"This book is a masterpiece. It captures the essence of the Tuskegee Airmen's experience from the perspective of one who lived it. The action sequences make me feel I'm back in the cockpit of my P-51C 'Kitten'! If you want to know what it was like fighting German interceptors in European skies while winning equal opportunity at home, be sure to read this book!" —Colonel Charles E. McGee, USAF (ret.) former president, Tuskegee Airmen Inc. “All Americans owe Harry Stewart Jr. and his fellow airmen a huge debt for defending our country during World War II. In addition, they have inspired generations of African American youth to follow their dreams.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University He had to sit in a segregated rail car on the journey to Army basic training in Mississippi in 1943. But two years later, the twenty-year-old African American from New York was at the controls of a P-51, prowling for Luftwaffe aircraft at five thousand feet over the Austrian countryside. By the end of World War II, he had done something that nobody could take away from him: He had become an American hero. This is the remarkable true story of Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr., one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen pilots who experienced air combat during World War II. Award-winning aviation writer Philip Handleman recreates the harrowing action and heart-pounding drama of Stewart’s combat missions, including the legendary mission in which Stewart downed three enemy fighters. Soaring to Glory also reveals the cruel injustices Stewart and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen faced during their wartime service and upon return home after the war. Stewart’s heroism was not celebrated as it should have been in postwar America—but now, his boundless courage and determination will never be forgotten.

As the country's first African American military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen fought in World War II on two fronts: against the Axis powers in the skies over Europe and against Jim Crow racism and segregation at home. Although the pilots flew more than 15,000 sorties and destroyed more than 200 German aircraft, their most far-reaching achievement defies quantification: delivering a powerful blow to racial inequality and discrimination in American life. In this inspiring account of the Tuskegee Airmen, historian J. Todd Moye captures the challenges and triumphs of these brave pilots in their own words, drawing on more than 800 interviews recorded for the National Park Service's Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project. Denied the right to fully participate in the U.S. war effort alongside whites at the beginning of World War II, African Americans--spurred on by black newspapers and civil rights organizations such as the NAACP--compelled the prestigious Army Air Corps to open its training programs to black pilots, despite the objections of its top generals. Thousands of young men came from every part of the country to Tuskegee, Alabama, in the heart of the segregated South, to enter the program, which expanded in 1943 to train multi-engine bomber pilots in addition to fighter pilots. By the end of the war, Tuskegee Airfield had become a small city populated by black mechanics, parachute packers, doctors, and nurses. Together, they helped prove that racial segregation of the fighting forces was so inefficient as to be counterproductive to the nation's defense. Freedom Flyers brings to life the legacy of a determined, visionary cadre of African American airmen who proved their capabilities and patriotism beyond question, transformed the armed forces--formerly the nation's most racially polarized institution--and jump-started the modern struggle for racial equality.

Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is a rare gift detailing the experience of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. In this vividly detailed, deeply personal story, Jefferson writes as a genuine American hero about what it meant to be an African American pilot in enemy hands, fighting to protect the promise of freedom. The book features the sketches, drawings, and other illustrations Jefferson created during his nine months as a POW, and Lewis Carlson’s authoritative background on the man, his unit, and the fight Alexander Jefferson fought so well. This revised edition covers the story of Jefferson’s continuing outreach and education work, as he brings the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to communities and schools across the country, and the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Airmen in 2007. Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is perhaps the only account of the African American experience in a German prison camp.

November 1943—May 1945—The U.S. Army Air Forces waged an unprecedentedly dogged and violent campaign against Hitler’s vital oil production and industrial plants on the Third Reich’s southern flank. Flying from southern Italy, far from the limelight enjoyed by the Eighth Air Force in England, the Fifteenth Air Force engaged in high-risk missions spanning most of the European continent. The story of the Fifteenth Air Force deserves a prideful place in the annals of American gallantry. In his new book, Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine, Tillman brings into focus a seldom-seen multinational cast of characters, including pilots from Axis nations Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria and many more remarkable individuals. They were the first generation of fliers—few of them professionals—to conduct a strategic bombing campaign against a major industrial nation. They suffered steady attrition and occasionally spectacular losses. In so doing, they contributed to the end of the most destructive war in history. Forgotten Fifteenth is the first-ever detailed account of the Fifteenth Air Force in World War II and the brave men that the history books have abandoned until now. Tillman proves this book is a must-read for military history enthusiasts, veterans, and current servicemen.

Many documentaries, articles, museum exhibits, books, and movies have now treated what became known as the Tuskegee Experiment involving the black pilots who gained fame during World War II as the Tuskegee Airmen. Most of these works have focused on the training of Americas first black fighter pilots and their subsequent accomplishments during combat. This publication goes further, using captioned photographs to trace the airmen through the stages of training, deployment, and combat actions in North Africa, Italy, and Germany, in an attractive coffee-table-book format. Included for the first time are depictions of the critical support roles of doctors, nurses, mechanics, navigators, weathermen, parachute riggers, and other personnel, all of whom contributed to the airmens success, and many of whom went on to help complete the establishment of the 477th Composite Group. The authors have told, in pictures and words, the full story of the Tuskegee Airmen and the environments in which they lived, worked, played, fought, and sometimes died.

The story of the men and women who served at Tuskegee Army Air Field from 1941 to 1946.

A Question of Honor is the gripping, little-known story of the refugee Polish pilots who joined the RAF and played an essential role in saving Britain from the Nazis, only to be betrayed by the Allies after the war. After Poland fell to the Nazis, thousands of Polish pilots, soldiers, and sailors escaped to England. Devoted to liberating their homeland, some would form the RAF’s 303 squadron, known as the Kosciuszko Squadron, after the elite unit in which many had flown back home. Their thrilling exploits and fearless flying made them celebrities in Britain, where they were “adopted” by socialites and seduced by countless women, even as they yearned for news from home. During the Battle of Britain, they downed more German aircraft than any other squadron, but in a stunning twist at the war’s end, the Allies rewarded their valor by abandoning Poland to Joseph Stalin. This moving, fascinating book uncovers a crucial forgotten chapter in World War II–and Polish–history.