Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. (December 18, 1912 – July 4, 2002) was a United States Air Force (USAF) general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen.
He was the first African-American brigadier general in the USAF. After his retirement, on December 9, 1998, he was advanced to four-star general by President Bill Clinton. During World War II, Davis was commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis flew sixty missions in P-39 Airacobra, Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang fighters and was one of the first African-American pilots to see combat. Davis followed in his father's footsteps in breaking racial barriers, as Benjamin O. Davis Sr. had been the first Black general in the United States Army.
Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on December 18, 1912, the second of three children born to Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Elnora Dickerson Davis. His father was a U.S. Army officer, a lieutenant at that time, stationed in Wyoming with the 9th Cavalry, a segregated African-American regiment. Davis Sr. served 41 years before he was promoted to brigadier general in October 1940. Elnora Davis died from complications after giving birth to their third child in 1916.
In the summer of 1926, at age 13, Davis Jr (or Davis) flew with a barnstorming pilot at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. The experience led to his determination to become a pilot himself.
In 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression, Davis graduated from Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio. That same year, he began attending Western Reserve University (1929–1930).
In July 1932, after attending the University of Chicago, Davis entered the United States Military Academy (West Point). He graduated from West Point in 1936, becoming the first black man to do so since 1889. His sponsor was Representative Oscar De Priest (R-IL) of Chicago, who was, at the time, the only black member of Congress.
During his four years at the academy, Davis was isolated by his white classmates on account of his race. He never had a roommate. He ate by himself. His classmates rarely spoke to him outside the line of duty, intending that their "silent treatment" would drive him from the academy. It had the opposite effect; it steeled his determination to endure the animosity and to compete and graduate. Ultimately, his perseverance earned the respect of his classmates, as evidenced by a biographical note of Davis in the 1936 yearbook, the Howitzer:
"The courage, tenacity, and intelligence with which he conquered a problem incomparably more difficult than plebe year won for him the sincere admiration of his classmates, and his single-minded determination to continue in his chosen career cannot fail to inspire respect wherever fortune may lead him."
Davis graduated in June 1936, 35th in a class of 276. He was the academy's fourth black graduate after Henry Ossian Flipper (1877), John Hanks Alexander (1887), and Charles Young (1889). When he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, the Army had only two black officers who weren't chaplains – Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Benjamin O. Davis Jr. After graduation, he married Agatha Scott, whom he had met while a cadet at West Point.
At the start of his junior year at West Point, Davis had applied for the Army Air Corps but was rejected because it did not accept African Americans. In 1936, the U.S. Army assigned Davis to the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment (one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments) at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was not allowed inside the base officers' club based on his race.
In June 1937, Davis attended the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning. He was later assigned to teach military tactics at Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Tuskegee, Alabama. This was the same assignment his father was given years before; it was a way for the Army to avoid placing a black officer in command of white soldiers.
Early in 1941, the Roosevelt administration, in response to public pressure for greater black participation in the military as war approached, ordered the War Department to create a black flying unit. Captain Davis was assigned to the first training class at Tuskegee Army Air Field (hence the name Tuskegee Airmen). In July 1941, Davis entered aviation cadet training with the Tuskegee Airmen's first class of aviation cadets, Class 42-C-SE. On March 6, 1942, Davis graduated from aviation cadet training with Captain George S. Roberts, 2nd Lt. Charles DeBow Jr. (Feb 13, 1918 – April 4, 1986), 2nd Lt. Mac Ross (1912–1944), and 2nd Lt. Lemuel R. Custis (1915–2005). Davis and his four classmates became the first African American combat fighter pilots in the U.S. military.
Davis was the first African American officer to solo an Army Air Corps aircraft. In July that year, having been promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was named commander of the first all-black air unit, the 99th Pursuit Squadron.
The squadron, equipped with Curtiss P-40 fighters, was sent to Tunisia in North Africa in the spring of 1943. On June 2, they saw combat for the first time in a dive-bombing mission against the German-held island of Pantelleria as part of Operation Corkscrew. The squadron later supported the Allied invasion of Sicily.
In September 1943, Davis was deployed to the United States to take command of the 332nd Fighter Group, a larger all-black unit preparing to go overseas. Soon after his arrival, there was an attempt to stop the use of black pilots in combat. Senior officers in the Army Air Forces recommended to the Army chief of staff, General George Marshall, that the 99th (Davis's old unit) be removed from combat operations as it had performed poorly. This infuriated Davis as he had never been told of any deficiencies with the unit. He held a news conference at The Pentagon to defend his men and then presented his case to a War Department committee studying the use of black servicemen.
Marshall ordered an inquiry but allowed the 99th to continue fighting in the meantime. The inquiry eventually reported that the 99th's performance was comparable to other air units, but any questions about the squadron's fitness were answered in January 1944 when its pilots shot down 12 German planes in two days while protecting the Anzio beachhead.
Colonel Davis and his 332nd Fighter Group arrived in Italy soon after that. The four-squadron group, which was called the Red Tails for the distinctive markings of its planes, were based at Ramitelli Airfield and flew many missions deep into German territory. By summer 1944 the Group had transitioned to P-47 Thunderbolts. In the summer of 1945, Davis took over the all-black 477th Bombardment Group, which was stationed at Godman Field, Kentucky.
During the war, the airmen commanded by Davis had compiled an outstanding record in combat against the Luftwaffe. They flew more than 15,000 sorties, shot down 112 enemy planes, and destroyed or damaged 273 on the ground at a cost of 66 of their own planes and losing only about twenty-five bombers. Davis himself led 67 missions in P-47s and P-51 Mustangs. He received the Silver Star for a strafing run into Austria and the Distinguished Flying Cross for a bomber-escort mission to Munich on June 9, 1944.