Tuskegee Airman Robert Martin, Shot Down In WWII, Dies At 99

OLYMPIA FIELDS, IL - One of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, Robert L. Martin, has died at the age of 99. Martin, who said he flew "63 and a half missions" was shot down over German-occupied territory on the 64th and spent five weeks trying to return to Allied lines. He died in a senior living facility in Olympia Fields, Illinois July 26.

Martin's daughter, Gabrielle Martin, told The Washington Post that Martin's cause of death was pneumonia.

Martin was born in Dubuque, Iowa, on Feb. 9, 1919. His mother, a homemaker, died shortly after he was born. His father was a foot doctor. Martin attended Iowa State University where he completed a civilian pilot-training program, joking that for a small fee “you could get silver wings and get all the girls.”

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He joined the Army Air Forces and trained at the segregated military complex in Tuskegee, Ala., in January 1944. Before 1940, African-Americans were barred from flying for the U.S. military. Civil rights organizations and the black press exerted pressure that resulted in the formation of an all African-American pursuit squadron based in Tuskegee in 1941.

On March 3, 1945, in what would've been his 64th mission, Martin was cut down by ground fire after an attack mission on an enemy airfield in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Martin explained that seven other pilots and he were attempting to shoot two airplanes parked off a field. They missed their target, and were blown off course by 100 mph winds.

According to his bio from the Chicago Chapter of Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., Martin felt a bump in his airplane and realized he had been hit. The engine caught on fire and Martin was forced to bail. When his parachute opened, it cut him on the chin and knocked him out. Martin found shelter in a farmhouse. He was eventually rescued and taken into the headquarters of Marshal Josip Broz Tito's Partisans, and hidden until he could safely return to his unit.

“We flew over this airfield where there was no opposition,” Martin said in 2008 at Chicago’s Pritzker Military Museum & Library, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We saw two airplanes parked a little bit off the field, and we said, ‘We’ll get more credit for destroying two airplanes than shooting up a railroad train.’ We went in to shoot up these planes.”

Martin and Simmons were hit by antiaircraft fire. Only Martin survived.

With the help of Tito’s anti-fascist Yugoslav partisans, Martin was greeted by one of Tito’s men as a “warrior on the side of the Allies,” he told the Experimental Aircraft Association in an interview. “The guy fried me an egg and gave me a glass of grappa when he found I was hungry, and just told me to sit and wait.”

After his military discharge in September 1945 at the rank of captain, he became an electrical engineer with the city of Chicago and retired in 1988. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart and seven awards of the Air Medal. He was among the recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal at a 2007 ceremony honoring the Tuskegee Airmen.

He is survived by his wife of 68 years, the former Odette Ewell, of Chicago; four children, Gabrielle Martin of Denver, Noelle Martin of Chicago, Dominique Martin of Olympia Fields and Robert Martin Jr. of Plymouth Meeting, Pa.; a sister; and two grandchildren.

Image via Shutterstock

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