The first black US Air Force unit will finally receive national recognition this week for fighting a double war - one against the Nazis abroad, the other against racial segregation at home.
President George W. Bush will honour the surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen with a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress, at a ceremony on Thursday at the US Capitol. The airmen helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement and influenced President Harry Truman's decision to desegregate the army in 1948. But just as their success is being recognised, one aspect of the story is in dispute.
The "Red Tails" of the 99th Fighter Squadron - so called because some of the planes they piloted had distinctive red tails - flew some 1,578 missions from their base in North Africa, destroyed over 260 enemy aircraft, sank one enemy destroyer and demolished numerous enemy installations, according to military records.
For decades, they were also credited with never having lost a bomber under their escort. Yet Daniel Haulman of the Air Force Historical Research Agency said some of the many bombers escorted were in fact shot down.
Haulman, responding to a request from three airmen, analysed five days of mission reports of the 332d Fighter Group and compared them with reports from the bomber groups they escorted and records of planes downed. Over the five days, 25 bombers were shot down, though most were lost on missions where the number of bombers exceeded the number of fighters, he said.
"I don't think it (their reputation) will be diminished at all because of the achievements that they accomplished - they don't really need that statement: 'Never lost a bomber'," he said, adding: "No other group could have done a better job."
The 99th Fighter Squadron was set up after the army reluctantly agreed to train a group of black pilots at a remote air school in Tuskegee, Alabama, keeping them separate from the rest of the army in line with its policy of segregation.
In all, about 1,000 pilots were trained, and also ground crew. Fewer than a third of the pilots are still alive to receive the medal. "We had the feeling that the program was designed to fail," said one of the pilots, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dryden, who graduated from the school in 1942.
"Our mantra was that we dared not fail because if we did, the doors of future aviation would be closed to black people forever," he said in an interview at his home in Atlanta. Dryden, 86, who stayed in the Air Force after World War Two, recalled the "horrible discrimination" he faced and said he decided to stay away from whites in Alabama as far as possible to avoid breaking the racial mores of the south.
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