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America’s Black Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen

Khalid Elhassan April 4, 2025 16 min

Tuskegee Airmen. Sheppard Air Force Base

7. From a Fighter Squadron to a Fighter Group

Tuskegee Airmen in front of a P-40 fighter airplane. US Air Force

The newly-created 332^nd Fighter Group and its novice squadrons were sent to Italy. There, the 332^nd was joined by the now-veteran 99^th Pursuit Squadron in June, 1944. The Tuskegee Airmen initially flew P-40s. They were switched to Bell P-39 Airacobras in March, 1944, and upgraded to P-47 Thunderbolts in June. In July, 1944, they were finally equipped with the airplane with which they became most associated: the P-51 Mustang. Operating out of Ramitelli Airfield in the city of Campomarino on Italy’s Adriatic coast, the 332^nd Fighter Group was tasked with escorting the Fifteenth Air Force’s heavy bombers. For the rest of the war, the Tuskegee Airmen accompanied the Fifteenth Air Force’s bombers on strategic raids. The black flyers flew cover on missions that targeted oil refineries, marshaling yards, factories, and airfields. The assignments took them to northern Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, Austria, France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Germany, and Poland.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.