US Army Air Force

Red Tail.

Brown family/NY Daily News (collection)

Captain Roscoe C. Brown, assisted by Crew Chief Wendall Smith, prepares for take-off in his North American P-51D Mustang, probably in Italy, late-1944. Captain Brown was Commander of 100 Fighter (previously Pursuit) Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group, which was posted to Italy early in 1943, and served through the Italian campaign and the subsequent Allied incursion into Germany, an assignment that was made only after serious obstruction on the part of Air Force authorities. Among his achievements is the shooting down of one of three Me 262 fighters destroyed by the 332nd Fighter Group while on bomber escort over Berlin on 24 March, 1945, an action for which the Group received a Distinguished Unit Citation. Why the obstruction over the combat deployment ? Well, the obvious reason - the 332nd was an African-American unit. Its pilots were trained at the Tuskegee Institute, Macon County, Alabama, where pretty well all African-American pilots to serve in the wartime air force had been trained. The US military remained racially segregated up to 1948, and the Tuskegee pilots had to face all manner of discriminatory action and discouragement before, and even after, combat deployment. That did not stop them. Dr. Roscoe Brown survived the war, and enjoyed a distinguished academic career thereafter. I believe he is still with us. Best regards, JR.