Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class The Triple Nickles About this episode The 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, also called the Triple Nickles, were the first Black paratroopers in the U. S. military, and their story is connected to the desegregation of the military after World War II.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:04 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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1:42 Speaker 04 Every small business owner has that one moment that could have broken them, but remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Kathleen Griffith, co-host of The Unshakeables, along with Stevie Barron, CEO of Chase for Business. We have more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible still to come in season three. Listen to The Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at chase.com/podcast. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase and Company.
2:20 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:34 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Today's episode is a listener request. It's from Josiah. Josiah has sent us so many topic ideas. So Josiah, I want to say I'm so sorry that we only very rarely respond to your emails. But after getting this particular one with this suggestion in it, I went through the inbox and I made sure that I had made note of every suggestion that you have sent to us because you've sent us a lot of really great ones. Today's is the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, also called the Triple Nichols. They were the first Black paratroopers in the US military, and their story is also connected to the desegregation of the military after World War II.
3:21 Holly Frey? Black soldiers' participation in the United States military goes back to before the Revolutionary War, and initially, most units were not racially segregated. One exception was the First Rhode Island Regiment. More than half of its number were Black or Indigenous, and there were segregated units within that regiment. Beyond that, during the Revolutionary War, thousands of people of African descent served in the Continental Army, in state militias, or at sea, mostly in integrated units.
3:53 Tracy V. Wilson? After George Washington became Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, he tried to bar people of African descent from enlistment, but he reversed that decision a couple of months later. But then after the Revolutionary War, Congress passed the Federal Militia Act, which Washington signed into law in 1792. This act applied to white men only, so it essentially excluded Black people from service.
4:21 Holly Frey? With a few exceptions, Black people continued to be excluded from military service in the US until the Civil War, when the Confiscation Act authorized the use of formerly enslaved people as soldiers in the United States Army. These soldiers generally served in segregated units. We talk more about this in our episode on contraband camps, which we ran as a Saturday classic on February 18, 2023.
4:49 Holly Frey? Prior hosts of the show also talked about the Massachusetts 54th, which was the second all-black regiment established in the US Army. And we ran that as a Saturday classic on February 2nd, 2019.
5:02 Tracy V. Wilson? After the end of the Civil War, the US Army was reorganized into a peacetime service. And this reorganization included the establishment of all-black infantry and cavalry units that came to be known as the Buffalo Soldiers. We talked about the Buffalo Soldiers in more detail in the Iron Riders episode that came out on July 3rd, 2024.
5:26 Holly Frey? So by the start of World War I, racial segregation had been the standard in the US military for decades. More than 380,000 Black Americans served in the Army during World War I. And overwhelmingly, the ones who were sent overseas were assigned to tasks involving manual labor, like working as stevedores and digging latrines. One exception was the Harlem Hellfighters. And we ran our episode on them as a Saturday classic on June 13th, 2020. As we talked about in that episode, these soldiers served with valor and then returned home to find that they still faced the same racism and discrimination as they had before purportedly fighting to make the world safe for democracy.
6:10 Tracy V. Wilson? As World War II was approaching, the situation for Black soldiers in the US military was largely the same as it had been in World War I. And that was in spite of ongoing advocacy on the part of Black service members and veterans, as well as civil rights leaders and organizations. The Selective Service Act that established the World War II draft specified that the training and selection of men would have no discrimination by race or color. But there were still racial disparities in who was actually selected for service and what roles those people were assigned. The Army also started using an intelligence test called the Army General Classification Test.
6:55 Tracy V. Wilson? And there were measurable differences between the typical scores of white and black recruits, with the black recruits generally scoring lower. Some military officials did recognize that these disparities stemmed from social and economic factors and not from the innate intelligence of people of different races. But these disparities still reinforced a lot of negative biases about black soldiers and what they were capable of doing.
7:25 Holly Frey? There was also an overall perception within military leadership and the executive branch of government that white soldiers as a whole would not accept an integrated army. A lot of the military bases where soldiers went through training were located in the South, so there were well-founded concerns that these communities would not accept integrated military units in their midst. So the military continued to maintain segregation moving into World War II, under the idea that to do otherwise would damage the nation's military readiness on the eve of war.
8:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Some steps were being made to try to address at least some of the most discriminatory aspects of a segregated military. On October 9, 1940, the White House issued a statement outlining the War Department's policy, which would be to maintain racially segregated units, but also using black soldiers, quote, "on a fair and equal basis with their white peers." So while units were still racially segregated and that segregation was inherently discriminatory, there were supposed to be more types of units being established for black soldiers so that
8:41 Tracy V. Wilson? they would no longer be so disproportionately working only in the least desirable roles. This policy also specified that black soldiers would be recruited in equal numbers that aligned with their proportion of the population of the United States. None of this really did anything about the inherently discriminatory aspects of segregation, but at least in theory, it meant that Black soldiers would no longer be primarily assigned to things like manual labor.
9:12 Holly Frey? From 1940 to 1942, William Henry Hasty Jr. served as a civilian aide to Secretary of War Henry Louis Stimson and advised on these issues. Hasty was the first Black person to be appointed as a federal district court judge. He conducted a survey in 1941 that documented multiple ways in which the US military was falling short of that 1940 policy announcement. Black people were not being inducted into the military at a rate that was proportional to their population. There had been some new units established for Black servicemen, such as the Tuskegee Airman, which prior hosts of the show covered in 2009.
9:52 Holly Frey? But Black soldiers were still disproportionately serving in certain roles, including the Quartermaster Corps and doing things like building infrastructure in the Corps of Engineers.
10:04 Tracy V. Wilson? In his report, Hasty noted, quote, "The traditional mores of the South have been widely accepted and adopted by the Army as the basis of policy and practice affecting the Negro soldier." He recommended a number of ways for Black soldiers to become a more integral part of the Army, including that the Army should, somewhere within the service, actually begin the process of integrating.
10:33 Holly Frey? By August of 1942, these patterns of discrimination were clearly still ongoing, and the Secretary of War established an Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, chaired by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy. This committee was focused on addressing what it saw as problems with discipline, morale, and military readiness among Black soldiers, and how to address them.
10:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Most of the people involved with this committee were white military leaders. One exception was Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis, who had served in one of the Buffalo Soldiers Regiments and had also become a Tuskegee Airmen. He was the first Black general in the US Army. A lot of his recommendations were really in line with ones that Hasty had made previously, including proposing, quote, "the breaking down of the so-called Jim Crow practices within the War Department and on the military reservations, and the securing of the cooperation of the communities near the reservations to that end." Basically, Davis and Hasty both recognized that a lot of what was happening,
11:43 Tracy V. Wilson? that the Army saw as problems with morale, readiness, and discipline, traced directly back to Black soldiers growing up targeted by racism without the same access to education or resources that the white recruits generally had, and then being expected to work in an inherently discriminatory environment, sometimes under the command of outwardly racist officers, all while also living on bases that were surrounded by civilian communities that were rife with racism and racist violence.
12:18 Holly Frey? In December of 1942, this committee made a number of recommendations, none of which really involved the kind of systemic dismantling of racist organizational structures and attitudes that both Davis and Hasty had spoken about. Hasty actually resigned from this work in 1943 due to the lack of progress. These recommendations included the creation of some new all-black units, including combat engineer units and ambulance battalions, and new harbor defense units to reduce the number of Black soldiers assigned to anti-aircraft units.
12:53 Tracy V. Wilson? So, the Black Harbor Defense Units never happened, partly because of difficulty finding communities where those units would be stationed that would not also object to their presence there, and because the perceived threat to coastal communities in North America diminished over the course of the war. Some new combat engineer units were established, but most of them eventually became construction or general service units. The Army also did establish 12 new motor ambulance companies in 1943, and then two more followed later.
13:29 Holly Frey? The recommendation that played a part in today's episode was the creation of a black parachute battalion, quote, "for the purposes of enhancing the morale and esprit de corps of the Negro people." Paratroopers were and are considered some of the most elite members of the military. They literally jump out of airplanes, often carrying heavy loads of gear, ready to face whatever it is they find when they land. Qualification requirements were strict, and training was grueling. So the idea followed that black soldiers in this role would become a point of pride.
14:06 Tracy V. Wilson? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the creation of a black parachute battalion in April of 1943. And we'll have more on that after a sponsor break.
14:19 Speaker 05 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
14:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
14:42 Speaker 05 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
14:49 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
14:56 Speaker 06 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
15:02 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
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15:19 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
16:04 Holly Frey? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:18 Speaker 03 That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at nsl.sport. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews,
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17:19 Tracy V. Wilson? One type of unit that black soldiers were being assigned to in the US Army during World War II was service companies. Service companies handled a lot of the non-combat work that needed to be done for a combat unit to function, like maintaining equipment, processing the mail, and keeping track of supplies. The exact duties of these service companies could really vary based on what kind of unit they were attached to and where that unit was located. Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, was home to the parachute school where the paratroopers went through their training. And the parachute service company was largely dedicated to guard duty.
18:03 Holly Frey? Fort Benning is also home to the infantry officer candidate school. Sergeant Walter Morris had washed out of that school with only a week left to go. He had been told to spend three months in one of the service companies at the fort before trying again, and he chose the parachute service company.
18:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Once he got there, a number of problems were obvious to him. This all-black unit was on duty from 4:00 PM until 8:00 AM, and during that time, there really was not much to do. The whole base was segregated, including black soldiers being excluded from the movie theater and the post exchange, or PX. German and Italian prisoners of war had access to services and facilities on the base that black servicemen were excluded from, so the morale was low and the men were very bored.
18:58 Holly Frey? Drawing on what he'd learned in officer candidate school, Morris put together a plan to try to improve morale among the service corps, and he got it approved by the company commander. This plan included the black soldiers doing the same fitness and training regimen that the paratrooper candidates were doing. Basically, everything except practice jumps from towers and airplanes. So they'd be using the training fields and equipment rather than just guarding them overnight. And this gave the men more of a sense of purpose and cohesion, and their morale did start to improve.
19:32 Tracy V. Wilson? General Ridgely Gaither, the commandant of the airborne school, observed all of this as it was happening. And eventually, he informed Morris that the Army was establishing a test platoon to see if black soldiers could perform as paratroopers. Gaither personally selected Morris as a potential candidate for this platoon. And Morris ultimately became a second lieutenant and helped recruit the test platoon's other members.
20:00 Holly Frey? This test platoon was created as the Company A 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. The platoon took the name Triple Nichols from that numerical designation of 555. And since a nickel is five cents, it also had a connection to Buffalo nickels. Many of the company's enlisted men were recruited from the 92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Wachukka, Arizona.
20:26 Tracy V. Wilson? These men were selected very carefully because in addition to the morale and esprit de corps that we mentioned before the break, the Army was basically testing whether black men were suitable to serve as paratroopers before committing to selecting and training more of them.
20:46 Holly Frey? After being selected for the test platoon, 19 men went through a four-phase training process at the airborne school. Phase A started with extremely grueling exercise that went on for long stretches at a time. It was basically intended to wash out anyone who wouldn't be able to handle the rigors of the rest of the training or the rigors of life as a paratrooper and to do it as quickly as possible. They also attended lectures on how to protect themselves during a jump and they did wind tunnel exercises to practice controlling a parachute.
21:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Phase B built on what they'd learned the previous week and it added hand-to-hand combat and jump training. At this point, the jump training mainly involved mock jumps from a 50-foot tower without a parachute while wearing a harness.
21:37 Holly Frey? Phase C moved on to simulated jumps with a parachute, which many of the men considered to be more of a mental and emotional challenge than actually jumping from an airplane would be later on. These took place from a 250-foot tower at the airborne school.
21:55 Tracy V. Wilson? And then in the fourth week, Phase D took them into actual airplanes to make real jumps with a parachute. After they'd successfully completed all four phases, the men would earn their jump wings.
22:09 Holly Frey? Ultimately, on February 18th, 1944, 16 black paratroopers graduated from this first round of training. Six black officers graduated from their training on March 4th, so there were 22 men in total in the Test Platoon.
22:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Based on the memoir of Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs, who was the first black officer accepted into the Triple Nichols, their training was extremely difficult, and the white officers and enlisted men who conducted that training were very hard on them. But they did not get a sense that there were racial undertones to this. It was the same training, at the same pace, that the white paratroopers went through, and at least in the context of their paratrooper training, Biggs felt like they had gotten the same treatment that the white soldiers would have.
23:02 Holly Frey? The Test Platoon was still housed with the service company on base, but after earning their jump wings, they reported feeling more camaraderie with the white soldiers at Fort Benning than they did before. There was sort of a perception that a paratrooper was a paratrooper regardless of skin color, although the 555's black officers and NCOs still were not welcome in their respective clubs. And the situation off-base had not changed at all. Columbus, Georgia is in a fairly rural part of the state, near the Alabama state line, and black soldiers often faced racism and harassment from white civilians and from the Columbus Police when they were off-base.
23:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Based on the success of this first round of training, the Army started the process of turning this 22-man Test Platoon into a full parachute infantry company. That happened in the summer of 1944. The Triple Nichols were moved to Camp McCall, North Carolina, which had an airfield.
24:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Camp McCall was also segregated, but black troops there did have access to a separate section of the movie theater and the officers were allowed access to their clubs. The Triple Nichols also organized a football team for recreation at Camp McCall and they played a number of games against teams from historically black colleges and universities.
24:26 Holly Frey? As the company expanded, the Triple Nichols underwent additional training at Camp McCall. This lasted for five months, during which more men were being recruited and put through jump school. Their number grew to 155 enlisted men and 10 officers under the command of Captain James Porter, sometimes called the father of the 555. Some of that training at Camp McCall was particularly unpleasant, like one hot afternoon when they went up in a plane that was simulating evasive maneuvers right after they had been served a heavy, greasy lunch.
25:01 Tracy V. Wilson? As their training progressed, many of the men started to think they might be deployed to Europe, especially as their additional training started to focus on combat. The Army was still reluctant to send black troops into combat, but by this point in the war, a lot of paratroopers had been killed or injured in Europe, so reinforcements were needed. Among other things, the D-Day invasion in June of 1944 had started with paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions being dropped behind enemy lines, and they had faced really heavy losses.
25:40 Holly Frey? But almost a year later, the war in Europe was coming to an end. On April 21, 1945, when they were four weeks into an eight-week combat readiness program, the Triple Nichols got a different order. It was to report to Pendleton Field in Pendleton, Oregon.
25:57 Tracy V. Wilson? This was not because they were going to be deployed from there to the Pacific, where the war against Japan was still ongoing. It was because they were going to fight fires, and we will have more on that after another sponsor break.
26:16 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
27:01 Holly Frey? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
27:14 Speaker 03 That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.
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28:11 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant.
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29:14 Tracy V. Wilson? On May 5th, 1945, the Reverend Archie Mitchell and his wife Elise were taking a group of children on a church outing in Bligh, Oregon. Elise and some of the children spotted something on the ground and it exploded. Elise was killed along with five children between the ages of 11 and 14. It turned out this device was a bomb that had been sent to the United States from Japan via balloon. The US Navy had started to find balloons and parts of balloons the previous November, and hundreds more were sighted in the following months. We talked about these balloon bombs in our episode on the balloons of World War
29:58 Tracy V. Wilson? II on March 6, 2023.
30:02 Holly Frey? By coincidence, May 5th was also the day the Triple Nickels left Camp McCall for Pendleton, Oregon. They traveled most of the way by rail, and it took them six days to get there. For their first couple of weeks at Pendleton Air Base, they mostly focused on their physical fitness and conditioning because the base was being reactivated for this purpose and their equipment and supplies had not arrived yet.
30:26 Tracy V. Wilson? The effort to find and defuse these Japanese balloon bombs and to fight any fires that the bombs caused was known as Operation Firefly. It involved roughly 2,700 military personnel working in conjunction with the US Forest Service. The Triple Nichols formed a 300-man smoke jumping unit during Operation Firefly.
30:51 Holly Frey? Smoke jumping, or sending firefighters into an area by parachute, was a fairly new development in the United States. Like the development of paratroopers, it had grown out of the combination of parachutes, which have been around in their modern form since the late 18th century, and practical aircraft, which have been around since the early 20th century. The first uses of aircraft in firefighting in western North America started with aerial photography and equipment drops in the 1920s. Various people proposed the idea of transporting firefighters to an area by parachute in the 1920s and 30s, but initially, most people thought this was way too dangerous to be practical.
31:33 Holly Frey? That started to change with the development of more maneuverable parachutes in the mid to late 1930s.
31:39 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1939, the Forest Service started working with Eagle Parachute Company of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and most of the first smoke jumpers that were part of this project were employed by the company rather than by the government. They carried out about 60 experimental jumps, and eventually, some Forest Service employees embarked on jumps as well. The first actual jumps for fire and rescue missions, rather than tests and training, started in 1940, but it really wasn't until 1944 that smoke jumping started to be seen as a realistic, practical way to fight forest fires.
32:21 Tracy V. Wilson? And one that saved more money than it cost.
32:24 Holly Frey? The Triple Nichols' time as smokejumpers was only partly about the Japanese balloon bombs. Although, when they got this assignment, those were seen as a huge potential threat, especially since summer was approaching. Beyond the balloon bombs, the Forest Service was facing a huge labor shortage due to the war. Before the arrival of the Triple Nichols, the number of firefighters in the West had been bolstered by conscientious objectors, who were assigned to alternative service, including from pacifist religious denominations, like the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers.
33:00 Tracy V. Wilson? The goal for the Triple Nichols was for them to be able to parachute into a fire area, assess what was going on there, and keep any fires contained until reinforcements arrived, often by mule train, because the area was so remote and so far away from roads. If they found a balloon bomb, they would cordon off the area and defuse it. So the Triple Nichols' training included both firefighting and fire containment techniques, and bomb disposal.
33:30 Holly Frey? To do this work, they also had to learn new strategies for parachuting, using a different type of parachute than they had learned to use in the Army. They were taught by Frank Derry, who was a distributor for Eagle Parachute Company on the West Coast, and who had developed a steerable parachute called the Derry Shoot that the Forest Service was using. Their uniforms and equipment also changed, including swapping their steel military helmets for football helmets with mesh screens to help protect their faces from cinders and debris.
34:02 Tracy V. Wilson? The Triple Nichols' military parachute training had focused on landing in fields and other open areas. But as smokejumpers, they were typically landing in wooded areas instead. They would literally aim for the trees. This was intentional. Places that were clear of trees were often just too rugged and mountainous to be traversed. Or if they looked open from above, they might really be full of downed timbers that were hazardous to try to land on or navigate through once you were on the ground. Members of the 555th talked about really having to fight against their original training to intentionally aim for those trees instead of aiming for open ground.
34:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Aiming for wooded areas also meant that they had to learn how to get themselves out of the trees after landing. To do this, they used 50 feet of nylon rope that they carried with them during their jumps.
35:03 Holly Frey? From May 22 to June 6, the members of the Forest Service trained the Triple Nickels on how to use the Forest Service's maps and on techniques for fire suppression. Then, from June 8 to 15, the Ninth Service Command trained them on bomb disposal. Their training jumps started on June 18, and they answered their first fire call just three days later. Ultimately, they were split into two groups, with six officers and 94 enlisted men sent to Chico Army Airfield in Chico, California, to cover the southwest, while the rest of the men remained at Pendleton Airfield to cover the northwest.
35:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Over the 1945 fire season, the Triple Nickels carried out more than 1,200 jumps to help control 36 fires and dispose of several Japanese bombs. Sometimes, their work took them to Canada, where they helped keep fires from spreading southward into the United States. Over that summer of 1945, they developed a reputation for dedication, flexibility, adaptability, and professionalism.
36:10 Holly Frey? More than 30 of them were injured during this work, some of them seriously. As one example, on one jump, one of the men fractured his spine while landing and had to remain in the field while the rest of the team worked. When it was time to hike out, he refused their help because everyone else was tired and they were also low on food and water. So he hiked out under his own power, trying to keep his back straight the whole time, and he did this for more than 18 miles.
36:39 Tracy V. Wilson? The Triple Nickels had only one fatality during their time as smokejumpers. Medic Malvin L. Brown landed in a tree during a jump on August 6th. As he was lowering himself down, something went wrong and he fell into a rocky creek bed below. He was most likely killed instantly.
37:00 Holly Frey? By the late summer of 1945, it was clear that the Japanese balloon bombs were no longer a threat. It would later become known that the last ones had been launched in April of that year. So on September 2nd, the Western Defense Command started winding down the balloon defense project. In October, the Triple Nickels returned to Camp McCall. And then that December, they became part of the 13th Airborne Division and they moved to Fort Bragg. When the 13th Airborne was inactivated, the Triple Nickels became part of the 82nd Airborne under Major General James M. Gavin.
37:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Fort Bragg was still racially segregated and initially, the Triple Nickels were living in the worst housing available on the base. But Gavin insisted that the Triple Nickels be integrated with the rest of the 82nd Airborne, including insisting that they march with the 82nd Airborne as part of the New York City Victory Parade on January 14th, 1946.
38:01 Holly Frey? The 555th was formally deactivated on December 15th, 1947, at which point its remaining paratroopers became part of the 3rd Battalion 505th Airborne Infantry 82nd Airborne. One of them, Charles Stevens, was later quoted as saying, quote, "Everybody was crying. I think we were crying for two different reasons. We were glad the segregation was leaving the Army and we were sad we were losing our Triple Nickel colors."
38:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Advocacy for a racially-integrated military had been ongoing during and after World War II. Another advisory board had been convened called the Board for Utilization of Negro Manpower, or the Gillum Board, for its chair Lieutenant General Alvin Colum Gillum, Jr.
38:51 Tracy V. Wilson? This board issued a report that once again recommended desegregation of the military. President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, which banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in the US military. This effectively banned segregation throughout the military, although it took years for that to actually be put into practice across all of the divisions. And obviously, it also did not solve racism within the Army. But the 82nd Airborne had been integrated months before the order was even issued.
39:34 Holly Frey? Not long after the executive order, some of the men who had been part of the Triple Nichols experienced a tragedy. Multiple units from different branches of the military were preparing for large-scale maneuvers known as Operation Combine III. On September 16, 1948, at Eglin Field on the Florida Panhandle, very near where I grew up, the 505th Airborne Infantry and the 785th Tank Battalion were on maneuvers on the ground while Air Force B-29 bombers were conducting a firepower rehearsal. Some of the bombers missed their mark and dropped their bombs onto the troops on the ground. Five men were killed and 29 were injured, and with the exception of one white officer,
40:17 Holly Frey? all of them were black. All of the pilots involved were white. In his memoir, Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs contended that this was largely covered up and that the pilots and navigators involved were not held accountable, and that would not have been the case had their races been reversed.
40:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Operation Firefly had largely been a secret while it was going on. The military had tried to keep word from spreading about the Japanese balloon bombs for fear that the public would panic if they knew about them. So people had not even been warned about the potential dangers until after that tragedy in Bligh, Oregon.
40:56 Tracy V. Wilson? That meant that the Triple Nichols really did not get as much news coverage or recognition for their work at the time. The Tuskegee Airmen, for example, were a lot more widely covered and more widely known.
41:09 Holly Frey? That's still largely true today, but it started to change a little bit in more recent years. In 1994, the Triple Nichols were part of a celebration of Smokey Bear's 50th birthday. Pendleton Airfield is now home to the Oregon National Guard's Pendleton Aviation Support Facility, and the conference room there is named for the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. There are historical markers dedicated to them at the Siskiyou Smokejumper Museum in Cave Junction, Oregon, and in Pendleton, Oregon.
41:40 Tracy V. Wilson? In addition to Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Biggs's book, which is called The Triple Nichols: America's First All-Black Paratroop Unit, there's also a book called Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nichols: America's First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone. This book is intended for ages 10 and up, and it won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Youth and Teens in 2014. And that's the Triple Nichols.
42:11 Holly Frey? Do you also have listener mail?
42:13 Tracy V. Wilson? I do also have listener mail, and this listener mail came with a subject line that really delighted me. It's from Katie, and the subject line of the email is "Out of Hand Viking Unearthed Hoax." And Katie wrote, "Dear Holly and Tracy, listening to your latest unearthed podcast, I was wondering if you had mentioned a Viking artifact that was unearthed here in Sweden this past March. You did not, so you may not have heard this hilarious story. In March, a rare Viking-age neck ring was discovered at a construction site. It was in very good condition and had a very rare design.
42:54 Tracy V. Wilson? So, experts were all excited about the find, and it made headlines all over the country. However, they were a bit over-eager to share the discovery and did not conduct the test to determine the authenticity of the find. It turns out some of the construction workers had planted an elaborate fake made of wire and spray paint and buried it in the mud to fool some land surveyors. They were fooled and took it to the Viking experts, who were also fooled." And sent out a press release very quickly. It took about 24 hours for the story to unravel. It seemed like the construction workers thought the joke would be figured out very quickly. The experts were embarrassed, but took it well.
43:39 Tracy V. Wilson? I'm sure every artifact will have rigorous testing done before any press releases are sent out in the future. The construction workers were informed that they could reclaim the necklace from the authorities, but to my knowledge, no one ever claimed it.
43:54 Tracy V. Wilson? I've added some links. I do not know if this will count as unearthed, but it was a good story. The email goes on to say, on the topic of spite houses, there is a castle that was owned by a successful general Gloucester Castle. And I did not look much further into that, but the email continues. He built an elaborate castle right next to the home of his father. The size difference is very noticeable. I do not remember the full story, but it was definitely to spite his father. See the attached image. I don't currently have pets, so my pet tax is some cherry blossoms from outside my house. Keep up the good work, Katie. Katie, I love this story.
44:36 Tracy V. Wilson? I did not see any of this about this, this quote, discovery. As I was working on unearthed, the, the particular links that were included in the email with, with more information on the story are not links that I typically look at as part of unearthed. There have been times though, where over the course of researching unearthed, I will see a similar, maybe not exactly this story, maybe not a hoax, but I will see something play out that involves an announcement about something and then questions raised about that announcement. And then maybe the initial announcement being retracted. That does happen sometimes.
45:15 Tracy V. Wilson? And so one of sort of my perpetual low grade fears about unearthed, since we do them quarterly, is that it's possible that toward the very end of the quarter, there could be something that's announced that isn't revealed as being inauthentic until after we have already recorded the unearthed that it's part of. These cherry blossom pictures are very beautiful.
45:45 Holly Frey? Listen, I will always take a flower picture.
45:48 Tracy V. Wilson? Very excited about that. I stop so many times and take pictures of random flowers while I'm out walking. One of them is a close up of the cherry, like one limb of the cherry blossoms with the rest of the tree in the background. So pretty. And then, yes, there is a picture of this Spite House castle. The castle is many, many, many times larger than the structure that it was apparently built next to. So, thank you so much for this email, Katie. It really tickled me, this whole story. If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcasts, we're at [email protected] .
46:33 Tracy V. Wilson? And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd like to listen to podcasts.
46:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
46:59 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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