Joseph Elsberry
He is only one of four Tuskegee Airmen to have earned three aerial victories in a single day of combat: Clarence Lester, Lee Archer (pilot), and Harry Stewart.[6][7] However, despite some contention, Lee Archer is considered by some as the first and only African American U.S. pilot in World War II to earn an "ace" designation.African American newspapers and civil rights leaders including the NAACP's Walter White, Judge William H. Hastie, and Pullman Porter union leader A. Philip Randolph pleaded with President Franklin Roosevelt to include African American in aeronautics and the United States Army Air Corps, the U.S. Army Corps.[15] Some of the way was paved by U.S. Congress' April 3, 1939 Appropriations Bill Public Law 18 which designated funds to train African-American pilots at civilian flight schools.[19] On 23 June 1944, Elsberry and his squadron of P-51 “Mustang” long-range, single-seat fighters sank a German destroyer in Italy's Trieste Harbor employing exclusively 50-caliber machine guns.