THE UNTOLD TRUTH OF THE 332ND PURSUIT SQUADRON
USAACE
NCOA
15ZSLC
15-002
SFC JOHNSON
We’ve all heard of the Tuskegee airmen in some way. Sometimes in the race to capture a large audience, Hollywood film adaptations neglect the less romantic truths of what transpired. Because of this, facts become obscured or completely omitted altogether. The 332nd fighter group was composed of the 99th, 100th, 301st, and 302nd pursuit squadrons who were once thought to be part of an experimental aviation program that was not intended to actually work. That was not true. In fact, The African American men of 332nd received the same standard of training their white counterparts did. Six months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
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Haulman, Ph.D., The Chief of the Organizational Histories Branch of the Air Force Historical Research Agency, who did most of the research in the 21st century that dispelled many stories about the 332nd, said “The Tuskegee Airmen were neither the inferior flyers their opponents described nor the supermen depicted by their supporters”. Although debunking some of the myths, were both positive and negative, Mr. Haulman concluded that, "If they did not demonstrate that they were far superior to the members of the six non-black fighter escort groups of the Fifteenth Air Force with which they served, they certainly demonstrated that they were not inferior to them. Moreover, they began at a line farther back, overcoming many more obstacles on the way to combat. I was intrigued with the amount of controversy surrounding the airmen. Some of the sources I used to study the famed fighter group were openly aimed at shaming them into obscurity. A number of them went on to careers in the military and making their mark in history. In 1950, George S. Roberts, the deputy commander of the 332nd, became the first African American to command a racially integrated unit in the new U.S. Air Force. Despite the challenges Mr. Roberts faced during those times, he retired as a full