7. The Tuskegee Airmen’s Greatest Mission
The Tuskegee Airmen’s most famous mission, in which they went up against German Me 262 fighter jets, came on March 24th, 1945. That day, Colonel Benjamin O. Davis led 43 P-51s of the 332nd Fighter Group as bomber escorts for Fifteenth Air Force B-17s, who flew a 1600-mile round trip to raid a tank factory in Berlin.
The Luftwaffe put up stiff resistance, sending up FW 190s, Me 163 Komet rocket fighters, and 25 Me 262 jet fighters. Tuskegee Airmen Roscoe Brown, Charles Brantley, and Earl Lane, all managed to shoot down Luftwaffe jets over Berlin that day. The 332nd earned another Distinguished Unit Citation for its feats on that mission.