Word: 99th
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Just last season, the Crimson (1-1, 0-1 Ivy) ranked 99th in Division 1-AA in total defense (396.5 yards allowed per game) en route to a disappointing 2-8 campaign...
...story of the Tuskegee airmen, and the vicious racism they overcame to become war heroes, will finally reach a wide audience. Starting on Aug. 26, with additional play dates over the following few weeks, HBO will broadcast a TV drama based on the adventures of the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron, which first went into combat in April 1943 and eventually shot down 16 enemy planes, destroyed four more and damaged six others in just nine months. Laurence Fishburne (What's Love Got to Do with It), Allen Payne (New Jack City), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Outbreak) and Andre Braugher...
...suicides and daredevil fatalities among the intensely frustrated young flyers. Things began to change when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Tuskegee in 1941 and, against the advice of her staff, took a test flight with Anderson. It was a well-publicized vote of confidence in the program. Soon the 99th Fighter Squadron was formed under the command of Benjamin O. Davis, the first black graduate of West Point, and dispatched to North Africa...
Once there, however, the 99th was relegated to the routine duty of strafing ground targets. Eventually, they began escorting bombers to their targets, but the commander of the fighter group, Colonel William Momyer, went out of his way to make them feel unwelcome. Time, in its Sept. 20, 1943, issue, questioned the fighting capability of blacks in general, asking, "Is the Negro as good a soldier as the white...
Then, in January 1944,the squadron happened upon a group of enemy planes. In less than five minutes, the airmen knocked down five. Later that same day, another group from the 99th downed three more. They had proved they could fight. The 99th eventually became part of the 332nd, a larger all-black unit, and altogether the pilots of the 332nd flew 1,578 missions and won 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses and 744 air medals , making them among the most highly decorated pilots of the war. They never lost a bomber under their protection, and eventually white bomber pilots began...