In April 1944, Walterboro Army Airfield ended fighter group training and shifted to advanced individual air combat training, and more than 500 black airmen from the Tuskegee program trained there between 1944 and October 1945 as replacement pilots for the all-black 332nd Fighter Group. At the base they lived in segregated quarters and faced segregated seating in the theater and cafeteria, as well as a separate officer's club, leading some to boycott the theater, while with support from the black community a USO for black pilots was approved on Gruber St. in 1944 less than a mile from the airfield. During stays of about four months, trainees averaged sixty hours in transition flying, formation flying, instrument and night flying, aerial and ground gunnery, aerobatics, and combat tactics, and black instructors including veterans of the 99th Fighter Squadron taught alongside white instructors. Black pilots at Walterboro trained on the P-39 Airacobra, P-40 Kittyhawk, and P-47 Thunderbolt, and four black pilots died during training there: Richard Bell, Cornelius Dowling, Willis Moore, and Lloyd Carter. In 1945, race relations off base grew more tense after a fracas involving Spann Watson and the mayor of Walterboro and after a national order against segregated officers' clubs led white officers to shift their activities to a local country club rather than associate with black officers, and tensions eased only when the base closed that October and its black and white soldiers were transferred elsewhere.