such training. All applicants in
excess of requirements were placed on an indefinite waiting list where
many became overage or were requisitioned for other military and
civilian duties. Yet when the Army Air Forces finally decided to
organize a black bomber unit, the 477th Bombardment Group, in late
1943, it encountered a scarcity of black pilots and crewmen. Because
of the lack of technical and educational opportunities for Negroes in
America, fewer blacks than whites were included in the manpower pool,
and Tuskegee, already overburdened with its manifold training
functions and lacking the means to train bomber crews, was unable to
fill the training gap. Sending black cadets to white training schools
was one obvious solution; the Army Air Forces chose instead to
postpone the operational date of the 477th until its pilots could be
trained at Tuskegee. In the end, the 477th was not declared (p. 030)
operational until after the war. Even then some compromise with the
Army Air Forces' segregation principles was necessary, since Tuskegee
could not accommodate B-25 pilot transition and navigator-bombardier
training. In 1944 black officers were therefore temporarily assigned
to formerly all-white schools for such training. Tuskegee's position
as the sole and separate training center for black pilots remained
inviolate until its closing in 1946, however, and its graduates, the
"Tuskegee Airmen," continued to serve as a powerful symbol of armed
forces segregation.[2-26]

[Footnote 2-26: For a detailed discussion of the
black training program, see Osur, _Blacks in the
Army Air Forces During World War II_, ch. III; Lee,
_Employment of Negro Troops_, pp. 461-66; Charles
E. Francis, _The Tuskegee Airmen: The Story of the
Negro in the U.S. Air Force_ (Boston Bruce
Humphries, 1955).]

Training for black officer candidates other than flyers, like that of
most officer candidates throughout the Army, was integrated. At first
the possibility of integrated training seemed unlikely, for even
though Assistant Secretary of War for Air Robert A. Lovett had assured
Hastie that officer candidate training would be integrated, the
Technical Training Command announced plans in 1942 for a segregated
facility. Although the plans were quickly canceled the command's
announcement was the immediate cause for Hasti