where an idealistic call for justice and fair play might well
have floundered.

_Segregation and Efficiency_ (p. 271)

Many officials in the Army Air Forces had defended segregated units
during the war as an efficient method of avoiding dangerous social
conflicts and utilizing low-scoring recruits.[11-1] General Arnold
himself repeatedly warned against bringing black officers and white
enlisted men together. Unless strict unit segregation was imposed,
such contacts would be inevitable, given the Air Forces' highly mobile
training and operations structure.[11-2] But if segregation restricted
contacts between the races it also imposed a severe administrative
burden on the wartime Air Forces. It especially affected the black
flying units because it ordained that not only pilots but the ground
support specialists--mechanics, supply clerks, armorers--had to be
black. Throughout most of the war the Air Forces, competing with the
rest of the Army for skilled and high-scoring Negroes, was unable to
fill the needs of its black air units. At a time when the Air Forces
enjoyed a surplus of white air and ground crews, the black fighter
units suffered from a shortage of replacements for their combat
veterans, a situation as inefficient as it was damaging to morale.[11-3]

[Footnote 11-1: For a comprehensive and authoritative
account of the Negro in the Army Air Forces during
World War II, sec Osur's _Blacks in the Army Air
Forces During World War II_.]

[Footnote 11-2: See Memo, CS/AC for G-3, 31 May 40,
sub: Employment of Negro Personnel in the Air Corps
Units, G-3/6541-Gen 527.]

[Footnote 11-3: For the effect on unit morale, see
Charles E. Francis, _The Tuskegee Airmen: The Story
of the Negro in the U.S. Air Force_ (Boston: Bruce
Humphries, 1955), p. 164; see also USAF Oral
History Program, Interview with Lt Gen B. O. Davis,
Jr., Jan 73.]

The shortage was compounded in the penultimate year of the war when
the all-black 477th Bombardment Group was organized. (Black airmen and
civil rights spokesmen complained that restricting Negroes to fighter
units excluded them from many important and prestigious types of air
service.) In the end the new