Most of the characters were fictitious composites of real pilots. However, Benjamin "B.O." Davis was very much a real person and was depicted accurately.
The character Lewis Johns (Mekhi Phifer) recites "Strange Fruit" to his fellow recruits to describe lynchings in the South in the first half of the 20th century. "Strange Fruit" is a song sung by Billie Holiday from 1939 which in turn was a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish teacher in The Bronx in 1936, under the pen name of Lewis Allen, after he witnessed the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, in that year.
The footage used when the crews are viewing the sinking of the destroyer, which also appears in the TV series Black Sheep Squadron (1976), is footage of a Japanese destroyer rather than a German one.
Cuba Gooding Jr. also starred in Red Tails (2012). It picks up pretty much where this film ended, with the pilots in Europe and their plight in trying to get meaningful assignments.
This film's closing epilogue states: "The 15th Air Force delivered a massive and successful raid on Berlin. The 332nd [Fighter Group] shot down three German jet fighters, the first jet planes of the war . . . Between May 1943 and June 1945, 450 Tuskegee Airmen were awarded more than 850 medals. Sixty-six Tuskegee Airmen died in battle. The 332nd Fighter Group never lost a single bomber to enemy action."