Despite limited opportunities early on, African-Americans have played a pivotal role in United States aviation and military history. From the American Revolution and the Civil War to the astronauts of today, African-Americans have not let circumstances hold them back.

One of the most highly touted of these success stories is the triumph of the Tuskegee Airmen. Prior to 1940, African-Americans were thought to lack the ability to master the training and leadership skills required to succeed in combat. More

by Senior Airman Thomas Trower
332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

10/1/2008 - JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq -- The 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing's lineage not only holds a link between the past and present of the Air Force, it also connects two generations of one Tuskegee Airman family here.

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - A local man who helped write a major chapter in American military history, Tuskegee Airman James E. Wright, died this morning at Memorial University Medical Center. He was 92.

Wright was part of a "military experiment" in Tuskegee, Alabama during World War II, to train America's first African-American military pilots. In time the "experiment" became known as the Tuskegee Experience and the participants as the Tuskegee Airmen. more

More than 60 years ago, when it was thought by many that African-Americans were incapable of piloting airplanes, Vernon Kingsley Sport knew he could.

Mr. Sport enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps after graduating from high school and volunteered repeatedly to fly with the pioneering black aviators who became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. He was turned down several times because he didn’t have a college degree, said his son-in-law Dr. Alfred Wyatt Jr., a Fayetteville dentist.

Congress awards it's top medal, the Congressional Medal of Honor, to two Virgin Islanders who flew with the legendary Tuskegee Airmen. Read more

Wednesday, September 03, 2008
By Randall Clark
rclark@sjnewsco.com
SALEM - In one of the largest funerals the city has seen in recent memory, several hundred people turned out Tuesday to pay their final respects to Tuskegee Airman and city icon William H. Accoo.

In a spiritual tribute, the congregation of friends and family who packed shoulder to shoulder at Mt. Hope United Methodist Church here ensured that their praise and love reached him in the heavens, where they said he soars higher than any plane could ever take him. More

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Lieutenant Colonel Howard Lee Baugh, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, has died.

Baugh died Saturday at a suburban Richmond hospital after a brief illness. He was 88.

The Prince George County resident enlisted in the Army in 1942 and joined the all-black fighter group that trained at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

DOTHAN, Ala. - Sherman Rose, who served as a flight instructor for the Tuskegee Airmen, has died. He was 88.

Rose died Wednesday at Southeast Alabama Medical Center, according to Sunset Funeral Home.

Gilbert B. Langford, 82, a Tuskegee Airman during World War II who later became an engineer with General Electric and the Defense Department, died of pneumonia July 11 at a hospital in The Villages, Fla. He was a former Alexandria resident.

Mr. Langford, who early on had an interest in flying, trained as a navigator and bombardier with the famed Tuskegee Airmen in 1944. He did not see combat.

Not long after completing additional training in Texas, "the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan, and so here I was, dual-rated, with no war to fight," he said in an oral history interview in 2004.

The young second lieutenant remained in the Army Air Forces for three more years and was a bombardier instructor teaching Chinese cadets and later an assistant weather officer. He also flew B-25s while stationed at Lockbourne Air Base in Ohio, the segregated, all-black base commanded by then-Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr.