Museum of Black WW II History

On 16 January 1941, the Army Air Corps was opened to blacks after decades of segregation.  Tuskegee , Alabama, was chosen for flight school.  This area of the country was noted for intolerance, violence, and segregation.

In the spring of 1941, flight instructor C. Alfred Anderson took First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for a flight around Tuskegee .  Flight training began in June of 1941 with the class 42-C-SE of 13 men.  Only five graduated, including Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who became the commander of the 99^th fighter squadron, and later the 332nd fighter group. 

The 100th fighter squadron soon followed and later the 301st and 302nd in mid-1942.  Tuskegee Army Air Field was a hell-hole of prejudice.  The black squadrons were not sent to combat after training, but stayed in the States and kept training.  Because of the delays, the 99th had much more training than white units, with most pilots having 250 hours in the P-40 fighter, when the 99th Fighter Squadron arrived in North Africa, 9 June 9 1943.  The first combat mission was escorting A-20 Havoc attack bombers, on a mission to the island of Pantelleria.

On his eighth combat mission, Lt. Charles B. Hall was the first 99th pilot to shoot down a German fighter on 2 July 1943 in his P-40L.  The 99th moved first to Sicily and then to Italy, where they were used for ground attack more than escort fighting.

February 1944, the 100th, 301st, and 302nd fighter squadrons joined the 99th to form the 332nd fighter group.  These squadrons flew the P-39 Airacobra fighters, which were very good at ground attack.  In mid-1942 the 332nd got P-47 Thunderbolt fighters to replace their P-39 and P-40 fighters.  On 25 June 1944, eight P-47s attacked a German destroyer escort with machine-guns, and it blew up and sank.

The P-47 was the first Red Tail, and transition to the P-51 Mustang fighter happened in June 1944.  The tails were painted red and thus were born the Red Tails.  On 8 July 1944, the 332nd fighter group shot down eleven enemy aircraft.  Ground attack and escort missions were the work of the Red Tails, for the rest of the war.  The Germans called them Schwartze Volgelmenschen (black birdmen).  Most white pilots were rotated home after fifty missions, but the Tuskegee could not train enough black pilots.  Walter Palmer of the 100th fighter squadron was not rotated home until he completed 158 missions in November 1944.

Pilots of the 332nd fighter group were among the first to confront the ME 262 German jet fighter, and gun camera photos were used to train other pilots on how to combat the much faster jets.  450 Tuskegee pilots flew their P-51s on over 1,500 missions, destroying 111 enemy aircraft in the air, plus 150 more on the ground.  One destroyer escort and 57 locomotives were destroyed, plus numerous rail cars and river barges. 

994 men were trained as aircrew and another 16,000 to 19,000 men were trained as ground crew, including some white men. 

The Red Tails escorted 200 bomber missions without the loss of any bomber to enemy fighters, a record unequaled by any other fighter group.  Altogether, the Red Tails were awarded 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, plus other medals; 66 pilots were killed in action and another 33 were captured.

Partly because of the Tuskegee Airmen's courage and devotion to duty, President Truman desegregated the military in 1948.  Within 45 years of the end of WWII, General Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony Honoring the Tuskegee Airmen
United States Capitol
March 29, 2007