On July 19, 1941, the U.S. Air Force created a program in Alabama to train African Americans as fighter pilots (Tuskegee Airmen1). Basic flight training was done by Tuskegee Institute, a school founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881 (Tuskegee Airmen 1). The cadets would finish basic training at Tuskegee's Moton Field and then transfer to Tuskegee Army Air Field to complete its transition from fighter aircraft training. The first Tuskegee squad was taught to adapt to the famed 99th Fighter Squadron, tagged for combat duty in North Africa. Other Tuskegee pilots were assigned to the 332d Fighter Group which fought alongside the 99th Squadron based out of Italy. By the end of the war, 992 men had completed training at Tuskegee, 450 were sent overseas to fight. During the same period, nearly 150 died during training or on combat missions. Additional men were trained at Tuskegee for the air and ground crew. The Mustang pilot spotted the line of Bf-109s heading towards the crippled B-24. The pilot, a certain Lieutenant Weathers, dropped the wing tanks and turned into the German formation. He gave the leader a burst with his .50 calibers and it sat nose up, smoking, and soon plummeted to the ground. The pilot radioed others in his flight and heard "I'm right behind you." But when Weathers looked back, all he could see was the front cannon of another Bf-109, aimed right at him. He lowered the flaps and cut the throttle, immediately slowing his Mustang, and the Bf-109 ran over him. A few volleys and Lieutenant Weathers had his second kill of the day. Two more e/a were still in sight and seemed easy prey, but the voice of the Group CO echoed in the pilot's mind: "Your job is to protect the bombers... middle of paper... ..). The Luke Weathers escort mission described above provided the group's only air victories for the month of November. They flew 22 missions in December, bringing the group's total air-to-air victories to 62 by the end of the year in January. limited to 11 missions, reaching 39 in February, but without many aerial victories. On March 24, 1945, Colonel Davis led the group on the longest escort mission ever flown by the Fifteenth Air Force, a 1,600-mile tour of the plant of Daimler-Benz tanks in Berlin (Tuskegee Airmen 5), Roscoe C. Brown, Jr., Charles Brantly and Earl Lane, each shot down a German Me-262 Distinguished Unit Citation fighter plane. (Story 4.) The Tuskegee Airmen continued to fly and fight, killing and dying, until the war ended in Europe in May., 1945.