Tuskeegee airmen’s legend mutated in the retelling

I’m catching up on paperwork and found a note from December to add an item to the Stories-Can-Mutate collection.  From the Washington Post:  “A bomber pilot from World War II says he was shot down while being escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, an account that supports a recent report by two historians that the famed black fighter group, contrary to legend, did lose at least a few bombers to fire from enemy aircraft.”    Bob Johnson, Ex-Pilot Confirms Bomber Loss — Flier Shot Down in 1944 Was Escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, Washington Post, Sun., Dec. 17, 2006, p. A18 (emphasis added).

The report drew almost immediate criticism for ‘revisionism’ of the legend that the Tuskeegee Airmen never lost a bomber that they were escorting.  It takes nothing away from the airmen’s heroism, however, to acknowledge that stories do indeed mutate. 

(And the controversy itself illustrates how people can be wedded to what they want to be the truth, which is not always the same as what the truth really is.)