Among the Latino World War II stories that documentarian Ken Burns missed/ignored is that of El Pasoan Richard Candelaria, an Army Air Force pilot who grew up in California.
This morning the daily ran a piece on the Burns debacle fronted by a great old photo of Candelaria in full knight-of-the-air panoply, including leather helmet, flying goggles, Mae West, dangling radio cable and oxygen mask, and what look like elbow-length fire-retardant gloves. The photo is here, though he isn’t mentioned in the story. Too bad. He was one of only five Latino-American fighter aces of World War II:
“’It’s the most exclusive club, or association, in the world,’ he said of the American Fighter Aces Association, of which he is a charter member. ‘You can’t buy your way in. You can’t influence your way in. You can’t talk your way in. There’s only one way in: aerial combat.’”
Candelaria flew P-38s and P-51 Mustangs, escorting bombers to their targets and back. He had six confirmed kills, and a possible seventh in one of the Nazi’s new jet fighters. Part of his story can be found here, but the most complete one is here at the University of Texas oral history project, which includes his escape from a POW camp after being shot down. Nose art on his P-51, the hottest fighter of the war, was: “My Pride and Joy.”
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 