The CAF Red Tail Project

Did you know?

1. C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson earned his pilot's license in 1929 and became the first Black American to receive a commercial pilot's certificate in 1932, and, subsequently, to make a transcontinental flight. Anderson is also well known as the pilot who flew Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, convincing her to encourage her husband to authorize military flight training at Tuskegee.

2. The Tuskegee Airmen were America's first Black military airmen.

3. The Tuskegee Airmen trained to be pilots, navigators, or bombardiers.

4. Tuskegee University was awarded the U.S. Army Air Corps contract to help train America’s first Black military aviators. It already had an airfield, and a civilian pilot training program.

5. The all-Black, 332nd Fighter Group consisted originally of four fighter squadrons, the 99th, the 100th, the 301st and the 302nd.

6. From 1940-1946, some 1,000 Black pilots were trained at Tuskegee.

7. As bomber escorts, the Tuskegee Airmen lost very few bombers to enemy fighters, which earned them the nickname "Red Tail Angels".

8. The 99th Squadron distinguished itself by being awarded two Presidential Unit Citations (June-July 1943 and May 1944) for outstanding tactical air support and aerial combat in the 12th Air Force in Italy, before joining the 332nd Fighter Group.

9. The 332nd Fighter Group was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its longest bomber escort mission to Berlin, Germany, March 24, 1945. It destroyed three German ME-262 jet fighters and damaged five additional jet fighters without losing any of the bombers or any of its own fighter aircraft to enemy fighters.

10. In 1948, President Harry Truman enacted Executive Order No. 9981 - directing equality of treatment and opportunity in all of the United States Armed Forces, which in time led to the end of racial segregation in the U.S. military forces.