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America’s Black Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen

Khalid Elhassan April 4, 2025 16 min

Tuskegee Airmen. Sheppard Air Force Base

10. Earning a Distinguished Unit Citation

Tuskegee - An Office of War Information poster wishing the Tuskegee Airmen good luck on their first combat mission — An Office of War Information poster wishing the Tuskegee Airmen good luck on their first combat mission. National Archives

Flying out of Tunis, the all-black 99^th Pursuit Squadron carried out its first combat mission on June 2^nd, 1943. Operation Corkscrew turned out to be an auspicious start for the Tuskegee Airmen. Pantelleria, with a garrison of about 11,000 Italians and 100 Germans, surrendered on June 11^th – the first time in history that a sizeable ground force surrendered because of aerial attacks. However, the 99^th was unfairly criticized by some white aviators. They included the unit’s own commander, who accused the black pilots of “failure to … display aggressiveness and daring for combat“, and called for the unit’s disbandment. The 99^th was cleared by a US Army Air Forces investigation, which revealed that the unit had performed just as well or better than white squadrons that also flew P-40s. Rather than get disbanded, the close examination of the black flyers’ actual performance earned the squadron a Distinguished Unit Citation (DUC).

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.