ided had black
officers commanded black squadrons, a logical course since the Air
Force had a large surplus of nonrated black officers stationed at
Tuskegee.[11-5] Most were without permanent assignment or were assigned
such duties as custodial responsibility for bachelor officer quarters,
occupations unrelated to their specialties.[11-6]

[Footnote 11-5: A nonrated officer is one not having
or requiring a currently effective aeronautical
rating; that is, an officer who is not a pilot,
navigator, or bombardier.]

[Footnote 11-6: Interv, author with Davis; see also
Osur's _Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World
War II_, ch. V.]

Few of these idle black officers commanded black service units because
the units were scattered worldwide while the nonrated officers were
almost always assigned to the airfield at Tuskegee. Approximately
one-third of the Air Forces' 1,559 black officers were stationed at
Tuskegee in June 1945. Most others were assigned to the fighter group
in the Mediterranean theater or the new bombardment group in flight
training at Godman Field, Kentucky. Only twenty-five black (p. 273)
officers were serving at other stations in the United States. The
Second, Third, and Fourth Air Forces and I Troop Carrier Command, for
example, had a combined total of seventeen black officers as against
22,938 black enlisted men.[11-7] Col. Noel F. Parrish, the wartime
commander at Tuskegee, explained that the principal reason for this
restriction was the prevailing fear of social conflict. If assigned to
other bases, black officers might try to use the officers' clubs and
other base facilities. Thus, despite the surplus of black officers
only too evident at Tuskegee, their requests for transfer to other
bases for assignment in their rating were usually denied on the
grounds that the overall shortage of black officers made their
replacement impossible.[11-8]

[Footnote 11-7: "Summary of AAF Post-War Surveys,"
prepared by Noel Parrish, copy in NAACP Collection,
Library of Congress.]

[Footnote 11-8: Noel F. Parrish, "The Segregation of
the Negro in the Army Air Forces," thesis submitted
to the USAF Air Command and Staff School, Maxwell
AFB, Ala.,