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Tuskegee Airman, Harry Stewart, Turns 95

July 3, 2019 by Breanna Wilson

Written By Harry Stewart

I was born on Independen­ce Day 95 years ago. 

On June 27, 1944, I gradu­ated from Tuskegee Army Fly­ing School, established in Ala­bama shortly before America’s entry into World War II to train young African-American men as Army combat pilots.

My journey to the flight line started in my high-school library in the New York City borough of Queens. I came across a magazine a1ticle about the first all-black flying combat unit, the 99th Pursuit Squadron. I decided right then that when I turned 18 the squadron was where I wanted to serve. These black flyers had glamom polish, prestige. The Army Air Forces accepted me even though I had no high­ school diploma. The country needed pilots, I was gung-ho, and I had passed the battery of written tests. 

The train ride down South was eye-opening for a teen­ ager who’d never traveled far from New York. When the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, the conductor came by and pointed at me: “Move to the colored car.” It was discon­certing, but I saw it as an un­ avoidable hurdle to earning my wings. I swallowed hard and kept going.

At Tuskegee Army Airfield, the sky filled with silvery planes emblazoned with the Army Air Forces star-in-circle insignia. The big-barreled trainers emitted a raspy cacophony from their radial engines and fast-turning propel­lers. You felt you were part of something big, something magnificent. You weren’t just learning to fly; you were serv­ing your country, and you were going to fight.

At the controls of P-51 Mus­tangs, I flew 43 combat mis­sions with the 332nd Fighter Group, known as the Red Tails. Our commander was the leg­endary Benjamin O. Davis Jr., who had endured four years of the silent treatment from white cadets at West Point but nevertheless managed to grad­uate 35th out of a class of 276. At our mission briefings, he implored us, “Gentlemen, stay with the bombers!” His convic­tions were encapsulated in his statement: “The privileges of being an American belong to those brave enough to fight for them.”

On Easter Sunday 1945, I shot down three long-nosed Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, the best piston fighters in the Luft­waffe inventory. That action resulted in my receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. I was thankful that my country had given me tl1e opportunity to fly and fight, and all these years later I am proud that I contributed to the cause. We called it winning the Double V, victory against totalitarianism abroad and institutional rac­ism at home.

July 4 is my birthday, but I celebrate my country’s birth­ day too. America was not per­fect in the 1940s and is not perfect today, yet I fought for it then and would do so again.

Mr. Stewart is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and subject of a new biography, “Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman’s Firsthand Account of World War II,” written by Philip Randleman.

 


Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tuskegee-airman-turns-95-11562109354 

Filed Under: Uncategorized, AAR (After Action Review), VTV Blog

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