Tuskegee Airmen Dies - Gilbert B Langford

Gilbert B. Langford, 82, a Tuskegee Airman during World War II who later became an engineer with General Electric and the Defense Department, died of pneumonia July 11 at a hospital in The Villages, Fla. He was a former Alexandria resident.

Mr. Langford, who early on had an interest in flying, trained as a navigator and bombardier with the famed Tuskegee Airmen in 1944. He did not see combat.

Not long after completing additional training in Texas, "the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan, and so here I was, dual-rated, with no war to fight," he said in an oral history interview in 2004.

The young second lieutenant remained in the Army Air Forces for three more years and was a bombardier instructor teaching Chinese cadets and later an assistant weather officer. He also flew B-25s while stationed at Lockbourne Air Base in Ohio, the segregated, all-black base commanded by then-Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr.

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