BLACK PILOT SCORED BIG FOR RUSSIANS

Sauvage prepares for mission in this frame from Soviet film A little-known fact is that one of the best fighter pilots of World War II was the son of a black soldier from the West Indian island of Martinique. This extraordinarily gifted aviator, Roger Sauvage, did not fly for the USA, Canada or Britain. He actually scored most of his sixteen victories while flying an aircraft bearing the red star of the Soviet Union!

Roger Sauvage was born in Paris during the First World War. His father died fighting with the French army without ever having seen his son. Although African Americans found educational avenues leading to careers in aviation largely inaccessable, France placed no racial barriers in Sauvage's path. Like many children of the era, young Roger was interested in flying, and his heros were the World War I French aces.

French Potez 631 had twin engines and was about size of German Me-110 When Sauvage was 16, he enrolled in the Lycee Voltaire and participated in the school's flying club, which regularly visited Paris' Orly airfield. During one of these visits Sauvage was exposed to a French reconnaissance plane, at which time he set his sights on flying for the French air force, the Armee de l'Air. Achieving that goal was not easy, however. The French maintained a relatively small air force, and only admitted the most qualified applicants. Sauvage continued his schooling, studying mathematics and engineering. In 1937, at the age of twenty, Sauvage met all the requirements and began flying with the Groupe de Reconnaissance de Strassburg.

Sauvage soon tired of flying observation missions and, recalling his childhood ambitions, requested a transfer to a fighter squadron. After being retrained, Roger joined a new unit in 1939 and was soon assigned a Potez 631 twin engined fighter. Shortly thereafter, in May, 1940, the Germans attacked and the routine patrols became desperate struggles for life and death. Although largely outclassed by the faster German planes, Sauvage's unit acquitted itself well, downing seventy-one of the enemy while losing only one pilot.

While the German's did not succeed in downing Sauvage, the British did. During one mission Sauvage's slow Potez was set upon by a British Hurricane that mistook it for a German Messerschmitt Me-110. Sauvage had to use his head to batter his way through a jammed canopy to escape his burning aircraft!

Sauvage soon recorded his first victory when he destroyed a German Heinkel bomber. In contradiction of all regulations, the exuberant Sauvage landed his plane near the crashed Heinkel and held the two surviving crew members prisoner until the arrival of French soldiers.

Soviet Yak-3 was highly competent fighter, particularly at the lower altitudes for which it was optimized Sauvage scored one more kill for the French Air Force, but days later France collapsed. Roger joined other French pilots in North Africa where he stayed until the formation of the Normandie Regiment, a unit of French flyers who would fight the Germans as part of the Soviet Air Force. Sauvage arrived in Moscow in December, 1942.

The fighting on the Eastern front was some of the bitterest combat of the war. Within six months after the French pilots arrived, eighty-five percent were killed or wounded. Things improved, however, when the expatriots were given the new YAK-9 fighters. Sauvage's group was always stationed close to the front lines, and they moved westward with the Russian advance. In early 1945 Sauvage was promoted to Second Lieutenant, and within the next week he shot down five German Focke-Wulf fighters. During this period the Germans threw their best pilots against the Russians. Among Yak-9s were typically armed with one 20mm cannon and one 12.7mm machine gun the German aces was Hans Beerenbrock, a national hero with 146 victories. Sauvage caught Beerenbrock's Messerschmitt alone, and the two aces struggled for fifteen minutes, each desperately trying to gain the advantage. Finally Sauvage forced his opponent to falter in a turn, and a burst of machine gun and cannon fire brought the German down.

Roger Sauvage's story illustrated the potential of black fliers at a time when many people still wondered whether non-whites had "the right stuff." His experiences in France contrasted sharply with those of black aviators in this country, who had to fight every step of the way just to get a chance. Although blacks contributed significantly to American aviation, the cost of bigotry and ignorance was great.