These specially trained units constructed, concealed, maintained, and defended airfields in every theater. Eventually, these black Airmen disproved the unfortunate belief that blacks could not do complicated construction or engineering work. The museum's exhibit portrays a scene of black aviation engineers working on an airfield in the China-Burma-India Theater.
On June 1, 1949, the Air Force published regulations dismantling segregation, thus becoming the first of all U.S. military service branches to complete integration of black personnel into all-white units. This story is presented in an exhibit titled "Integration of the USAF."
The exhibit features Gen. Daniel "Chappie" James Jr., the Air Force's first black four-star general; Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the first of the famous Tuskegee Airmen to become a general; and the 332nd Fighter Group, a segregated black unit stationed at Lockbourne Air Base near Columbus, Ohio, that won first place in the conventional class category of the 1949 U.S. Air Force Fighter Gunnery Competition.
The museum also features an exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen. On July 19, 1941, the AAF began a program in Alabama to train black Americans as military pilots. Primary flight training was conducted by the Division of Aeronautics of Tuskegee Institute, the famed school of learning founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881. The exhibit presents uniforms, photos and other mementos of the Tuskegee Airmen.
The National Museum of the United States Air Force is located on Springfield Pike, six miles northeast of downtown Dayton. It is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day). Admission and parking are free.
The museum is the world's largest and oldest military aviation museum. More than one million people visit the museum each year to see its nearly 350 aircraft and aerospace vehicles and to walk through more than 17 acres of indoor exhibit space. -- www.nationalmuseum.af.mil
Posted February 1st, 2007 by ruzik_tuzik
