99th

Flying over a new airdrome near Alabama's famed Tuskegee Institute this week, U.S. Army Air Forces pilots looked down on something new in the world. The air field, still abuilding, looked like many another new Army training center. Four Stearman trainers buzzed on and off in an interminable series of landings and takeoffs, and cadets waited on the flying line for their turns to fly.

But pilots who landed and looked around found the scene not familiar at all. All twelve of the gray-clad cadets and the one slim young officer student were Negroes, charter members of the Air Forces' 99th (all Negro) Pursuit Squadron, soon to become the first Negro flying officers of the U.S. Army.

From Fort Riley, Kans. to Tuskegee's new field was transferred a crack Negro line officer, one of two in the Army--28-year-old Captain Benjamin O. Davis Jr. He is the son of the only Negro general officer in the Army, and the fourth of his race to graduate from West Point since it was founded in 1802.

Seven weeks ago, tea-colored Ben Davis took over twelve black cadets. Eleven of them were college graduates, five had already won their private pilot's licenses. For five weeks straight-backed Captain Davis gave them the military works: close-order drill, military courtesy, the fundamentals of soldiering. Two weeks ago he joined them in front of the planes, began to take flying instruction from a civilian staff (three Negroes, one white).

First to solo (in the creditable time of six hours' dual instruction) was Captain Davis. A new class of eleven is already at the field doing its preliminary soldiering, and other classes will follow every five weeks.

Eight miles away a new field is abuilding where the 99th Squadron will make its permanent home. Built at a cost of $2,000,000 (by Negro contracting firm), the new field is bigger (1,642 acres) than many a famed army airdrome, will have 42 buildings when it is completed.

It will also have accommodations for 2,000 men, including 400 pilots -- an implied promise that if the 99th turns out to be a good flying outfit the Air Forces will have more of the same kind. From top to bottom such outfits will be all black. To service the 99th's planes, guns and instruments, the Army is training 278 Negro mechanics at Illinois's Chanute Field.

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