Claude Davis, who in the 1940s joined an elite group of black pilots at Alabama's Tuskegee Army Air Field that helped break down color barriers. has died. An Inglewood resident, he was 92.
Davis, who battled prostate cancer, died April 30 at Centinela Hospital Medical Center, in Inglewood. He was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, all-black Army Air Corps squadrons trained to fly and maintain combat aircraft during World War II. In the early 1940s, Air Corps officials had built a separate facility at Tuskegee to train the pilots, who proved themselves to be skilled aviators even as they faced crowded classrooms and racist attitudes in the military.