other bomber crews know he was leaving formation Then he steered Tail Heavy into a steep dive Ten thousand feet 3 048 m lower Scheib leveled out At 15 000 feet 4 572 m the air was rich with oxygen and his crew mates regained consciousness Scheib told all the men to put on their parachutes and be ready to bail out if German fighters pounced on them Scheib was on the lookout for German planes but what he saw next was something he did not expect Tail Heavy s flight engineer tapped him on the shoulder and pointed Scheib looked out the window and saw a P 51 Mustang The US fighter airplane had a tail painted bright red It was one of the Tuskegee Airmen known to other fliers as Red Tails The Tuskegee Airmen were an all African American unit of fighter pilots They had a reputation for protecting US bombers in the skies over Europe Where did this guy come from Scheib wondered The Red Tail had seen Scheib leaving formation and had followed him Soon another fighter showed up on his other wing A wave of relief washed over Scheib He knew he and his crew had a much better chance of surviving this flight now The presence of these two fighters announced to anyone watching that an entire escort squadron of fighter planes was nearby He felt nobody would dare mess with Tail Heavy knowing that Scheib was right His plane made it back to Venosa safely thanks in large part to its Red Tail escort But that was not the last time he would encounter the Red
D D K The Tuskegee Airmen sought to show African American pilots could fight just as well as their white
THE P 51 MUSTANG From 1944 through the end of World War II the primary aircraft flown by Tuskegee Airmen in the 332nd Fighter Group was the P 51 Mustang Experts on both sides of the conflict agreed the P 51 was among the best fighter airplanes of the war The first model of the aircraft known as the P 51A entered service with the US military in March 1942 However the airplane's engine lacked power at high altitudes In late 1942 the military experimented with replacing the Mustang's existing engine with a Merlin engine manufactured by the British company Rolls Royce Stunky A member of the Tuskegee Airmen ground crew loads ammunition into a Mustang's wing machine gun 12
312102 sta The new engine boosted the Mustang's power immensely This new model the P 51B could fly faster and higher speeding across the sky at nearly 440 miles per hour 710 kmh Later changes made the plane even more effective The P 51D added a transparent plastic bubble canopy or cockpit enclosure allowing the pilot to see clearly in all directions This was an improvement over earlier canopies which had braces that blocked a pilot's rear vision The P 51 carried four to six machine guns and could also carry bombs and rockets Its extra external fuel tanks gave it a range of more than 1 000 miles 1 609 km Hermann Göring the commander of Germany's Luftwaffe or air force remarked after the war When I saw your bombers over Berlin protected by your long range fighters P 51 Mustangs I knew then that the Luftwaffe would be unable to stop your bombers Our weapons plants would be destroyed our defeat was inevitable 13
