Tuskegee Airmen: The First Black Military Aviators in the US

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military pilots in the history of the US armed forces, together with the navigators, mechanics and other personnel who supported them. Trained in a segregated programme at Tuskegee, Alabama, from 1941, they flew in combat over North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Germany during the Second World War. Their record challenged racist assumptions in the military and helped lead to the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948.

Background: segregation and the Air Corps

In the 1930s the US armed forces were strictly segregated, and the Army Air Corps did not accept Black Americans as pilots. A 1925 Army War College report had claimed, without evidence, that Black soldiers lacked the ability to serve in skilled roles. These ideas were widely accepted by senior officers.

Black newspapers, civil rights organisations such as the NAACP, and Black colleges campaigned against the exclusion. In 1939 Congress created the Civilian Pilot Training Program to build a reserve of aviators, and several Black colleges, including Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, took part. In January 1941 a Howard University student, Yancey Williams, filed a lawsuit to be admitted to military pilot training.

Creating the programme

On 16 January 1941, under growing political pressure, the War Department announced the creation of an all-Black pursuit squadron, the 99th. Training would take place at Tuskegee, where the institute already ran flight instruction at Moton Field and the Army built a new air base, Tuskegee Army Air Field.

The programme gained publicity in March 1941 when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Tuskegee and flew as a passenger with Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson, the institute’s chief flight instructor. Her flight helped answer doubters and is often credited with boosting support for the project.

On 7 March 1942 the first class of five cadets graduated as pilots. They included Captain Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a West Point graduate and the son of the Army’s first Black general, who would lead the Tuskegee fighter units in combat.

Into combat: the 99th Fighter Squadron

The 99th Fighter Squadron deployed to North Africa in April 1943, flying P-40 Warhawks. It flew its first combat mission on 2 June 1943 against the Italian island of Pantelleria. On 2 July Lieutenant Charles B. Hall shot down a German fighter, the first aerial victory by an African American pilot in US service.

The squadron faced open doubt from some white commanders, and a critical report in 1943 nearly led to its removal from combat. Davis defended the unit before a War Department committee, and a later Army study found its performance comparable to that of other P-40 squadrons. In January 1944 the 99th scored several victories over the beachhead during the Anzio landings.

The 332nd Fighter Group and the Red Tails

A larger unit, the 332nd Fighter Group, made up of the 100th, 301st and 302nd Fighter Squadrons, arrived in Italy in early 1944 under Colonel Davis. The 99th joined it in mid-1944. Flying first P-47 Thunderbolts and then P-51 Mustangs from Ramitelli airfield on Italy’s Adriatic coast, the group escorted heavy bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force to targets in Austria, Germany, Romania and elsewhere.

The group painted the tails of its aircraft red, which led to the nickname “Red Tails”. Escort work demanded discipline: Davis insisted that his pilots stay close to the bombers rather than leave them to chase enemy fighters for personal victories. Bomber crews came to value this approach, and some specifically requested the Red Tails as escorts. The group also flew strafing attacks on airfields, railways and shipping, including a June 1944 attack that badly damaged a German-controlled warship in the Adriatic. On 24 March 1945 its pilots escorted bombers on a long mission to Berlin and were credited with shooting down three German Me 262 jet fighters. In total the Tuskegee fighter units were credited with 112 aerial victories, according to the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

Life for the airmen was shaped by segregation at every step. At Tuskegee and at bases in the United States they faced separate facilities, hostile local laws in the Jim Crow South, and white officers who often doubted them. Overseas, they were kept in separate units and rarely received the same recognition as white pilots. Many later said they were fighting two wars: one against the Axis and one against racism at home, an idea expressed in the “Double V” campaign launched by the Black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier in 1942.

A Black medium bomber unit, the 477th Bombardment Group, trained in the United States but did not see combat before the war ended. In April 1945, at Freeman Field in Indiana, more than 100 of its officers were arrested for refusing to accept segregated officers’ clubs. The protest, known as the Freeman Field Mutiny, became a landmark in the struggle for equal treatment in the military.

Key people

• Benjamin O. Davis Jr. – commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, later the first Black general in the US Air Force.
• Charles Alfred Anderson – chief civilian flight instructor at Tuskegee, often called the father of Black aviation.
• Eleanor Roosevelt – First Lady, whose flight at Tuskegee in 1941 publicised the programme.
• Charles B. Hall – the first Tuskegee Airman to shoot down an enemy aircraft, in July 1943.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: the Red Tails never lost a bomber. A March 1945 newspaper story claimed this, and the idea became part of popular memory. In 2007 historian Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency found that escorted bombers had been shot down by enemy aircraft on seven days, about 27 bombers in all. Even so, the group’s losses were lower than those of many other escort groups.

Myth: all Tuskegee Airmen were pilots. In fact most of those involved were ground crew, instructors, mechanics, nurses, clerks and other support personnel.

Legacy

The Tuskegee Airmen’s service was cited by those who argued that segregation wasted talent and was morally indefensible. On 26 July 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, requiring equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces, which led to desegregation. In 1954 Davis became the first African American general in the Air Force.

The airmen’s story later inspired books, documentaries and the feature film Red Tails (2012). In 2007 they were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and Moton Field is preserved as the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. Their struggle forms part of the wider history that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Timeline

• 1941, 16 January: The War Department announces an all-Black pursuit squadron.
• 1941, March: Eleanor Roosevelt flies with Chief Anderson at Tuskegee.
• 1942, 7 March: The first five Black military pilots graduate.
• 1943, 2 June: The 99th Fighter Squadron flies its first combat mission.
• 1943, 2 July: Charles B. Hall scores the first aerial victory.
• 1944, summer: The 332nd Fighter Group begins escorting heavy bombers with red-tailed P-51s.
• 1945, 24 March: The group escorts a bombing mission to Berlin.
• 1948, 26 July: Executive Order 9981 orders equality in the armed forces.

Why it matters

The Tuskegee Airmen proved in combat that prejudice, not ability, had kept Black Americans out of military aviation. Their achievements, won while facing discrimination at home, made them a powerful symbol of the fight for civil rights in the United States.