Meet the American who taught the Tuskegee Airmen to fly: Pioneer pilot Charles 'Chief' Anderson

The Tuskegee Airmen soar across American military lore some 80 years after victory in World War II. The heroic U.S. Army Air Forces pilots battled for equality at home before they battled the Nazis in the skies over Europe. 

The unit of African American pilots in the segregated Army earned their wings under the tutelage of pioneering pilot Charles A. Anderson. 

Dubbed "Chief" by his students, he was the lead flight instructor at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

He put the wind beneath the wings of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, only after fighting for the right to fly on his own a decade earlier.  

"His reputation was that he expected a lot out of us," World War II veteran and retired Lt. Col. George Hardy, 98, told Fox News Digital for this article.