Eugene Jacques Bullard
After watching Fly Boys again I thought I'd look on the web to see if there was a black pilot who flew in WWI. What I found was far more interesting than the character in the movie. Check out the link below.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/cadre/aspj/a...aletteeng.html
A really Interesting link Well done, Don
Ares, make his plane!!!
Interesting bit of history! Thank you for sharing!
Here, here!Originally Posted by greenalfonzo
What Kev said make his plane!
Now THAT is an amazing story...truly a hero.
Corporal Eugene Bullard painted a red bleeding heart pierced by a knife on the fuselage of his Spad. Below the heart was the inscription "Tout le Sang qui coule est rouge!" Roughly translated it says "All Blood Runs Red."
The picture, denotes the aviator Eugene Bullard, Lafayette Escadrille Flying Corps, posing by his Spad airplane along with his pet monkey Jimmie, who he flew with. He bought Jimmie in Paris, circa 1915. The photograph is courtesy of the Air Force Enlisted Heritage Hall, Maxwell Air Force Base-Gunter Annex, Alabama
Thank you so much.
What an inspiring story. It just shows that what ever your disadvantages are in life you can still make it if you have the moral fibre.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Excellent read. Thanks for the link.
Very intersting
Another great discovery Don. Thanks.
Excellent ,what a man he was .Thanks for the link.
Truly touching. Now, what Kev advised - ARES make his SPAD!!!
A very interesting read!
Truly an amazing life, and he witnessed so many things in a time of great change.
He was a victim of the Peekskill Riots in 1949: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekski...Eugene_Bullard
Eugene Bullard being beaten by police officers and rioters. [Source: Howard Fast]
http://www.historycommons.org/timeli...eekskill_riots
Sad period of American history as do all that involve the bad treatment of our fellow African Americans.
Or indeed any group on the basis of "well, they're [fill-in-the-blankety-blank-blank]".
YES! Motion Seconded, thirded...or whatever!
VERY PROBABLY COUNTERFEIT
Finally found a photo of his Spad.
Last edited by Zoe Brain; 11-06-2021 at 17:32.
COUNTERFEIT
And of his Nieuport.
Last edited by Zoe Brain; 11-06-2021 at 17:31. Reason: Photo is counterfeit
All blood that flows is red ! Nice pics, thanks Zoe
Sapiens qui vigilat "He is wise who watches"
Nice pictures. Has anyone done a decal of his plane markings. Would be a fun plane for the table.
I don't remember if I found these in the files or on BoardGameGeek. They may prove useful. Of course, the Nieuport 28 should be A firing, but did Bullard fly a Nieuport 28?
Not sure !I don't remember if I found these in the files or on BoardGameGeek. They may prove useful. Of course, the Nieuport 28 should be A firing, but did Bullard fly a Nieuport 28?
Because Eugene Bullard never flew for the US Air Force WW1 ! and no one of the French pilots flew Nieuport 28 in aerial combat, the French Ministry of the Army preferring the new Spad XIII to the Nieuport 28, it is considered inferior to this one, the Nieuport 28 will be given only to the American pilots who have just entered the war officially while waiting for the Spad
Eugene Bullard was first a legionnaire who fled the racial segregation of his country by joining the French Foreign Legion :
Bullard in his legionnaire uniform in 1917; he wears the insignia of his squadron on the left
With the number 19/33.717, he was assigned to the third marching regiment of the 1st Regiment of the Army, and was immediately sent to the combat zone. On July 13, 1915, he joined the second marching regiment of the 1st RE and then the 170th French infantry regiment, later called the "black swallows of death". A comrade-in-arms of Moďse Kisling and Blaise Cendrars, he took part in the fighting on the Somme, in Champagne and at Verdun where he was seriously wounded in the thigh on March 5, 1916.
While convalescing in Lyon, under the protection of the Nesme family, he was cited in the regimental order on July 3, 1917, and was awarded the war cross. Bullard, declared unfit for the infantry, but willing to continue fighting
Eugene was transferred to the French combat air force on October 2, 1916.
The American was trained on Caudron G.3 and G.4, training planes, between Tours and Dijon.
After the N 93 squadron, he joined the N 85 squadron and flew on Nieuport 24 , 27 ? and Spad
Bullard quickly made a name for himself, already because of his background and his country of origin... and also because of the fact that he always flew, even on missions, with his monkey Jimmy in the cockpit !
Nieuport 24 and Eugene Bullard with Jimmy the monkey
On his Spad, he writes his first two victories... as his motto: "All blood runs red".*
In August 1917, when the United States entered the war, the United States Army Air Service recruited Americans serving in the Lafayette Flying Corps. Bullard was rejected because of his skin color.
On November 16, 1917, Bullard was declared medically unfit to fly, under pressure from Edmund Gros, an American doctor in charge of organizing the American aeronautics in liaison with General Pershing, because of a fight with a French adjutant who had insulted him while returning from leave.
This decision was taken under pressure from Edmund Gros, a racist American doctor in charge of organizing American aeronautics. He wrote to the American headquarters:
"The BULLARD affair has been settled in a most admirable manner. This former boxer had the bad idea of knocking out a French warrant officer, which earned him 10 days in prison. And he even got an additional 20 days for illegally wearing the Legion insignia to which he was not entitled. The result: a disbarment from the French Air Force and a return to the trenches. Under these conditions, you would, of course, consider this oddball morally unfit to be in the United States Army and dismiss him on that ground alone. Here is at least one dark cloud that disappears from our horizon!" .
The American high command sent a note to the French staff drawing up a list of 28 airmen, 27 were promoted to captain and the 28th Eugene was appointed sergeant. The note specified that in order to be received as an airman in the American army one must be at least a lieutenant. Eugene therefore remained in the French army.
On January 11, 1918, he was reassigned to the 170th French infantry regiment, and served at the La Fontaine du Berger camp near Orcines, in the Puy-de-Dôme region, until the 1918 Armistice. After his demobilization, he settled in Paris.
After World War I , Eugene Bullard settled in Paris where he was an entrepreneur and Jazz musician . He owned the popular Paris nightclubs, Le Grand Duc and L’Escadrille, an athletic club and other successful business ventures. His circle of friends included Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes and French flying ace Charles Nungesser.
With the outbreak of World War II, Bullard, who spoke English, French and German, joined the French resistance, was wounded and barely escaped when the Germans occupied Paris.
He worked with the French espionage services and participated in the defense of Orleans where he was hit by a shrapnel wound to the spine. He was eventually evacuated to the United States but did not fully recover from his injury. In order to survive, he had several jobs, including perfume salesman, security guard and even musician for Louis Armstrong.
During the 1950s, Bullard is like a stranger in his own homeland. His daughters are married, and he lives alone in his apartment, which is decorated with pictures of the celebrities he has known. A framed box contains his fifteen French war medals. His last job was as an elevator operator at Rockefeller Center, where his Black Swallow of Death fame was unknown.
In 1954, the French government invited Bullard to Paris to rekindle, with two Frenchmen, the flame at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. In 1959, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor by General Charles de Gaulle who called him a true French hero. Despite this, he spent the last years of his life in relative anonymity and poverty in New York where he died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961. He was buried in his legionnaire uniform with full military honors by French officers in the French War Veterans section of Flushing Cemetery in Queens.
Eugene Bullard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris (1954)
On August 23, 1994, thirty-three years after his death, and seventy-seven years after his rejection by the U.S. Service in 1917, Eugene Bullard was posthumously promoted to the rank of second lieutenant of the United States Air Force.
Š Photos Sources donnadrewsawyer.com + parasforumactif.fr+ histogames.com + Wikipedia
(a photo was taken of him with a Spad "Biplace" XVI it seems ? some have spoken on the forum the aerodrome )
: the Aerodrome + the Black Icharus " Eugene Bullard in The Dawn of Military Aviation” by Jamie H. Cockfield – “Over The Front” Vol. 9 # 4 + histogames.com
Edit : Tee Shirts Eugene Bullard :
https://www.bretelles-et-chevrons.co...ullard-35.html
&
https://1023248.myspreadshop.ca/euge...roductType=815
Last edited by Spad VII; 10-28-2021 at 07:00.
Wow, great info!!!!
It would be good if the game honoured Eugene Bullard when a suitable reprint of models takes place.
Equally they could do the same with Hardit Singh Malik 'the flying Sikh' who flew Camels on the Western and Italian front, or Harry Fusao O’Hara the 'Japanese Fighter Pilot', if his plane details are known.
https://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/sh...ying-Sikh-quot
https://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/sh...ot-(July-1917)
PS. They could look at Indra Lal Roy for SE5a's when that time comes again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra_Lal_Roy
Last edited by flash; 11-15-2021 at 08:22.
Sapiens qui vigilat "He is wise who watches"
Great new pics! Spad seems to have stripes on the nose, no? Same red as heart?
Another important bit of missed history. thanks, everyone.
Marvellous research, Spad VII.
Has anyone took upon the challenge of making a decal set for Eugene Bullard?
Stop...
Stop.
STOP
This is clearly a photo-edit of Raoul Lufbery's Nieuport:
https://www.neam.org/lafayette-escadrille/lufbery2.html
https://tacairnet.com/2014/06/03/raoul-luf-lufbery/
Given the identical nature of the logo in the otherwise unremarkable SPAD photo, we can pretty safely assume that is also a photo-manipulation.
The fact of the matter is that there is no known photographic record of Bullard's logo or the planes that he flew, which is one of the reasons that neither Nexus nor Ares ever seriously attempted to issue a depiction of them.
I don't know if it was gullibility or lack of judgement, but to attempt to insert these images into a conversation about the history of this extremely important historical figure as genuine, and not an artistic interpretation of what these planes may have looked like does a disservice to the legacy of a man which I'm sure has already seen more than it's share of obfuscation and misrepresentation.
I have had, and continue to have, the utmost respect for Zoe Brain as one of the leading contributors to this site, but out of respect for Eugene Bullard can not let these posts pass unremarked.
My thanks for the correction and great detective work on your part.
I rely on peer review of this nature to correct my errors.
I confess it never occurred to me that anyone would deliberately fake a photo like that. Lesson learned.
People will fake anything/everything.
Hence the plethora of errors/obfuscations/falsehoods on Wikipedia.
I laugh in the face of danger - then I hide until it goes away!
Photos looked pretty real to me, I wouldn’t have known any different..
Never Knowingly Undergunned !!
I looked at them at magnification which took them to pixel level and whoever did the fix was a master Chris. Even the pixels differing shades matched each other.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Pretty darn impressive touch ups! Amazing what people can do now.
Why would anybody bother ?
Never Knowingly Undergunned !!
Probably because they get some peverse satisfaction out of misleading people Chris.
Much the same mental defect as the ones who hacked into this site and spoilt all those pictures.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
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