retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr., a famous World War II pilot who was honored for his combat heroics and broke down racial boundaries as a Tuskegee Airman, has away. He was 100 years old.
Stewart was among the final combat pilots to survive from the renowned 332nd Fighter Group, popularly referred to as the Tuskegee Airmen. They were the first Black military pilots in the country.
His death was verified by the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum. According to the group, he died quietly on Sunday at his Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, home.
When Stewart shot down three German planes in a dogfight on April 1, 1945, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was also one of four Tuskegee Airmen that won the 1949 U.S. Air Force Top Gun flying competition, though it would take decades for their achievement to be acknowledged.
According to Brian Smith, president and CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum, Harry Stewart was a good man with a strong sense of moral integrity and accomplishment who served for our nation for a long time after the Second World War.
He was born in Virginia on July 4, 1924, and his family relocated to New York when he was a small child. According to Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman’s Firsthand Account of World War II, a book chronicling Stewart’s life, he had dreamed of flying since he was a boy and used to watch jets at LaGuardia airport. Stewart, at eighteen, enrolled in what was then seen as an experiment to train Black military pilots in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The group was sometimes referred to as the Red Tails due to the red tips of their P-51 Mustangs or the Tuskegee Airmen because of their training in Alabama.
At the moment, I was unaware of how serious the situation we are in is. At the time, I simply believed it to be my responsibility. In a 2024 interview with CNN regarding World War II, Stewart stated, “I just stood up to my duty.”
According to the book about his life, Stewart was shocked by the segregation and bigotry of the Jim Crow-era South after growing up in a multicultural neighborhood, but he was determined to finish and earn his wings. The pilots were tasked with escorting American bombers throughout Europe after completing training. Compared to other fighter groups, the Tuskegee Airmen are recognized for having lost a notably lower number of escorted bombers.
“It was just the ballet in the sky and a feeling of belonging to something that was really big,” Stewart said in a 2020 interview with WAMC, “and I got to really enjoy the idea of the panorama, I would say, of the scene I would see before me with the hundreds of bombers and the hundreds of fighter planes up there and all of them pulling the condensation trails.”
According to his autobiography, Stewart occasionally claimed in a humble manner that he was too preoccupied with enjoying flying to recognize that he was creating history.
After leaving the military, Stewart wanted to fly for a commercial airline, but his race prevented him from getting accepted. He later graduated from New York University with a degree in mechanical engineering. He retired as vice president of a natural gas pipeline company and moved to Detroit.
When Stewart realized who was piloting the plane on a recent commercial flight, he broke down in tears, he told Michigan Public Radio in 2019.
Upon entering the aircraft, I noticed that there were two African American pilots in the cockpit. The pilot was one, and the co-pilot was another. Furthermore, Stewart stated that the fact that they were both female was what initially caused me to cry.
In an attempt to comply with the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, the Air Force temporarily withdrew training courses featuring videos of its legendary Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Air Force Service Pilots, or WASPs, last month. There was a bipartisan response, and the documents were promptly reinstated.