The Air Force seemed on safer ground when it pleaded that it lacked the black airmen with skills to carry out the variety of assignments called for by the Gillem Board. The Air Force was finding it impossible to organize effective black units in appreciable numbers; even some units already in existence were as much as two-thirds below authorized strength in certain ground specialist slots.[11-24] Yet here too the statistics do not reveal the whole truth. Despite a general shortage of Negroes in the high test score categories, the Air Force did have black enlisted men qualified for general assignment as specialists or at least eligible for specialist training, who were instead assigned to labor squadrons.[11-25] In its effort to reduce the number of Negroes, the service had also relieved from active duty other black specialists trained in much needed skills. Finally, the Air Force still had a surplus of black specialists in some categories at Lockbourne Field who were not assigned to the below-strength units.
Again it was not too many black enlisted men or too few black officers or specialists but the policy of strict segregation that kept the Air Force from using black troops efficiently. Insistence on segregation, not the number of Negroes, caused maldistribution among the commands. In 1947, for example, the Tactical Air Command contained some 5,000 black airmen, close to 28 percent of the command's strength. This situation came about because the command counted among its units the one black air group and many of the black service units whose members in an integrated service would have been distributed throughout all the commands according to needs and abilities. The Air Force segregation policy restricted all but forty-five of the black officers in the continental United States to one base,[11-26] just as it was the Air Force's attempt to avoid integration that kept black officers from command. In November 1947, 1,581 black enlisted men and only two black officers were stationed at MacDill Field; at San Antonio there were 3,450 black airmen and again two black officers. These figures provide some clue to the cause of the riot involving black airmen at MacDill Field on 27 October 1946.[11-27]
Segregation also prevented the use of Negroes on a broader professional scale. In April 1948, 84.2 percent of Negroes in the Air Force were working in an occupational specialty as against 92.7 percent of whites, but the number of Negroes in radar, aviation specialist, wire communications, and other highly specialized skills required to support a tactical air unit was small and far below the percentage of whites. The Air Force argued that since Negroes were assigned to black units and since there was only one black tactical unit, there was little need for Negroes with these special skills.
Checking Ammunition.
An armorer in the 332d Fighter Group inspects the P-51 Mustang, Italy, 1945.
The fact that rated black officers and specialists were restricted to one black fighter group particularly concerned civil rights advocates. Without bomber, transport, ferrying, or weather observation assignments, black officers qualified for larger aircraft had no chance to diversify their careers. It was essentially the same story for black airmen. Without more varied and large black combat units the Air Force had no need to assign many black airmen to specialist training. In December 1947, for example, only 80 of approximately 26,000 black airmen were attending specialist schools.[11-28] When asked about the absence of Negroes in large aircraft, especially bombers, Air Force spokesmen cited the conversion of the 477th Composite Group, which contained the only black bomber unit, to a specialized fighter group as merely part of a general reorganization to meet the needs of a 55-wing organization.[11-29] That the one black bomber unit happened to be organized out of existence was pure accident.
The Gillem Board had sought to expand the training and placement of skilled Negroes by going outside the regular black units and giving them overhead assignments. After the war some base commanders made such assignments unofficially, taking advantage of the abilities of airmen in the overmanned, all-black Squadron F's and assigning them to skilled duties. In one instance the base commander's secretary was a member of his black unit; in another, black mechanics from Squadron F worked on the flight line with white mechanics. But whatever their work, these men remained members of Squadron F, and often the whole black squadron, rather than individual airmen, found itself functioning as an overhead unit, contrary to the intent of the Gillem Board. Even the few Negroes formally trained in a specialty and placed in an integrated overhead unit did not approximate the Gillem Board's intention of training a cadre that would be readily expandable in an emergency.
The alternative to expanded overhead assignments was continuation of segregated service units and Squadron F's, but, as some manpower experts pointed out, many special purpose units suitable for unskilled airmen were disappearing from the postwar Air Force. Experience gained through the assignment of large numbers of marginal men to such units in peacetime would be of questionable value during large-scale mobilization.[11-30] As Colonel Parrish, the wartime commander of training at Tuskegee, warned, a peacetime policy incapable of wartime application was not only unrealistic, but dangerous.[11-31]
The Air staff tried to carry out the Gillem Board's suggestion that Negroes be stationed "where attitudes are most favorable for them insofar as military factors permit," but even here the service lagged behind civilian practice. When Marcus H. Ray arrived at Wright Field, Ohio, for a two-day inspection tour in July 1946, he found almost 3,000 black civilians working peacefully and effectively alongside 18,000 white civilians, all assigned to their jobs without regard to race. "I would rate this installation," Ray reported, "as the best example of efficient utilization of manpower I have seen." He went on to explain: "The integration has been accomplished without publicity and simply by assigning workers according to their capabilities and without regard to race, creed, or color." But Ray also noted that there were no black military men on the base.[11-32] Assistant Secretary of War Petersen was impressed. "In view of the fact that the racial climate seems exceptionally favorable at Wright Field," he wrote General Carl Spaatz, "consideration should be given to the employment of carefully selected Negro military personnel with specialist ratings for work in that installation."[11-33]