The Air staff explained that the slight surge in black recruits in the early months of integration was related less to the new policy than to the abnormal recruiting conditions of the period. In addition to the backlog of Negroes who for some time had been trying to enlist only to find the Air Force quota filled, there were many black volunteers who had turned to the quota-free Air Force when the Army, its quota of Negroes filled for some time, stopped recruiting Negroes.
With Negroes serving in over 1,500 separate units there was no need to invoke the 10 percent racial quota in individual units as Vandenberg had ordered. One notable exception during the first months of the program was the Air Training Command, where the rapid and unexpected reassignment of many black airmen caused some bases, James Connally in Texas, for example, to acquire a great many Negroes while others received few or none. To prevent a recurrence of the Connally experience and "to effect a smooth operation and proper adjustment of social importance," the commander of the Air Training Command imposed an 8 to 10 percent black quota on his units and established a procedure for staggering the assignment of black airmen in small groups over a period of thirty to sixty days instead of assigning them to any particular base in one large increment. These quotas were not applied to the basic training flights, which were completely integrated. It was not uncommon to find black enlistees in charge of racially mixed training flights.[16-29] Of all Air Force organizations, the Training Command received the greatest number of black airmen as a result of the screening and reassignment. (Table 7)
Table 7—Racial Composition of the Training Command, December 1949
| A. Flight Training | White | Black | Percent Black | |||
| Officers | 1,345 | 11 | .8 | |||
| Enlisted | 3,063 | 22 | 1.0 | |||
| Total | 3,408 | 33 | .9 | |||
| B. Technical Training | ||||||
| Officers | 1,897 | 37 | 1.9 | |||
| Enlisted | 25,838 | 1,819 | 6.5 | |||
| Total | 27,735 | 1,856 | 6.0 | |||
| C. Indoctrination (Basic) Training | ||||||
| White | 7,649 | |||||
| Black | 1,007 | |||||
| Total | 8,656 | |||||
| Percent black | 11.6[a] | |||||
| D. Officers Candidate Training (candidates graduating from28 November through 26 December 1949) | ||||||
| White | 225 | |||||
| Black | 7 | |||||
| Total | 232 | |||||
| Percent black | 3.0 | |||||
| E. Course Representation | ||||||
| Base | No. of Courses | No. of Courses with Blacks | ||||
| Chanute | 31 | 21 | ||||
| Warren | 11 | 10 | ||||
| Keesler | 16 | 7 | ||||
| Lowry | 23 | 13 | ||||
| Scott | 6 | 4 | ||||
| Sheppard | 4 | 1 | ||||
Tablenote a: In January 1950, probably as a result of a decline in backlog and the raising of enlistment standard to GCT 100, this percentage dropped to 8.8.
Tablenote b: Negroes in 61 percent of the courses offered as of 26 Dec 1949.
Source: Kenworthy Report.
At the end of the first year under the new program, the Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, General Nugent, informed Zuckert that integration had progressed "rapidly, smoothly and virtually without incident."[16-30] In view of this fact and at Nugent's recommendation, the Air Force canceled the monthly headquarters check on the program.
To some extent the Air Force's integration program ran away with itself. Whatever their personal convictions regarding discrimination, senior Air Force officials had agreed that integration would be limited. They were most concerned with managerial problems associated with continued segregation of the black flying unit and the black specialists scattered worldwide. Other black units were not considered an immediate problem. Assistant Secretary Zuckert admitted as much in March 1949 when he reported that black service units would be retained since they performed a "necessary Air Force function."[16-31] As originally conceived, the Air Force plan was frankly imitative of the Navy's postwar program, stressing merit and ability as the limiting factors of change. The Air Force promised to discharge all its substandard men, but those black airmen either ineligible for discharge or for reassignment to specialist duty would remain in segregated units.
Yet once begun, the integration process quickly became universal. By the end of 1950, for example, the Air Force had reduced the number of black units to nine with 95 percent of its black airmen serving in integrated units. The number of black officers rose to 411, an increase of 10 percent over the previous year, and black airmen to 25,523, an increase of 15 percent, although the proportion of blacks to whites continued to remain between 6 and 7 percent.[16-32] Some eighteen months later only one segregated unit was left, a 98-man outfit, itself more than 26 percent white. Negroes were then serving in 3,466 integrated units.[16-33]