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America’s Black Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen

Khalid Elhassan April 4, 2025 16 min

Tuskegee Airmen. Sheppard Air Force Base

15. The Birth of the 99^th Pursuit Squadron

Tuskegee - First class of black pilot trainees at the US Army Air Corps basic and advanced flying school at Tuskegee in 1941 — First class of black pilot trainees at the US Army Air Corps basic and advanced flying school at Tuskegee in 1941. US Air Force

The black graduates of the aerial training program were sent to a new unit, the 99^th Pursuit Squadron. It was activated before it even had any pilots, on March 22^nd, 1941. In accordance with the military’s racial segregation policies, the 99^th was an all-black flying outfit. The unit first began to train at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois. That WWII’s black pilots became known as the Tuskegee Airmen instead of the Rantoul Airmen was due to the random chance of military bureaucracy and assignment. Months after it was activated in Illinois, the 99^th Pursuit Squadron was transferred to Tuskegee, Alabama, in June 1941. The following month, the squadron’s enlisted trainees were sent to Tuskegee to train there. In the meantime, five black aviation cadets were admitted to an Officer Training School at Chanute Field.

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.