Daily Mail repors:
• Burial coincided with the official opening in theaters of 'Red Tails' a George Lucas-produced movie
• The airmen debunked widely-held beliefs that black pilots were incapable of fighting in combat
• Service began with flyover of four F-16 jets in the Missing Man formation, a special honor reserved for pilots
A Tuskegee airman who shot down two German fighter planes while escorting a damaged bomber to its base now lies in Arlington National Cemetery after a burial with special honors.
On the same day that retired Air Force Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr. took his resting place among other war and military heroes, his real-life story as a World War II aviator played out on movie screens across the country.
Weathers was buried Friday in a service that began with a flyover of four F-16 jets in the Missing Man formation, a special honor reserved for pilots, by the 113th Wing of the D.C. Capital Guardians, the same unit that guards the airspace over the nation's capital.
Weathers died Oct. 15 in Tucson, Ariz., of pneumonia at age 90.
His burial coincided with the official opening in theaters of 'Red Tails,' a George Lucas-produced movie retelling the story of the Tuskegee Airmen who debunked widely held beliefs that black pilots were incapable of fighting in combat.
Shortly after the flyover, in which one of the three jets departed from formation, a caisson pulled by six horses carried Weathers' body to his burial spot amid hundreds of the stark marble tombstones that cover the grounds of the national cemetery.
An Air Force band accompanied the wagon, its drummer thumping a solemn beat as family followed on the chilly, overcast Friday morning.
Family members wore red ties and scarves, as they had at Weathers' Memphis funeral, as a nod to the aviators who painted their aircrafts' tails red to set themselves apart.
Luke Weathers III, 61, said his father and other black Americans who fought in World War II did so to prove they were men, 'and then they wanted their country to love them, but that didn't happen, either.'
Friday's ceremony, however, finally delivered recognition of his father as a national hero, Weathers said.
This kind of attention to the Tuskegee Airmen is what the elder Weathers wanted throughout his life, said his daughter, Trina Weathers Boyce. Weathers was not vain, but he wanted to share the lessons of the airmen's courage in war, their struggles for equality and their victory over a wartime enemy and over racism, she said.
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