SecAF files. Nugent later succeeded Edwards
as the chief Air Force personnel officer.]

[Footnote 11-68: This attitude is strongly displayed
in the USAF Oral History Program, Interviews with
Lt Gen Richard E. Nugent, 8 Jun 73, and Marr, 1 Oct
73.]

[Footnote 11-69: USAF Oral Hist Interv with Zuckert.]

[Footnote 11-70: Colonel Marr recalled a different
chronology for the Air Force integration plan.
According to Marr, his proposals were forwarded by
Edwards to Symington who in turn discussed them at
a meeting of the Secretary of Defense's Personnel
Policy Board sometime before June 1948. The board
rejected the plan at the behest of Secretary of the
Army Royall, but later in the year outside pressure
caused it to be reconsidered. Nothing is available
in the files to corroborate Marr's recollections,
nor do the other participants remember that Royall
was ever involved in the Air Force's internal
affairs. The records do not show when the Air Force
study of race policy, which originated in the Air
Board in May 1948, evolved into the plan for
integration that Marr wrote and the Chief of Staff
signed in December 1948, but it seems unlikely that
the plan would have been ready before June. See
Ltrs, Marr to author, 19 Jun 70, and 28 Jul 70, CMH
files; see also USAF Oral Hist Interv with Marr.]

[Illustration: COLONEL MARR.]

As it evolved during the months of deliberation,[11-71] the Air Force
study of black manpower weighed Air Force practices against the Gillem
Board Report and found them "considerably divergent" from the policy
as outlined. It isolated several reasons for this divergence. Black
airmen on the whole, as measured by classification tests, were
unsuitable and inadequate for operating all-black air units organized
and trained for modern combat. To achieve a balance of skills and
training in black units was a "never ending problem for which there
appears to be no solution under either the current Air Force policies
or the pol