Book Reviews
FORGOTTEN SOULS
THE SEARCH FOR THE LOST TUSKEGEE AIRMEN
by Cheryl W. Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 27, 2026
Poignant, bittersweet lives of unsung and overlooked American heroes.
Stories of men and families who made the ultimate sacrifice for an often hostile homeland.
Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama, established in January 1941 to train Black pilots for the military nearly a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, was considered an experiment that some in the starkly segregated military never expected or hoped would succeed. Racists at the Department of War were skeptical that Black people even had the right stuff to fly an airplane. When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on a whim in an April 1941 visit to the school hopped into a two-seater for an hour-long flight over Tuskegee with a Black flight instructor, her security detail had a fit. (Upon landing, Roosevelt turned to her pilot and said, “Well, you can fly all right.”) Hundreds of ambitious young Black men signed up for the program. The best flew missions accompanying Allied bombers in Europe, often out of Ramitelli, Italy. Twenty-seven of these men never returned home, lost under mysterious circumstances. Thompson, a veteran investigative journalist for the Washington Post and NPR whose father was Tuskegee trained, suggests that many of these incidents were due to faulty single-engine fighter planes that were already old when the Tuskegee pilots were assigned to fly them. One family member told Thompson she believed the military “intentionally equipped the young, inexperienced Black pilots, like her dad, with less than stellar aircraft because the men weren’t wanted as pilots in World War II, to begin with.” Interviews with survivors, many now in their 90s, reveal intense feelings of pride and sorrow over the lives lost, and lingering anger over the shoddy treatment their loved ones faced in the U.S. and abroad.
Poignant, bittersweet lives of unsung and overlooked American heroes.
Travel For Aircraft Bookshelf –
Forgotten Souls: the Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen
by Cheryl W. Thompson
27 December 2025
Cheryl W. Thompson’s Forgotten Souls: The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen shines light on 27 Red Tail pilots who vanished in combat during World War II and were never brought home. Through extensive research, family interviews, and compassionate storytelling, Thompson restores identity and dignity to men too often ignored by the very system they served. This powerful book blends history and humanity, revealing the personal stories behind each missing airman and the generations who still carry the weight of unanswered questions. Set for release in January 2026, it stands as a vital contribution to both WWII scholarship and African American history.
MIA—Missing in Action. The acronym signifies a service person lost in combat with remains unaccounted for, death uncertain. Once 366 days pass, with no recovery of remains or positive conclusion of death, the MIA is declared KIA—Killed in Action.
The MIA acronym brings despondency to affected families along with an emotional void. An eternal void that troubles relatives and fellow service people with questions that have no answers. Thoughts of possible survival? Did the MIA perish with, or without, great pain? Or simply, “Just what happened?”
Cheryl Thompson’s Forgotten Souls has 27 of these gripping stories. Any MIA story is tragic. It is inherent by its nature. But these stories of these 27 pilots—all Tuskegee Airmen—are all the more tragic with the added insanity of racial discrimination. Recall that the Tuskegee Airman were flying for the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) in World War II (WW II) while breaking the “color barrier” allowing the Afro-American men to pilot fighter aircraft on combat missions.
These 27 individual subjects in Forgotten Souls were lost on combat mission in the skies over Italy during WW II. Sometimes deep inside Axis territory. Sometimes in the deep waters of lakes and seas. But lost, usually without missions dedicated to search and rescue (SAR) efforts. Simply written off. Replaceable. Not missed.
But they were missed. Of course they were missed. Missed by relatives, squadron mates, chief mechanics and more. The math quickly adds up to hundreds of people missing these 27 men, wondering about their ultimate fates. All while bravely serving their country flying bomber escort missions and fighter sweeps while protecting Allied bomber aircrews—all of whom would have not been Afro-American.
Thompson tells of their lives and what she learned delving through family records as well as interviewing relatives. Humanity and history are both rich in her book. Readers get to know these men as individuals through Thompson’s uncommonly good writing. It is little wonder given her caliber and number of her credentials. Saying Cheryl Thompson is a journalist is like saying Chappie James was a General or that Robin Olds was a fighter pilot.
First not allowed to fight, these men rose to prove equal in ability compared to any country despite America’s deeply entrenched racism—even when a baseless government report concluded Afro-Americans to be inferior to other races was produced. Afro-Americans who earned medical degrees, engineering degrees, inventors, professors and musicians apparently were insufficient to disprove the report. Belief over facts, as well as over common sense and logic, too often prevails with humans. Not so in the rest of the Animal World.
Readers also get a true understanding of a strand within this country’s intricate cultural tapestry. So many of the 27 are juniors in their families—30% in fact. The “Divine Nine” of Black Greekdom, a variety of Black thinkers and great achievers, but mostly families—regular families, American families.
This book is unique for its depth of history as well as the lives of 27 of the Tuskegee Airmen who were MIA while fighting the Axis Powers. It tells but of how they fought with less than stellar logistical support, worn aircraft, and within a system not devoting resources to search for them when lost or shot down. Thompson’s research into each story shows each to be unique as was each Red Tail pilot. It is Thompson’s ability to talk with these MIA family members which brings this history home to the reader, however. Her compassion and empathy interviewing dozens of family members brings the humanity of their experiences into the light—an aspect of history as commonplace as it is untold. But read of 27 men, these Forgotten Souls, who served in combat not expecting to be appreciated by American society in their time but who took the higher road all the same. Choosing to make history.
This is a review of a galley copy, a pre-publication, with the published book slated to have 50 addition pages. These pages may or may not include images but can only add to the remarkable nature of Forgotten Souls: the Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen.
Forgotten Souls would be as welcome on Afro-American bookshelves as on World War II air warfare bookshelves. It would also be welcomed on bookshelves for aspiring journalists, to read first hand how to investigate, as well as those concerned with humanity in wartime.
Forgotten Souls: the Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen is set for release near the end of January 2026—at the beginning of Black History month!