332nd Fighter Group Patch Tuskegee Airman

The black panther breathing fire across this shield was approved as the emblem of the 332nd Fighter Group on 15 January 1943, and the group's descendants carry it today with only the unit name changed. The 332nd was the fighter group of the Tuskegee Airmen, the Black pilots and ground crews trained at Tuskegee, Alabama, during World War II. The emblem was set before the group ever reached combat. Every part of it means something. The panther is strength and devotion to duty, the flames are the unit's reach, and the cloud-like line edging the gold band stands for flying day and night.

The group flew P-39 Airacobras, then P-47 Thunderbolts, and finally the P-51 Mustangs whose painted red tails gave the Tuskegee Airmen the name Red Tails. Its squadrons were the 99th, 100th, 301st and 302nd Fighter Squadrons, flying from Ramitelli, Italy, as bomber escort for the Fifteenth Air Force. Under Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr., on 24 March 1945 the 332nd escorted bombers to Berlin and back, and that mission earned it the Distinguished Unit Citation. The group was inactivated in July 1949 at Lockbourne Army Air Base, Ohio, after Executive Order 9981 ended segregation in the armed forces. Today the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing and the 332nd Expeditionary Operations Group carry the same lineage.

The patch is a shield on a blue field, cut edge, trimmed close to the shield and scroll outline. A gold band crosses the middle with a cloud-scalloped line, called nebule in heraldry, along its top and bottom edges. On that band a black panther strides to the left with red flames coming from its mouth. Below the shield a gold scroll with maroon edging reads SPIT FIRE in black, set between two dots. Blue and gold are the colors of the Air Force, blue for the sky and gold for the sun.

Bomber crews of the Fifteenth Air Force came to know the red tails off their wings. The 332nd built that reputation by staying with the bombers through flak and fighters, all the way to the target and home. The pilots get the headlines, but the mechanics, armorers and support men of the group kept those Mustangs flying from Ramitelli, near the Adriatic coast. Their record helped open the door that Executive Order 9981 walked through in 1948. The panther on this patch belongs to all of them.

It fits a shadow box beside a model of a red-tailed P-51 Mustang, or on the jacket of an airman whose wing carries the 332nd lineage today. It is also a good gift for a young pilot, a history teacher or a family with a Tuskegee Airman in its past. The iron-on backing goes on with a household iron, and it can also be sewn on for a permanent hold. The panther still spits fire.