were actually Tuskegee Airmen were more than pilots. There were like 14,000 of them who did all kinds of things. But he was actually in the flying school. And I write about how he didn't quite make it to the plane. Cause he had a little trouble landing. Okay. And when you're in the middle of a war, you gotta be able to land. You gotta be able to land. But it also explains a lot about why I drive the way I do. Because he taught me to drive.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Okay. Okay. So. But is that why? Because you have this personal connection? I mean, he was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, even though he wasn't a pilot. Is that why you wanted to do this book? Is this how you got interested in it?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

So actually, how I got interested in it. Cause he used to tell the stories he used to talk about. And the guys used to come to the house, you know, when I was a kid growing up. And I always think, gosh, I should have paid closer attention when I was a kid to the stories that he told the men who would come to the house. And he was in the cadet class with some really well known pilots, General McGee and the guy who is actually on the COVID of the book, William F. Williams. They were all in the same cadet class. But I digress. So how this came about was when, before I came to NPR, I spent 22 years at the Washington Post. And one day I was talking with a colleague who had done this amazing story on the remains of someone they thought was an airman, a Tuskegee airman they found over in Austria. And I said to him, I said, do you think there were others? And he says, oh, yeah, there were others. And so he knew about my dad, or I'm sure I had talked about it at NAJM at some point during my time there. And I said to him, I said, this is Your book. And he said, no, Cheryl, this is your book. And so a couple years passed. I thought about it and thought about it, and you know, as a reporter, I can write a news story, I can write a feature story. Writing a book is a whole nother. That's a whole nother level. And so it took me a few years to sort of get up the, the, the courage to go, okay, can I do this? Can I really pull this off? And then I decided, okay, let me see what I can do and pitch it and see if somebody will buy into it.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Well, well, I mean, we're so glad that you did take this on. And, you know, I mean, we'll get into, obviously, because you're talking about people who went missing in action, so there's loss. And we'll get into that. But first I want to talk to you about how this book, it really shines a light on the lives of these men. Was there anything that surprised you about their personal lives when you started doing this research?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

I think the one thing that surprised me most was really how young they were. But in their letters and in their conversations with relatives, they seemed so much older because they had to grow up so quickly. But most of them were fresh out of college. The oldest one was 28. The youngest one, I believe was 20. And it just, they were just starting out and they had their whole lives to look forward to. That was one of the things that surprised me. The other was just the kind of lives they led before they went off to war. I don't think any of them were wealthy. They didn't come from wealthy backgrounds. They came from all over the country, you know, from the south, from your home state, North Carolina. And you know, my dad was born in Dallas but raised in Chicago. So they just, you know, they were just these typical sort of starry eyed men who just wanted to serve this country and do something good. And there was this chance to do this. And, you know, a lot had been written about the airmen. Lots of things had been written about him, but nobody had ever really delved into their lives. And that's the angle I chose to take because it was so fascinating to me. It's like, who are these men who disappeared? Who are they?

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Yeah. And I mean, I found it so powerful to hear from some of these pilots in their own words through their letters to their loved ones. And could you read a letter from John Henry Chavis? He was writing to his mother about his soon to be bride, who he called Cookie.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Okay. I'm still a very lucky Guy, look at the nice letter I got from her mother. The next time you talk to Cookie, be sure to welcome her to the Chavis family. But by the way, when are you gonna congratulate me? I'm sure you're happy over my having such a perfect girlfriend. Who writes like that now, right?

[Ayesha Rascoe]

No, and that's the other thing is reading those letters, I was like, what have we lost in the fact that people don't send, they don't communicate like that anymore. But from this, like, he's so like, you know, starry eyed and like, you know, and just like got the perfect girlfriend, which, you know, everybody feels like at that, you know, at that first age, like, how did you feel going through these personal effects? And like, how did you get this letter?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

So I got this letter from Chavis nephew and niece. You know, I got lucky. You know, journalism is a lot about luck. But writing this book was a lot about luck too. Because so many of these relatives actually kept or were handed letters were handed down from other relatives to them and they just, they kept to their credit. They kept them. And I got, you know, other letters were just as sort of endearing.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Yes, yes, endearing.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Very heartwarming. Very heartwarming. Very endearing. Very real, very from the heart kind of letters. Yeah, yeah.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

And you know, reading that letter from Chavis filled with all of this hope and joy. The other part of the book is that it makes it really sad when you learn of the tragedy of his disappearance. On a mission in February 1945, the military blamed engine trouble for Chavis plane going down. But as the book shows, like, there is often like just a lack of clarity about what happened when these pilots went missing. Was that just a feature or like just the nature of war at that time? Were these type of crashes common?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Well, you know, there was a lot going on. Cause there was a war going on. But I think that the black pilots were ignored more than others. Right. You know, when war was over or even during the war when some of these men disappeared, some of the guys they were with over in Italy, which is where they were, that's where they were based, they went looking for them. Their fellow pilots went circling for them or looking for them. And the government certainly was aware that they disappeared because they always had to file. If somebody went missing, you had to file a report. But oftentimes, you know, if they went down in enemy territory, the government say, well, it was, you know, it was too dangerous for us to go and search for them. Okay, fine. But then there's after the war. And, you know, sometimes it took two, three, four, five years. I'm not sure what they hoped to find after all that time. After all that time. And sometimes they didn't search at all.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Yeah. I mean. And so do you attribute that lack of urgency to the fact that this was a segregated military at that time and that these were black men and that they were not valued as much at that moment?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Oh, I absolutely think that plays a role for sure. I mean, talking to, you know, not only learning about the 27, but also the Tuskegee Airmen pilots who flew over in the 332nd Fighter Group who were still living when I started this book four years ago now, going on five, having conversations with them and meeting with them. The stories they told me about how they were treated was just unimaginable, that they did not want you there, period. They didn't want them flying the planes. They didn't want them there. You don't forget things like that, and you don't forget when people treat you badly.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

When we come back, Cheryl W. Thompson will tell us about her conversations with the family members of missing Airmen. Stay with us.

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[Ayesha Rascoe]

We're back with the Sunday story. I've been talking with my NPR colleague Cheryl W. Thompson about her new book, forgotten the Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen. Talk to me about the impact on the families because it sounds like, you know, they would get the telegram that their loved ones were MIA and a year later they would be declared dead. And how did the families move forward and how did they deal with just the not knowing?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

I don't think, and I think I'm safe in saying this for the families I met with and talked to repeatedly, they never got over it. Right. They never got over. Some of them still have siblings, and they're in their 90s now. And so it destroyed their parents, not only moms, but dads as well, who just, you know, there was one father who just want his son that was.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Yeah.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

To be in the. And to go off to war.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

He didn't want him to go.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

He didn't want him to go because he knew he didn't want to lose him. He didn't want to lose him, and he lost him. And for the children. Right. Because some of them had children. The oldest one I found at the time her dad disappeared was 3, and she's now 84. And she has said to me, and I talked to her just the other day because I keep in touch with these families because it's sort of like, you know, when you spend time with these people over years, you just have a relationship, you develop some kind of relationship with them. And she says, you know, I'm still waiting. I'm hoping that one day, you know, somebody will knock on my door and say, we found your dad.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Well, is the government looking like, did you find any evidence of that? Are they looking. Are these families getting any type of support?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

So none of the families, with the exception of two that they found in the last, you know, eight years, know, the families told me they have never heard from the government. The government has just totally ignored them.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Why do you think this hasn't been talked about more? I mean, I feel like we hear. Not saying that we could ever hear enough about the Tuskegee Airmen, but we. We hear about the honors. We, you know, they, you know, in the State of the Union, they're getting the honor at the White House. But why haven't we talked more about those that were lost and their remains were not found? Why have we not talked about that?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

That's a good question. That's a question you should pose to the government and ask them, like, what are you guys doing? Why hasn't this come up? Because, I mean, they were honored, you know, back in. I want to say it was 2007 by the Bush, George W. Bush White House when they got the Congressional Medal of Honor. Actually, it was on my birthday. And so those who were still around, of course, went to the White House and they were very touched it and honored by it. And then President Obama, in the homes I visited with families, there was some kind of proclamation from President Obama on the walls of these homes, right?

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Yes.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Yes, there were and then, you know, that's a question. That's a really good question. Why?

[Ayesha Rascoe]

What do the families that you talk to, what do they want from the government? Do they want they obviously they want their loved ones found, but do they want even just an acknowledgement?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

The families I got to know, I think would be happy with someone knocking on their door, picking up the phone, saying, you know what? We haven't forgotten about your dad. We haven't forgotten about your brother. We haven't forgotten about your uncle something. But to have crickets, you know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them is to just because in their mind it says nobody cares.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Well, what do you think? What do you want the public to learn from this book because you've now, you know, set this record and borne witness to the lives of these men and put it in black and white so we can all see the honor that they served with and lost their lives. Like, what do you want the public to take from this?

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

You know, I want I would love it if people really, like, realized how amazing these men were, not just as soldiers, not just as patriots, but they had lives before this war. They were like uni, right? They were, you know, they were most of them were college educated or had been to college, and they were just starting out. And they had girlfriends, right, like John Chavis. And they had wives and they had children and they had families who loved them. And I don't want people to forget that, you know, because we know that the Tuskegee Airmen existed, right? We know that. But what do we really know about who these men were? They had people who loved them, who cared about them, who never, ever forgot them. And now, you know, they have no closure. And most all, you know, of course, all the parents are gone. They never got closure. They never had a body to bury. You know, it was just they were left hate the government. You know, at some point kind of left them hanging by not keeping in touch with them.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

Cheryl, thank you so much.

[Cheryl W. Thompson]

Thank you, Aisha, for having me.

[Ayesha Rascoe]

That was NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl W. Thompson. You can find more of her [e-mail] her new book is Forgotten the Search for the Lost Tuskegee Air. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Rennie Swernowski and edited by Justine Yan. The engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Special thanks to Ryan bank and Ed McNulty, who produced and edited the original interview. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo, Jenny Schmidt, and our senior supervising producer, Liana Simstrom. Our executive producer producer is Irene Noguchi. I'm Aisha Rascoe up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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