e's resignation from the
War Department. The Air staff assured the Assistant Secretary of War
in January of 1943 that qualified Negroes were being sent to officer
candidate schools and to training courses "throughout the school
system of the Technical Training Command."[2-27] In fact, Negroes did
attend the Air Forces' officer candidate school at Miami Beach,
although not in great numbers. In spite of their integrated training,
however, most of these black officers were assigned to the
predominantly black units at Tuskegee and Godman fields.

[Footnote 2-27: Memo, CofAS for ASW, 12 Jan 43, ASW
291.2.]

The Army Air Forces found it easier to absorb the thousands of black
enlisted men than to handle the black flying squadrons. For the
enlisted men it created a series of units with vaguely defined duties,
usually common labor jobs operating for the most part under a bulk
allotment system that allowed the Air Forces to absorb great numbers
of new men. Through 1943 hundreds of these aviation training
squadrons, quartermaster truck companies, and engineer aviation and
air base security battalions were added to the Air Forces'
organization tables. Practically every American air base in the world
had its contingent of black troops performing the service duties
connected with air operations.

The Air Corps, like the Armor and the Artillery branches, was able to
form separate squadrons or battalions for black troops, but the
Infantry and Cavalry found it difficult to organize the growing number
of separate black battalions and regiments. The creation of black
divisions was the obvious solution, although this arrangement would
run counter to current practice, which was based in part on the Army's
experience with the 92d Division in World War I. Convinced of the poor
performance of that unit in 1918, the War Department had decided in
the 1920's not to form any more black divisions. The regiment would
serve as the basic black unit, and from time to time these regiments
would be employed as organic elements of divisions whose other
regiments and units would be white. In keeping with this decision, the
black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments were combined in October (p. 031)
1940 with white regiments to form the 2d Cavalry Division.

Before World War II most black leaders had agreed with the Army's
opposition to all-black divisions, but for different reasons. They
considered that such divis