ation: LABOR BATTALION TROOPS IN THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, MAY
1943. _Stevedores pause for a hot meal at Massacre Bay._]

[Illustration: SERGEANT ADDRESSING THE LINE. _Aviation squadron
standing inspection, 1943._]

When the War Department supported these demands the Army Air Forces
capitulated. Its 1941 mobilization plans provided for the formation of
nine separate black aviation squadrons which would perform the
miscellaneous tasks associated with the upkeep of airfields. During
the next year the Chief of Staff set the allotment of black recruits
for the air arm at a rate that brought over 77,500 Negroes into the
Air Corps by 1943. On 16 January 1941 Under Secretary Patterson
announced the formation of a black pursuit squadron, but the Army Air
Forces, bowing to the opposition typified by General Arnold's comments
of the previous year, trained the black pilots in separate facilities
at Tuskegee, Alabama, where the Army tried to duplicate the expensive
training center established for white officers at Maxwell Field, just
forty miles away.[2-24] Black pilots were at first trained exclusively
for pursuit flying, a very difficult kind of combat for which a Negro
had to qualify both physically and technically or else, in Judge (p. 029)
Hastie's words, "not fly at all."[2-25] The 99th Fighter Squadron was
organized at Tuskegee in 1941 and sent to the Mediterranean theater in
April 1943. By then the all-black 332d Fighter Group with three
additional fighter squadrons had been organized, and in 1944 it too
was deployed to the Mediterranean.

[Footnote 2-24: USAF Oral History Program, Interv
with Maj Gen Noel F Parrish (USAF, Ret.), 30 Mar
73.]

[Footnote 2-25: William H. Hastie, _On Clipped Wings:
The Story of Jim Crow in the Army Air Corps_ (New
York: NAACP, 1943). Based on War Department
documents and statistics, this famous pamphlet was
essentially an attack on the Army Air Corps. For a
more comprehensive account of the Negro and the
Army Air Forces, see Osur, _Blacks in the Army Air
Forces During World War II_.]

[Illustration: PILOTS OF THE 332D FIGHTER GROUP BEING BRIEFED _for
combat mission in Italy_.]

These squadrons could use only a limited number of pilots, far fewer
than those black cadets qualified for