PITTSBURGH — Men from western Pennsylvania who served in the all-black Tuskegee Airmen unit during World War II are now honored in a new monument in Allegheny County.
Hundreds gathered at Sewickley Cemetery for Sunday's unveiling of the memorial billed as the country's largest outdoor monument honoring the barrier-breaking group.
The names of about 100 western Pennsylvania members of the 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S Army Air Corps are carved into two flanking towers. A central tower is topped by a red granite sculpture of an airplane tail, a reference to the unit's nickname, "Red Tails."
More than 900 pilots trained at Tuskegee institute in Alabama and about a third escorted bombers in the war's European theater, disproving the notion that black pilots were inferior to whites.
WPXI
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