The Triple Nickles

There are a lot stories from World War II that get most of the headlines these days including Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Midway, Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on  Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  During each of these major events of that war there were a number military units, ships and personal stories that are highlighted in which much of the war is told through.  But there were other (Black, Native and Japanese American) military units and personal stories that most of us have never heard of that also played a vital role during WWII.    

Some of us know of the role of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Indian Code Talkers, but what about the 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the “Triple Nickles”?  Well you are not alone.  This unit was a 20-member “colored test platoon” from the 92^nd Infantry (Buffalo) Division.  It was born within an army that was still segregated and had traditionally relegated Blacks to menial jobs and programmed them for failure.  However, the 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion, or “Triple Nickles,” succeeded in becoming the nation’s first All-Black parachute infantry test platoon, company and battalion from 1943-45.   

One of the most notable operations that the 555^th perform came in 1945 when a request came from the U.S. Forest Service to fight blazing forest fires in the American Northwest.  It was also important to know that the Japanese were at that floating incendiary devices attached to balloons across the Pacific Ocean, which took advantage of the jet stream’s easterly flow and would perhaps land in the Northwest.  In addition, the unit was to confront a new dimension in warfare involving the use of biological agents that could destroy woodlands and crops.  Because of their skill and abilities they became history’s first military “Smoker Jumpers.”  During their assignment in the northwest they answered 36 fire calls with more than 1,200 individual jumps during the summer of 1945.  


A major element in their success was that, unlike other Black infantry units commanded by White officers, this unique army unit commanding structure was entirely Black.  As time when alone, these pioneers blazed new trails for countless black soldiers to follow.  The 555^th also helped in the formation of other Battalions, Airborne Infantry Regiments and Special Forces.  The truly amazing part of their story was how they as black soldiers had gone from riding in the back of trucks, buses, used “colored” toilets and drinking fountains in rail-road stations, sit in segregated sections of theaters, and go out of their way to avoid confrontation with racist police to a military unit that kept the Northwest forest fires in check and was called by General Ben Lear as “one of the finest groups of soldiers he had ever seen.”  Now that is some history.