Red Tails, Black Wings: The Men of America's Black Air Force

Baseball aficionados know John B. Holway as author of books about the Negro Leagues that rescued from obscurity many of the great black players who could not play in the segregated ranks of major league baseball. Here, Holway sets his sights on another group of heroes: the men of the "Tuskegee experiment"--the effort to train black pilots during World War II. Many white officers believed the experiment would be a failure because blacks did not have the skills necessary to become pilots. But the Tuskegee Airmen proved them wrong, and black pilots--in particular those of the 332nd Squadron (the Red Tails of the title)--established stellar records in combat. Holway quotes copiously from his interviews with black airmen, and the result is a stunning record of the heroism of black men in all but impossible circumstances.