A three page photo-essay found on the yellowing pages of a 1943 issue of Click Magazine introduced American readers to the flying Black Panthers of the U.S. Army Air Force; a fighter squadron composed entirely of African American pilots, trained at the new $2000,000 airfield in Tuskegee, Ala.. The four paragraphs that tell their story are accompanied by eight portraits of the pilots and snap-shots of the assorted ground crew, mechanics and orderlies – all Black.
They undoubtedly will reach a combat area this summer. One squadron, the 99th, has arrived overseas already. [These] pilots, whose insignia is a flame-spewing black panther, are rarin’ to join them. They want to roar a personal answer to the Axis ‘race superiority’ lies.