On this day in 1943 1st Lieutenant Charles Blakesly Hall, United States Army Air Corps, 99th Fighter Squadron, becomes the first member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen to shoot down an enemy aircraft. Hall shot down the Focke-Wulf Fw-190, the most capable German fighter aircraft at the time, flying a Curtiss-Wright P-40L Warhawk made in Buffalo at the site of what is now the Buffalo International Airport. Almost 14,000 P-40s were made in Buffalo during World War II.
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