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History Battle of Black Race for Liberty and Justice

Khalid Elhassan May 12, 2020 34 min

Deacons for Defense - Deacons for Defense and Justice — Black demonstrators arriving in Franklinton, Louisiana, after a two day march from Bogalusa. Face 2 Face Africa

7. The Tuskegee Airmen’s Greatest Mission

Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who commanded the 99th Pursuit Squadron, then the 332nd Fighter Group, in the cockpit of a P-51 Mustang. National Air and Space Museum

The Tuskegee Airmen’s most famous mission, in which they went up against German Me 262 fighter jets, came on March 24^th, 1945. That day, Colonel Benjamin O. Davis led 43 P-51s of the 332^nd Fighter Group as bomber escorts for Fifteenth Air Force B-17s, who flew a 1600-mile round trip to raid a tank factory in Berlin.

The Luftwaffe put up stiff resistance, sending up FW 190s, Me 163 Komet rocket fighters, and 25 Me 262 jet fighters. Tuskegee Airmen Roscoe Brown, Charles Brantley, and Earl Lane, all managed to shoot down Luftwaffe jets over Berlin that day. The 332^nd earned another Distinguished Unit Citation for its feats on that mission.

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.