bombardment group only served to limit
black participation in the air war. Already short of black pilots, the
Army Air Forces now had to find black navigators and bombardiers as
well, thereby intensifying the competition for qualified black cadets.
The stipulation that pilots and bombardiers for the new unit be
trained at segregated Tuskegee was another obvious cause for the
repeated delays in the operational date of the 477th, and its crews
were finally assembled only weeks before the end of the war.
Competition for black bomber crews also led to a ludicrous situation
in which men highly qualified for pilot training according to their
stanine scores (achievements on the battery of qualifying tests taken
by all applicants for flight service) were sent instead to
navigator-bomber training, for which they were only barely
qualified.[11-4]

[Footnote 11-4: Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_, pp.
462-64; see also Interv, author with Lt Gen
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., 12 Jun 70, CMH files.]

Unable to obtain enough Negroes qualified for flight training, the
Army Air Forces asked the Ground and Service Forces to screen their
personnel for suitable candidates, but a screening early in 1945
produced only about one-sixth of the men needed. Finally, the Air
Forces recommended that the Army staff lower the General Classification
Test score for pilot training from 110 to 100, a recommendation the
Service and Ground Forces opposed because such a move would eventually
mean the mass transfer of high-scoring Negroes to the Air Forces, (p. 272)
thus depriving the Service and Ground Forces of their proportionate
share. Although the Secretary of War approved the Air Forces proposal,
the change came too late to affect the shortage of black pilots and
specialists before the end of the war.

[Illustration: DAMAGE INSPECTION. _A squadron operations officer of
the 332d Fighter Group points out a cannon hole to ground crew, Italy,
1945._]

While short of skilled Negroes, the Army Air Forces was being
inundated with thousands of undereducated and unskilled Negroes from
Selective Service. It tried to absorb these recruits, as it absorbed
some of its white draftees, by creating a great number of service and
base security battalions. A handy solution to the wartime quota
problem, the large segregated units eventually caused considerable
racial tension. Some of the tension might have been avo