Wings for This Man

An Army Air Forces short about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military pilots in American history, made by the First Motion Picture Unit and narrated by Captain Ronald Reagan — the future president's own unit produced the film. It follows Black cadets through flight training at Tuskegee and into combat over Europe with the 332nd Fighter Group, pushing back against the Army's own official skepticism that Black men could fly fighters. Short, pointed, and a remarkable artifact of what the wartime government chose to say on film. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain.