The film was directed by Robert Markowitz and stars Laurence Fishburne, Cuba Gooding Jr., John Lithgow, and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

During World War II Hannibal "Iowa" Lee, Jr. (Laurence Fishburne), traveling by train to Tuskegee, Alabama, is joined by fellow flight cadet candidates Billy "A-Train" Roberts (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Walter Peoples III (Allen Payne), and Lewis Johns (Mekhi Phifer).

Afterwards, cadet Leroy Cappy (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) begins to let self-doubt creep in after seeing Johns' deadly crash and watching others leave the program.

Afterwards, Peoples performs some unauthorized aerobatic maneuvers (buzzing the airfield, barrel rolling) to impress Hannibal, but this also catches the attention of Colonel Rogers and Major Joy, and results in him being removed from the training program.

Peoples admits to Colonel Rogers and Major Joy that he made a mistake and pleads with them not to put him out of the program, but to no avail.

To avoid going home in disgrace, an emotionally distraught Peoples commandeers an AT-6, takes off with it and commits suicide by deliberately crashing it.

Cadet Cappy - again letting his own self doubts creep back in - sides with Roberts against Lee, saying that he doesn't see any reason to continue on if Major Joy is going to stick with his attempts to break them as well.

The guards stand with a mixed look of praise and curiosity when the cadets exit the aircraft; their emotions turn to utter shock when Lee and Cappy take their flight masks off, revealing themselves as black aviators.

With the ensuing positive press coverage, the men are deployed to North Africa, as part of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, though they are relegated to ground attack missions.

Another Bf 109 hits Cappy's fighter aircraft numerous times, causing a fire in the cockpit and fatally wounding him.

A congressional hearing of the House Armed Services Committee is convened to determine whether the Tuskegee Airmen "experiment" should continue.

They also rescue a straggling B-17 which is being attacked by two German fighters while returning from a bombing raid, shooting down both of the enemy Bf 109s.

[1] Ottumwa, Iowa, native, Captain Robert W. Williams, a wartime pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps' "332nd Fighter Group", the all African-American combat unit trained at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama, wrote a manuscript years earlier, and worked with screenwriter T. S. Cook to create a screenplay originally intended for a feature film project.

The principal photography also utilized locations at Juliette, Georgia, Muskogee, Oklahoma as well as studio work in Los Angeles, California.

One example of period dialogue that was faithful to the times was Hannibal Lee Jr. (another fictitious composite) singing: "Straighten up..." finished by Billy Roberts (fictional character): "...and fly right."

"Strange Fruit" is a song recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, inspired by a poem by Abel Meeropol after he witnessed the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.

At the end, the film details the unit's accomplishments: 66 out of the 450 Tuskegee Airmen died in battle, they engaged and defeated Messerschmitt Me 262s, the first operational jet fighters, and they were awarded a total of 850 medals over the course of the war.

[13][14] This was, however, still an exxcellent loss to enemy fire ratio; the average for other P-51 fighter groups of the Fiffteenth Air Force was 46 bombers lost.