Not many people have – but it is a remarkable story.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Tuskegee Airmen – named after their training base – were the first African-American military aviators in the United States armed forces and fought in the Second World War. Formally, they formed the\u00a0332nd Fighter Group and the\u00a0477th Bombardment Group of the\u00a0United States Army Air Corps (United States Army Air Forces after June 1941).<\/p>\n
The Tuskegee Airmen initially were equipped with Curtiss P-40 Warhawks fighter-bomber aircraft, briefly with Bell P-39 Airacobras (March 1944), later with Republic P-47 Thunderbolts (June\u2013July 1944), and finally with the aircraft with which they became most commonly associated, the North American P-51 Mustang (July 1944). When the pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group painted the tails of their P-47s and later, P-51s, red, the nickname “Red Tails” was coined.<\/p>\n
Their story has been told twice on film: first as “The Tuskegee Airmen”<\/em>, a\u00a01999 HBO television film [my review here<\/a>], and this year in “Red Tails”<\/em>, a George Lucas-funded movie [my review here<\/a>]. You can find further information on the airmen and their heroic record here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not many people have – but it is a remarkable story. The\u00a0Tuskegee Airmen – named after their training base – were the first African-American military aviators in the United States armed forces and fought in the Second World War. Formally, they formed the\u00a0332nd Fighter Group and the\u00a0477th Bombardment Group of the\u00a0United States Army Air Corps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10153"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10177,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10153\/revisions\/10177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}