Raquel Fors EUH 1000 Extra Credit Essay 12/06/12 Tuskegee Airmen The movie Tuskegee Airmen was

about the experimental squadron that was the first to integrate black soldiers into the air force. The Tuskegee Airmen lived and fought during World War II. The men in the Tuskegee force were carefully selected by the government. The main characters in the movie were well-educatedone even had a pilots license prior to coming to Tuskegee. They all had scores 95 or higher on their Air Force Officer Qualifying Tests; however, they were required, based on their ethnicity, to retake the exam to enter the force. There was very little faith in the Tuskegee air force, and many believed it would fail. Flying in and of itself was dangerousjust taking a plane into the air posed risks, and men could, and did, die during training. According to the movie, over a third of the men dropped out of the training camp or were killed in accidents. There were one hundred fifty officers at Tuskegee, but only one, the only black officer on base, had combat experience. This officer had fought in the Canadian air force, and had gotten over one hundred kills. The major in charge of the Tuskegee base was racist, believing that the applicants had cheated on their first test because their scores were too high, and frequently telling them that they were not real pilots. The men were told that America was not their country; they were to fight for white men, not for themselves or for their own families. The army was very unforgiving towards the black soldiers-in-training; slight errors could force a man out of the army. In the movie, one man was discharged for reckless show-boating with his plane. In response, the man took a prepped plane into the air and crashed it, killing himself. During one training exercise, two of the pilots-in-training landed on a country road to fix a problem with one of the planes. They happened to land by a chain-gang of mostly black

prisoners, who were all surprised to see that the pilots were black. This incident made headlines across the United States, which upset some of the Congressmen in Washington, D.C. One senator funded an anthropological study which reported that black men were inherently unfit to serve the army, and that the Tuskegee air force should be ended. Six months later, the First Lady went to Tuskegee for a tour when she asked for a plane-ride, specifying that a black man should pilot it. This made headlines in the news, as well, and bolstered Tuskegees standing, and allowed it to finally send its men into the war. The first Tuskegee squadron, the 99th Unit, was sent to Morocco, where the men did mostly fuel runs and took out German supply lines. Their commanding officer was Lieutenant Captain Benjamin ODavis. They were looked down on by the white pilots, and were sabotaged into coming late to meetings. Again, they were faced with the threat of being discharged from the army. Eventually, ODavis went to Washington, D.C. to defend the integrity of his men, and he convinced the government to allow them to continue to fight. He revealed that the Tuskegee men had flown fifty missions with no rotations, while the white squadrons had regular rotations of fresh soldiers. He also convinced the government to reassign the Tuskegee men to Italy, where they would see more air combat and be more useful. There, they are bomb escorts. In Ramitelli, Italy, the 99th Unit is joined by other units from Tuskegee and is given new planes. They have regular encounters with the Germans. In one incident, a Tuskegee pilot sank a German destroyer. Because of his ethnicity, he was pessimistic that he would receive a medal for his act of bravery. The climax of the movie was when the 99th Unit was requested to escort the bomb carriers into Berlin. After the successful mission, the pilot who shot down the German destroyer received a Distinguished Flier medal and was promoted to captain. Over 850 medals were awarded to the Tuskegee Airmen, and sixty-six of them died in battle.