The Red Tails of Tuskegee

In January 1941, before America was at war, the Army Air Corps activated the 99th Pursuit Squadron — the first all-black flying unit in U.S. military history — and assigned it to a flight training program at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The "Tuskegee Experiment" was meant to determine whether African Americans could be trained to fly combat aircraft; many in the War Department openly expected and intended it to fail. Primary flight training began on July 19, 1941, at first on Kennedy Field, then on the new Robert Russa Moton Field — funded in part by Eleanor Roosevelt, who had visited in March 1941 and famously taken a flight with C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson, the school's lead instructor. The program produced 992 black military pilots between 1941 and 1946. The 332nd Fighter Group — comprising the 99th, 100th, 301st, and 302nd Fighter Squadrons — deployed to Italy in 1944. They flew P-40s, P-39s, P-47s, and finally P-51 Mustangs. They painted the tails of their aircraft red. They flew 1,491 combat missions, escorted Fifteenth Air Force heavy bombers deep into Germany, and earned 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Distinguished Unit Citations, and one of the lowest bomber-loss rates in the European theater. President Truman's 1948 executive order ending segregation in the U.S. military was directly enabled by what the Tuskegee Airmen had proved. The 332nd was deactivated in 1949; its members were absorbed into the new integrated Air Force. Today Moton Field is the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site (NPS, since 2008) — Hangar #1 still stands, the original 1941 wooden parachute room is intact, and the runway is still in use as KCQF.