In March 1941 Eleanor Roosevelt went up in an airplane piloted by a Black flight instructor at a small Tuskegee airfield, returned to the White House, and put the weight of her office behind it. Five months later the first thirteen cadets of what became the Tuskegee Airmen started primary flight training there.
A Pirep featured story · 06A Moton Field Municipal, Tuskegee, AL
In the early 1940s the United States Army did not believe Black Americans were capable of flying combat aircraft. A Civilian Pilot Training Program had been operating since 1939 at Tuskegee Institute in rural Macon County, Alabama, under the direction of Chief Instructor Charles Alfred "Chief" Anderson — the first African American to earn a transport pilot license and a record-setting long-distance aviator in his own right. The training was being done on a borrowed field outside town called Kennedy Field.
On March 29, 1941, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Tuskegee Institute. She asked Chief Anderson to take her flying. He did. She came back to the White House and pressed her husband on the question of whether Black pilots could serve in combat. She sponsored fundraising for a larger airfield to be built north of the Institute, where primary military flight training could take place. The field was named for Robert R. Moton, Tuskegee Institute's second president (1915–1935). Moton Field opened in the summer of 1941.
The first class of thirteen aviation cadets began primary flight training at Kennedy Field on August 21, 1941, because Moton wasn't quite finished, and moved to Moton in September. By the time the United States entered the war that December, the program was expanding rapidly. Pilots advanced from Moton to Tuskegee Army Air Field a few miles away for advanced training, then went to the 99th Pursuit Squadron — the first all-Black flying unit in the U.S. military.
Between 1941 and 1946, roughly 1,000 Black military pilots completed training at Tuskegee, along with more than 15,000 mechanics, navigators, bombardiers, instructors, and support personnel. They formed the 332nd Fighter Group — four squadrons (99th, 100th, 301st, 302nd) — and the 477th Bombardment Group. Flying P-40s, P-39s, P-47s, and finally the P-51 Mustangs with the distinctive crimson tails that gave them their nickname, the Red Tails escorted heavy bombers from bases in Italy deep into Germany. They flew 1,491 combat missions, earned three Distinguished Unit Citations, 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and a combat record that did not statistically lose more bombers per sortie than the white fighter groups doing the same work. They proved the question wrong.
In 1948 President Truman signed the executive order desegregating the U.S. military. In 1998 Moton Field was designated a National Historic Site. The Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site is on the field today — Hangar 1 is original, Hangar 2 is a reconstruction. A replica P-51 with red tails sits inside. Civilian general aviation still uses the runway. Pilots fly into KCQF to see where it started.