Flying P-39 Airacobras, Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, P-47 Thunderbolts and, lastly, P-51 Mustangs, among the feats of the fighter pilots who flew more than 15,000 sorties was the downing of more than 100 enemy aircraft in aerial combat including three of Germanys fearsome ME-262, the world’s first operational fighter jet demolishing nearly 150 enemy planes on the ground and ruining an Italian destroyer that had been converted to a German torpedo boat.
The 99th and the 332nd Fighter Group saw action in North Africa and Italy where they distinguished themselves winning hundreds of decorations for skill and gallantry in combat. who also took charge of the all-black 477th Bombardment Group in 1945. Roughly 450 men joined the 99th Pursuit Squadron, initially led by whites but later ably commanded by then Capt. Graduation of the first five pilots who received their wings took place on March 7, 1942, at the Tuskegee Army Air Field. Also, because they were a segregated unit, supporting personnel who were black–bombardiers, navigators, mechanics, and instructors-also had to be trained and they too are considered Tuskegee Airmen who kept the pilots aloft. Despite the strictures of brutal and demeaning segregation in the nation’s military and the actions of a few of its white commanders to retard their efforts, 992 African American flight cadets completed the Army Air Corps course between Jand the end of World War II including many who had originally been assigned to the old Buffalo Soldier units, the 9th and 10th cavalries and the 24th and 25th infantries. The legal authority to form a black combat flying unit sprang from Public Law 18, enacted in 1939, which directed the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to allow for the establishment of training programs for “Negro pilots” at designated locations, most notably Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) and a revised Selective Service Act in 1940 that effectively ended discrimination in the recruiting of men for the armed forces. Tuskegee airmen at Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945Ĭourtesy Library of Congress (2007675064)
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