Winter 1993
Number 27
$5.00
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ALABAMAHERITAGE:WINTER1993
A L A B A M A H E R I T A G E : W I N T E R 199 3
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In the years before World War II, many African Americans attempted to join the
Army Air Corps but weresummarily rejected because of their race.
I
N THE EARLY MORNING hours of November 16, 1944, Capt. Luke Weathers, a young
fighter pilot from Memphis, Tennessee, strolled
out onto an airstrip in northern Italy and checked
the condition of his plane. Weathers had made
precautionary testing of his aircraft a part of his daily
routine during his flight training days in Alabama, and he
had continued the practice throughout his active duty
assignments in North Africa and Europe. Today his
mission was to escort B-17 bombers, known as "Flying
Fortresses," from bases in northern Italy to targets in the
Munich area of southern Germany. Most bombers, even
the heavily armed B-17s, were vulnerable to enemy
fighter aircraft; fighter pilots had to provide "close cover"
escort on bombing missions such as these.
Escort duty was uneventful for Weathers and his
fellow fighter pilots, Capt. Melvin Jackson and Capt.
Louis Purnell, until eight Messerschmidt 109s (ME 109s)
attacked a crippled bomber returning from the mission.
All three American pilots peeled off from their positions,
returned the fire, and Weathers hit one of the ME 109s.
Suddenly he noticed red balls of aircraft fire arcing
over the canopy of his cockpit. He was being attacked
from the rear. Jackson and Purnell fell in behind the
attacking plane but had to abandon their pursuit when
other Messerschmidts began firing on them as well.
Instead of pursuing Jackson and Purnell, the Germans
concentrated on Weathers' plane, closing in from all
directions in a deadly tactic that Americans called the
German "wolf pack." The odds were heavily in the
Germans' favor, but Captain Weathers maintained his
composure.
"It looked like they had me," Weathers remembered
later, "so I decided to follow the falling [ME 109] plane.
I made a dive, came out of it, and looked back. One
plane was still on my tail. I was headed back toward
Germany and didn't want to go that way. I chopped my
throttle and dropped my flaps to cut my speed quickly.
The fellow overshot me and this left me on his tail. He
was in range so I opened fire. A long burst and a short
burst [of gunfire] sent him tumbling to the ground."
Weathers' acrobatic and highly dangerous maneuver
allowed him to escape unharmed.
A L A B A M A HERITAGE:WINTER 1993
Luke Weathers, Melvin Jackson, and Louis Purnell
were among the first black military aviators in American
history. Trained in Alabama at Tuskegee Institute, now
Tuskegee University, they were members of the Tuskegee airmen, among the most highly decorated pilots
in the European theater of war during World War II.
P
RIOR TO THE WAR, few African Americans had the opportunity to learn to fly.
Despite the odds against them, several black
Americans managed to gain not only a pilot's
license but a few headlines as well. "Brave
Bessie" Coleman, who learned to fly in France, became
the first black woman in the United States to hold a
pilot's license. Coleman barnstormed across the country
in the 1920s, thrilling air show audiences until her death
in a tragic crash in 1926. In October 1932, James Herman
Banning and Thomas Allen (called "suntanned editions
of Lindy" by the Pittsburgh Courier) became the first
black Americans to complete a transcontinental flight.
One year later, Charles Alfred "Chief Anderson and
Dr. Albert E. Forsythe became the first African Americans to make a round-trip transcontinental flight.
In the years before World War II, many African Americans attempted to join the Army Air Corps (the precursor
to the U.S. Air Force) but were summarily rejected
because of their race. Determined to prove their flying
skills, two young black aviators, Chauncey E. Spencer
and Dale L. White, rented an old Lincoln-Paige biplane
in Oaklawn, Illinois, and flew to Washington, D.C. After
a number of complications, Spencer and White finally
arrived in the capitol and were introduced to Rep. Everett
Dirksen of Illinois and Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri.
Truman was reportedly surprised to learn that the air
corps excluded African Americans. "If you guys had the
guts to fly this thing to Washington," he said, "I've got
guts enough to see that you get what you are asking!"
It would not be easy. The War Department's policy
of racial discrimination was based on a 1925 War College
study which stated that black men, due to their "smaller
cranial size," lacked the ability to perform as well as
white men and, consequently, were "incapable of flying
airplanes."
In 1932 James Herman
Banning!,above) and
Thomas C. Allen became the
first black aviators to complete a transcontinental flight.
Time: 41 hours and27
minutes. Affectionately called
the "Flying Hobos," thepair
bought a used aircraft and set
off with less than $100for
expenses. (Thomas C. Allen,
courtesy National Air and
Space Museum, Smithsonian
Institution) Right: Opportunitiesfor African American
aviators expanded dramatically in 1939, when blacks
gained entrance to the
Civilian Pilot Training Program. Pictured: Linkwood
Williams, civilian flight
instructor at TuskegeeArmy
Air Field. (James 0. Plinton,
Jr., courtesy NASM, SI)
W
HEN WAR BROKE OUT in Europe in 1939, President Roosevelt
asked Congress to create a federally funded Civilian Pilot Training
Program (CPTP) as a preparedness
measure. The program was to be administered by the
Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA), which, operating
through colleges and universities, promoted interest in
military service during national emergencies. African
Americans such as Dr. Ormande Walker of Wilberforcc
University and Arthur Howe of Hampton Institute began pressing members of Congress and President
Roosevelt to include black colleges and universities in
the new aviation classes. The Senate Military Affairs
Committee debated the question of black participation
in the Army Air Corps during the early months of 1939
and, eventually, a compromise was struck, stipulating
that one of the civilian pilot training schools would be
earmarked as a training site for African Americans.
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama was selected as the site,
but Public Law 18, signed by President Roosevelt on
April 3, made no explicit statement about admitting
black civilian pilots to the air corps. Thus, the Army Air
Corps continued its exclusion of black pilots.
ALABAMA HERITAGE:WINTER
1993
33
The army was convinced that any effort to undermine the system of segregated
training would instigate race riots and hobble the war effort.
Above: First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt, an avifi supporter
of equal opportunity for
black Americans, joined
Tuskegee's chief flight
instructor C. Alfred "Chief
A ndersonfor an aerial tour
of the airfield. Left: Col.
Benjamin 0. Davis, Jr.,
pictured in the cockpit of his
P-51 Mustang, commanded
the Ninety-ninth Fighter
Squadron and, later, the
332d Fighter Group. Davis'
skill as an administrator did
much to dispel hostility
toward black participation
in military aviation.
(Courtesy NASM, SI)
F
ROM THE BEGINNING, the program
at Tuskegee was a success. Ninety-one of
one hundred students qualified for civil
pilot's licenses during the school's first
year of operation, and by 1940 Tuskegee
had become the largest black pilot training program in
the country.
Keeping up with the need for airfields was a problem.
For the first few months, from January through March
1940, student pilots used the municipal airport in Montgomery, forty miles away, because the landing strip at
Tuskegee was not completed. As the program expanded,
Tuskegee pilots made use of their own airstrip as well as
airfields in Montgomery and at Alabama Polytechnic
College (now Auburn University). Finally, aided by funds
ALABAMA H E R I T A G E : W I N T E R 1993
that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped raise, Tuskegee
built a second airstrip in August 1941.
That same summer, Frederick Douglass Patterson,
president of Tuskegee Institute, received word from the
U. S. secretary of war that Congress had appropriated
$1,091,000 for the construction of an army air base at
Tuskegee. Black cadets would now have the opportunity to receive basic, advanced, and combat training and
to earn flight wings and commissions. Hangars, repair
shops, classrooms, laboratories, administrative facilities,
an infirmary, dining hall, firehouse, and dormitories were
to be constructed to provide a self-sustaining and fully
functional air base.
Tractors began leveling hills and uprooting trees on
July 23, 1941, in preparation for laying the runways.
Ralph Jones, one of the base support personnel, arrived
in October before construction was complete and described the scene:
We arrived at a little train station called Cheehaw in Alabama, which described the place adequately. From Cheehaw
we were trucked to the base... really what was to become the
base, for on our arrival we immediately dubbed it tent city.
There were no permanent buildings for the Army personnel
and the airstrip was still under construction.
Charles B. \\all
"Buster had one problem, if it could be considered as such. He
was totally withoutfear."
—Capt. George Roberts
The first class of cadets transferred to Tuskegee Army
Air Field in November 1941, less than one month before
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
I
N THE YEARS BEFORE World War II, African Americans had challenged the U.S. military
policy of racial segregation. In 1938, while the
nationally circulated black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, campaigned for extended opportunities for blacks in the military, the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) encouraged the War Department to integrate its personnel
in proportion to the country's total population of black
Americans, thereby creating more opportunities for blacks
in the military, including the air force.
Within the black community, the debate over how to
bring about equality of opportunity in the military was
intense. Many African Americans, like Tuskegee's President Patterson, supported a separate training facility for
blacks at Tuskegee. But others, like Howard University
Law School Dean William Henry Hastie, opposed the
formation of a segregated unit, claiming it was discriminatory and ultimately restrictive of opportunities. The
government remained firm: Segregation of the races was
the policy of the U.S. military.
After the passage of the Selective Services Act of
1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that
opportunities for blacks in the army would be maintained in proportion to the number of African Americans
in the population at large, and that pilot, mechanic, and
technical training for blacks in the air corps would be
increased. The policy of racial segregation, however,
remained unchanged.
Segregating the air corps proved far more difficult
than segregating infantry regiments. Pilots often had
technical problems, even on maneuvers, and were forced
down far from their home base. When a black pilot was
forced to spend time on a base that had no facilities for
O
N JULY 2, 1943, Charles B. "Buster"
Hall, Ninety-ninth Fighter Squadron,
became the first black pilot to shoot
down an enemy aircraft. As part of the
Sicilian campaign, he piloted one of six
P-40s assigned to escort sixteen B-25s in the bombing of
enemy-occupied Castelvetrano airfield.
"It was my eighth mission," Hall later told an interviewer, "but the first time I had seen the enemy close
enough to shoot at. I saw two FW-190s following the
Mitchells just after the bombs were dropped. I headed
for the space between the fighters and bombers and
managed to turn inside the Jerries. I fired a long burst
and saw my tracers penetrate the second aircraft. He was
turning to the left, but suddenly fell off and headed
straight into the ground. I followed him down and saw
him crash. He raised a big cloud of dust."
Upon Hall's return to the air base, the squadron
awarded him a rare "ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola." According to fellow pilot Louis Purnell: "We chilled the
Coke in a one-gallon fruit juice can packed with ice. It
was in the shade of a grove of olive trees that the bottle of
Coke—probably the only one in the Mediterranean theater of operations—came to a well-deserved end."
Hall also received the Distinguished Flying Cross
and commendations from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
(Elmer D. Jones, courtesy NASM, SI)
ALABAMA HERITAGE:WINTER
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36
A L A B A M A H E R I T A G E : W I N T E R 1993
ALABAMA H E R I T A G E r W I N T E R
1993
. Calmer
Palmer flew 158 missions, probably the highest number of
sorties flown by a Tuskegee-trained pilot in World War II.
I
N JULY 1944, LT. WALTER PALMER, a
graduate of Tuskegee Army Air Field's tactical
fighter school, was flying protective cover for
bombers in Europe with the One Hundredth
Fighter Squadron of the 332d Fighter Group.
We were "about five thousand feet above the bombers," Palmer recalled, "as they prepared for their bomb
run [in southwestern Germany]... .We noticed 'bogeys'
attempting to break through our protective formation in
order to get to the bombers. As they approached, we
engaged them. I got on the tail of a FW-190 and squeezed
the trigger. My first victory was recorded on film. After
pulling back up, I came up under another [Focke-Wulf].
Since he did not see me, I closed the distance until I was
within range and gave the trigger another squeeze; however, nothing happened because my guns had jammed.
I foolishly decided—in the anxiety of battle—that the
only thing left to do was to chop off his empennage with
my propeller. I didn't stop to think my plane would go
down as well.
"At any rate, . . .[the German pilot] decided to head
into the mountains
I reasoned he might know his way
into those mountains and I did not. So I headed home
and performed my 'Victory Roll' over the field so my
crew chief and the others of my crew would know to get
ready for the celebration. Several members of our squadron got victories that day." (Courtesy Walter J. Palmer)
38
A L A B A M A H E R I T A G E : W I N T E R 1993
blacks, base commanders had difficulty carrying out the
rules of segregation. These same rules presented problems in personnel deployment, mass mobilization, and
aerial combat.
After African Americans were permitted to become
pilots, another problem arose: Who would command
them? Not only did the War Department need a regular
army officer who was black, but a black officer who
could fly airplanes. Between 1920 and 1940, only one
black man had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and had served with distinction, according to the War Department—Capt. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., class of 1936 and son of the army's
only black general.
Davis was selected to command the first class of
cadets at Tuskegee, a class that would form the core of
the first black fighter squadron in the air corps, the
Ninety-ninth Fighter Squadron. Davis' superiors assumed he would learn to fly and he did, although he was
never as skillful a pilot as others in the squadron. In fact,
his instructors joked that Davis banked his biplane trainer
with a precision seen only on the West Point parade
ground. But more importantly, Davis was a regular line
officer who understood army procedures and knew how
to motivate men.
Preflight training at Tuskegee lasted five grueling
weeks. From five in the morning until lights out at ten
o'clock, the cadets drilled and studied first aid, radio,
codes, aircraft identification, military law, courtesy, and
army organization. New cadets also had to withstand
hazing from the upperclassmen. One cadet, Walter J.
Palmer, wrote that about one-fifth of his class of fifty
cadets dropped out, because "nothing was worth that
much physical and mental harassment."
Lt. Charles H. DeBow, Jr., who graduated with the
first class of cadets at Tuskegee Army Air Field, recalled
his training at Tuskegee for a writer from American Magazine in 1942. Primary flight training was supervised by
the army, DeBow said, "but the actual instructors were
colored civilians trained under the Civilian Aeronautics
Authority (CAA)." Basic flight training began in November 1941, when Davis took over command of the
cadets, and advanced training commenced in January
1942.
With this new training came new airplanes, like "the
Big Vultee BT-13s, with 400 horsepower engines, 130
mph cruising speed and plenty of new problems." DeBow
was astonished at every new piece of aircraft that arrived.
"Those ships were something," he said, particularly the
Within the black community, the debate over how to bring about
equality of opportunity in the military was intense.
Graduating class, Tuskegee
Army Air Field, June 1942:
(Left to right) William A.
Campbell, Willie Ashley,
Langston Caldwell, Herbert
Clark, George Boiling,
Charles B. Hall, Graham
Mitchell, Herbert Carter,
Louis Purnell, Graham
Smith, Allen G. Lane,
Spann Watson, Faythe
McGinnis, James T. Wiley,
and Irwin Lawrence.
(Courtesy Herbert E. Carter)
"North American AT-6As with their 600 horsepower
engines, 160 mph cruising speed, and 30 calibre machine guns."
DeBow, Ben Davis, George Roberts, and other pilots
spent four days at Eglin Field, Florida, shooting at ground
targets. They not only qualified but set a better record
than a squad of British cadets before them. Also, DeBow
claimed, "[We] practiced night formation flying with our
wing tips just six inches apart."
W
HILE FLIGHT TRAINING continued with great success, other aspects of life at Tuskegee Army Air
Field presented difficulties. Despite the War Department's original plan to run the base with black personnel exclusively, the command structure, for the most part, was
white and remained a continuing source of frustration to
black officers throughout the war. All military rules regarding segregation of the races were observed, which
meant that white officers had no officially sanctioned
contact with blacks except during duty hours. The army
was convinced that any effort to undermine this system
of segregated training would instigate race riots and
hobble the war effort.
Other problems arose as white communities surrounding the base became displeased about the influx of black
pilots, administrators, and support personnel. Racial tensions flared. As a consequence, morale was low when
Capt. Noel F. Parrish, a native of Lexington, Kentucky,
arrived in May 1941 to take over as base commander. In
order to reduce tensions in the community, Parrish immediately sought to make the base so self-sufficient and
attractive that personnel would not want to leave.
Parrish assigned to Capt. Eldridge Williams the task
of creating a morale-building physical fitness program.
Williams organized football, basketball, baseball, and
tennis teams that competed on a collegiate level with
other black teams throughout the country. Maj. Fred
Minnis, Education, Recreation, and Morale Officer, held
local talent reviews, provided the latest films, and brought
a variety of celebrities to Tuskegee, including Ella
Fitzgerald, Lena Home, Louis Armstrong, Joe Louis,
Langston Hughes, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, The
Camel Caravan orchestra and singers, and opera stars
Grace Moore and Richard Crooks.
ALABAMA HERITAGE:WINTER
1993
39
Above: In August 1943,
Maj. GeorgeS. "Spanky"
Roberts, a graduate of the
first class at Tuskegee Army
Air Field, assumed command of the Ninety-ninth
Fighter Squadron, which
skillfully supported Allied
landings atAnzio, January February, 1944. Right: A
primary task of the 332d
Fighter Group was to protect
Allied bombers, like this B24, in bombing raids over
central and eastern Europe.
(U.S. Air Force, courtesy
NASM, SI).
Sgt. James T. Moseley, a pianist and composer from
Muskogee, Oklahoma, organized an orchestra for dances,
The Imperial Kings of Rhyme. Young ladies from local
colleges—including Talladega College, Atlanta University, Spelman College, and, of course, Tuskegee Institute—were invited to attend, with transportation and
overnight quarters provided.
On Sunday afternoons, Capt. Ulysses G. Lee, a former
literature professor at Howard University, and Cpl. John
Lucas, a classical pianist, presented musical programs,
often featuring hymns and spirituals by the post chapel
choir and marches by the post band. The big attraction
on Sunday was "Blue Hour," a popular dance at the
Officers' Club, where officers and their women friends
frequently took turns as vocalists.
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ALABAMA H E R I T A G E : W I N T ER
1993
G
RADUATION DAY at Tuskegee saw
the convergence of people from all over
the country to witness the culmination
of months of intensive training. Louis
G. Hill, who had completed flight training and was stationed at Tuskegee Army Air Field,
remembered seeing "carts and wagons loaded with families and scrubbed children [who] lined the roadway to
Tuskegee Institute. . . . It takes a lot of courage to
succeed," he recalled over forty-five years later, and "it
takes hope to fulfill dreams. Out of all the things that
happened in my life, that scene, backgrounded by the
red Alabama clay, stands out boldly in my mind."
The guest speaker at the first graduating class of
pilots at Tuskegee, Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, re-
By 1940 Tuskegee had the largest black
pilot trainingprogram in the country.
ment of their young lives and a time of great pride for
their families. After graduation, Lt. Charles DeBow took
the train to Indianapolis with his parents. Years later, he
recalled their trip:
/'// never forget that ride. Dad kept finding an excuse to
walk down the aisle to the water cooler. On the way back to our
seats, he'd find an excuse to start a conversation with somebody,
anybody, about "those colored boys who just got their wings at
Tuskegee." Then he'd add casually, as if it had just occurred to
him, "You know, there's one of them right here in this car." Then
he'dpoint to me and say, "There. That's Lieutenant DeBow.
He's my boy."
O
minded the graduates that their training was viewed as
an experiment, not only by the War Department but by
American society. Failure meant letting themselves
down, of course, but worse, it meant dashing the hopes
of all African Americans:
You will furnish the nuclei of the Ninety-ninth and One
Hundredth Pursuit Squadrons. Future graduates of this
school will look to you as old pilots. They will be influenced
profoundly by examples which you set. Therefore, it will be of
the highest importance that your service be of a character
worthy of emulation by younger officers.
Despite the responsibilities and challenges handed
them that day, it was for many the most exciting mo-
VERSEAS ASSIGNMENTS did not
come as easily or as quickly as the
Tuskegee airmen hoped. In fact, all
African American soldiers had trouble
getting assignments abroad because the
War Department was unable to agree on a policy for
overseas use of black soldiers. Some Tuskegee pilots
and ground crews began to call themselves the "Lonely
Eagles," a variation of Charles Lindbergh's nickname,
"Lone Eagle." As late as the fall of 1944, the Pittsburgh
Courier-was still bemoaning the War Department's racial
discrimination and noting the frustration of blacks at
Tuskegee. As an example, the Courier mentioned Capt.
Algernon Sparks, a black warrant and finance officer
who claimed to have been "passed over by a white
lieutenant with less experience." After one year at
Tuskegee, Captain Sparks summed up his contributions
to the war effort in the title of a song: "Time on My
Hands." He also noted a vast improvement in his PingPong game. Like many other men at Tuskegee, the
frustrated Sparks whiled away the hours at a time when
the army was in dire need of men on the battlefield.
E
VENTUALLY, of course, many African
American troops did see action overseas.
In early 1942, the War Department sent
black troops to Liberia to defend against
the threat of a Nazi advance and to build
an air base. The War Department also considered using
A L A B AM A H E R I T AG E : W I N T E R 1 99 3
41
Herbert E. Carter
"The mechanics and pilots of the Ninety-ninth were the best in
the Mediterranean theater of operations."—Herbert E. Carter
L
T. COL. HERBERT E. CARTER,
USAF (Ret.), a former pilot and squadron aircraft maintenance officer trained
at Tuskegee Army Air Field, recently
told an interviewer that the unsung heroes of the war were the "men [who] worked ten to
twelve hours daily to ensure that their aircraft were
operational." Such involvement contributed enormously
to the team spirit that developed between pilots and
ground crews. "To them, a missed mission or an aborted
flight was an unfavorable reflection on themselves and
their flight. On the other hand, a flight that resulted in
air-to-air victories by the pilot, or air-to-ground target
destruction, was a celebration."
The mechanics and technicians trained at Tuskegee
were also called on "to retrieve aircraft that had crashlanded for whatever reasons," often behind enemy lines.
They either salvaged the aircraft wreckage on-site or
tried to retrieve the whole aircraft. When Carter returned to the United States in July 1944, after seventyseven missions (rotation eligibility back to the states was
only fifty missions), he and the other pilots regretted
"leaving the mechanics and technicians of the Ninetyninth, knowing they were there for the duration."
Above: Capt. Herbert E. Carter presents Crew Chief of the
Month award to Sgt. Willie McNair. Sgt. Lewis H. Sobers
looks on. (Courtesy Herbert E. Carter)
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A L A B A M A H E R I T A G E : W I N T E R 1993
the Ninety-ninth Fighter Squadron in Liberia to search
for German U-Boats along the west African coast, but
the Allied invasion of North Africa removed the German
threat to Liberia. It did not, however, decrease the need
for tactical fighters in the Mediterranean theater of war.
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson visited the air
field in Tuskegee in February 1943 to discuss possible
overseas assignments for the "Black Birdmen," or
Schwarze Vogelmenshen—as the Germans would later call
them—with Captain Parrish, who repeatedly appealed
to the War Department for activation of his fliers. One
early rumor asserted that the Ninety-ninth was being
shipped out to North Africa, but Tuskegee's pilots had
to endure another month of drills on aerial combat,
formation, and night flying before the squadron was
ordered to Camp Shanks, New York, for embarkation.
The four hundred men of the Ninety-ninth Fighter
Squadron were initially assigned to an airfield in French
Morocco. In June 1943, they received their first combat
assignment, a strafing mission against the heavily fortified island fortress of Pantelleria. On the morning of
June 9, a squadron of planes led by Charles "A-Train"
Dryden was attacked by twelve Focke-Wulfs and
Messerschmidts acting as escorts for eighteen bombers
en route to attack Allied forces in Tunisia. Tuskegee
airmen historian Robert A. Rose later summed up
Dryden's account of the action:
. . . the Jerries peeled off from 12,000 feet and dived through
the Warhawks [U.S. aircraft] at better than 400 MPH. Two
Focke-Wulfs caught [Lee] Ray ford's right wing. Spann
Watson camefrom Ray ford's right and fired a burst at the
two Germans. TheNazis flipped and broke away. Willie
Ashley had lost considerable altitude, having gone into a spin,
but upon recovering hefound a Focke-Wulf crossing his sights.
He got in a raking burst, and the German went into aflat
smoking glide to the sea. Other enemy planes turned and
retreated toward Sicily while Ashley pursued. Finally, enemy
ground fire forced him back.
WAS THE FIRST of many combat sorties for the Ninety-ninth Fighter
Squadron, which, along with other
Tuskegee-trained squadrons in the
332d Fighter Group, helped destroy the
German war machine across central and eastern Europe.
They flew hundreds of missions over European territory
and were part of the Allied invasion forces in Sicily,
southern France, and Greece.
The Tuskegee airmen proved that no discrepancy existed between the effectiveness of
properly trained black and white soldiers.
The base commander at
Tuskegee Army Air Field
reviews aviation cadets and
their Vultee BT-13 basic
trainers. (USAF Photo
Collection, Negative No.
20798 A.C., courtesy
NASM, SI)
By March 7, 1945, American forces had discovered
the Remagen Bridge intact and had begun crossing the
Rhine River into the heart of Germany. On March 24,
the Tuskegee airmen played a pivotal role in this advance as the Fifteenth Air Force attempted a sixteenhundred-mile attack on Berlin led by Col. Benjamin O.
Davis, Jr., and the 332d Fighter Group, the cadre of
which was formed by the Ninety-ninth Fighter Squadron. The target was the Daimler-Benz Tank Works, and
the mission was designed as a diversionary effort to draw
off German fighters which might otherwise have been
deployed against the Allied airborne landings north of
the Ruhr Valley.
On that same day, the 332d Fighter Group, flying
cover for B-17 bombers, encountered several jet-propelled Messerschmidt 262 fighters. The Tuskegee airmen claimed three of the eight German jets destroyed.
For successfully escorting the B-17s and exhibiting "outstandingly aggressive combat technique," the 332d
Fighter Group was awarded the Distinguished Unit
Citation.
During the last few months of the war, Tuskegee
served as a training facility for a host of programs primarily for African Americans. But few, if any, of these
trainees would see combat in World War II. On April 25,
1945, less than two weeks before the war in Europe
ended on May 7, the 332d flew its last mission, chalking
up four more victories over enemy aircraft while on a
photo reconnaissance mission over Prague.
When hostilities ended in the Pacific, President Harry
Truman announced a two-day holiday. The military and
civilian personnel at Tuskegee Army Air Field spent
their vacations enjoying the base facilities. Lucky
Millinder and his orchestra entertained the largest crowd
ever at the post amphitheater.
After the war, operations continued at Tuskegee until
June 29,1946, when the last class of pilots graduated and
was transferred to other units. Many of the men and
women who trained at Tuskegee never used their skills
because opportunities for African Americans were limited in a segregated army. The demobilization that followed soon after the war also forced many into becoming
reservists. Most of those who managed to retain their
active duty status ended up at Lockbourne Air Base,
near Columbus, Ohio.
The Tuskegee airmen, however, had every reason to
celebrate. They had proven to American society that no
discrepancy existed between the effectiveness of properly trained black and white soldiers. Perhaps their success in action during World War II helped change attitudes towards integration in the American military; certainly their success brought about a strong sense of pride
among those who served. Two years after the last
Tuskegee airman graduated, President Truman ordered
the desegregation of the armed forces, and the Defense
Department announced the end of mandated segregation in the U.S. military. Wherever they were, the
Tuskegee airmen must have cheered.
j£H]
A L A B A M A H E R I T A G E : W I N T E R 1993
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