icies recommended by the Gillem Board." In short, practices
with respect to Negroes were "wasteful, deleterious to military
effectiveness and lacking in wartime application."

[Footnote 11-71: The Air Force integration plan
underwent considerable revision and modification
before its submission to the Secretary of Defense
in January 1949. The quotations in the next
paragraphs are taken from the version approved by
the Chief of Staff on 29 December 1948.]

Edwards and his staff saw several advantages in complete (p. 289)
integration. Wherever qualified black airmen had been permitted to
compete with whites on their individual qualifications and abilities,
the Negroes "achieved a certain amount of acceptance and recognition."
Students in some schools lived and learned side by side as a matter of
practical necessity. "This degree of integration and acceptance on a
competitive basis has been eminently successful and has to a
remarkable degree solved the 'Negro problem' for the training schools
involved." At some bases qualified black airmen were administratively
assigned to black units but actually performed duties in white units.
Some commanders had requested that these men be permanently
transferred and assigned to the white units because the men deserved
higher grades but could not receive them in black units and because it
was poor management to have individuals performing duties for one
military organization and living under the administrative jurisdiction
of another.

In the end consideration of full integration was dropped in favor of a
program based on the Navy's postwar integration of its general
service. Edwards and his personnel staff dismissed the Navy's problems
with stewards and its difficulty in enlisting skilled Negroes as
temporary embarrassments with little practical consequence. This
problem apparently allowed an economic and efficient use of Negroes
and also "relieved the Navy of the necessity for repeated efforts to
justify an untenable position." They saw several practical advantages
in a similar policy for the Air Force. It would allow the elimination
of the 10 percent quota. The inactivation of some black units--"and
the pronounced relief of the problems involved in maintaining those
units under present conditions"--could be accomplished without
injustice to Negroes and with b