Haulman - Eleven myths about the Tuskegee Airmen

The first misconception regarding the Tuskegee Airmen was that they were inferior. The myth was that black pilots could not perform as well in combat as their white counterparts. This misconception developed even before the 99th Fighter Squadron deployed as the first African American Army Air Forces organization in combat. On October 30, 1925, the War College of the U.S. Army issued a memorandum entitled, The Use of Negro Manpower in War. The memorandum noted that Negroes were inferior to whites and encouraged continued segregation within the Army. Even during the squadrons operations in North Africa, authorities challenged its right to remain in combat.

In September 1943, Major General Edwin J. House, commander of the XII Air Support Command, sent a memorandum to Maj. Gen. John K. Cannon, Deputy Commander of the Northwest African Tactical Air Force, suggesting that the 99th Fighter Squadron had failed to demonstrate effectiveness in combat, and should be taken out of the combat zone. The memorandum was based on information from Col. William Momyer, commander of the 33rd Fighter Group, to which the 99th Fighter Squadron had been attached.

Following the House memorandum, which went up the chain of command all the way to the headquarters of the Army Air Forces, the Statistical Control Division, Office of Management Control, War Department, conducted an official study to compare the performance of the 99th Fighter Squadron with that of other P-40 units in the Twelfth Air Force. The subsequent report, released on March 30, 1944, concluded that the 99th Fighter Squadron had performed as well as the other squadrons.

As you can see from the table below, there were seven fighter groups of the Fifteenth Air Force flying primarily bomber escort missions between June 1944 and the end of April 1945. In terms of aerial victory credits, which is one good measure of combat performance, the 332d Fighter Group did not score the lowest number. In fact, its total number of aerial victory credits was higher than that of two of the white groups.

Table I: Fighter Groups of the Fifteenth Air Force in World War II

Sources: USAF Historical Study No. 85, USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World War II (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1978); Maurer Maurer, Air Force Combat Units of World War II (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983).

I should mention, however, that both of the groups scoring lower numbers of aerial victories than the Tuskegee Airmen in the same period were flying P-38 aircraft, and the 332d Fighter Group was flying, for all but one month of the period, P-51 aircraft, which had a higher speed and range than the P-38s. Of the four P-51 fighter groups in the Fifteenth Air Force, the 31st, 52nd, 325th, and 332nd, the 332nd Fighter Group shot down fewer enemy aircraft in the same period. It is possible that the Tuskegee Airmen shot down fewer enemy aircraft than the other P-51 fighter groups, and did not have any aces, because they were staying closer to the bombers they were escorting, as ordered, and not abandoning the bombers to chase after enemy aircraft in the distance. Twenty-seven of the bombers in groups the 332d Fighter Group was assigned to escort were shot down by enemy aircraft. The average number of bombers shot down by enemy aircraft while under the escort of the other groups of the Fifteenth Air Force was 46. The Tuskegee Airmen lost significantly fewer bombers than the average number lost by the other fighter groups in the Fifteenth Air Force.

Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the first African American general in the U.S. Army, awards the Distinguished Flying Cross to his son, Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., for a mission the younger Davis led on June 9, 1944.