 China and over Germany. Teen Morning Patrol goes on. They close the range. 3500 feet, 3,000, 2,500, 2,000. The odds are still three to one. The Nazis spinning down in blood and flame to every one of ours in patrol. They're good planes, wonderful planes, and their pilots are good too. Listen. Yesterday, I filled one of my ambitions as a combat pilot. I got one airplane. An American far from home fighting a war around the world. Listen again. This was my leader, and the second ship was me, and two cock-wheels came on my right. I turned right and put up a stone wall of bullets, and the wall of bullets. It wasn't so long ago these men were students in a university, workmen in a shipyard, just plain citizens from everywhere, USA. They changed jobs, they changed clothes, they took a train into the future. They didn't know what the future would be, but many hoped they'd get the chance to fly and fight in the air. Some wanted that chance more than anything in the world. Deep inside Alabama is a famous school called the Tuskegee Institute. It was founded on July 4th of 1881, and since that independence day, it has graduated many thousands into agriculture, into science, into industry. This school was the first of its kind, and its founder, Booker T. Washington, was a pioneer who broke open a road for others to follow. This man had a dream, and the dream became stone. He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people, and pointed the way to progress through education and industry. Close to this school, close to the work this man had done, the United States government determined to build an airfield. Three years ago, this was just another farm in Alabama. More than trees had to be cleared away. There was misunderstanding and distrust and prejudice to be cleared away. Three years ago, there was only an idea, but ideas are powerful things. And today, there are fighter planes flying overhead. Instead of swamp and yellow pine, there are hangars, repair shops, barracks. Instead of patches of corn, concrete flight strips. But that's not enough. You can't make a fighter squadron out of concrete and aluminum and a can of paint. It takes men, a chemistry student, a welder, a shoe salesman must learn how to fly. A group of average Americans must become a team of fighting men with wings. There's a new world up here. A man has to learn his way around. It takes many weeks of learning to make a fighter pilot. And a lot of that learning is done in a hard wooden chair. Because a fighter pilot is a combination of a mathematician and an athlete, a scientist and a sharpshooter. He's got to know what goes on inside his plane. The heart of his fighter is steel and copper. Its bloodstream is gas and oil. But its brain is the man who flies it. He gains in a safe, slow plane. Two wings instead of one. But he flies many hours inside a closed room. In the morning, he may be flying a prescribed course over a sheet of paper. In the afternoon, he may fly the same course above the clouds. He trains his muscles down here very close to the ground. But he'll use the same sense of balance and coordination in the skies above Tuskegee. For this job of flying is never easy. And sometimes it's very, very tough. But he's learning how high and how fast and how far he must go to reach the enemy. Pilotage, dead reckoning, theory of flight, radio code. Yes, he's getting muscles in his mind. He's getting hard, keen, quick. He's coming into the clear. Near hills of Alabama, these Americans are running to fly in those tight combat formations they'll use someday to hunt down the German and Jep above his own cities. In addition to fighter groups, a year ago this field began to train men for medium bombers. And that too was a pioneer step. But one thing it proved, you can't judge a man here by the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose. On the flight strip, you judge a man by the way he flies. Here's the answer to Adolf and Hirohito. Here's the answer to the propaganda of the Japs and Nazis. Here's the answer, wings for this man. Here's the answer, wings for these Americans. Squadron after squadron out of Tuskegee, flying P-40s first, tough little planes, then striking with Thunderbolts, P-47s, then riding the Mustangs, P-51s. No, it was never easy for these men. They were pioneers and no pioneer has it easy. They fought lies, they fought heartbreak, and they won. Now they fight the enemy on his own soil. The enemy not without loss. Out of the first class to graduate almost three years ago, only a handful are left alive so that liberty might not perish from the earth. The years have passed since the founding of Tuskegee airfield. 750 pilots have been trained, 50% of them have been in combat, and this is only a beginning. Listen to Major General Butler at the celebration of this third anniversary. Here for the first time, Negro aviation cadets were being groomed to fly war planes of a unit which was then a unit and fought only the 99th pursuit squadron. These men were pioneers of a venture so new that you who stand here before me now, after three years, may still be considered forerunners in the movement which has given you a place in the fighting men of the sky. Under the feet of these men, a new road is being beaten out, broad enough now for thousands and ten thousands, a good road for our country. These men remember that, marching or flying. They remember backing them up, their families, their friends who expect so much of them, and backing them up, the men and women of every creed and speech and color who made these planes, and backing them up, the most powerful force in the world, the strength of the American people.