Latest news with #HarryStewart
CBS News
16-05-2025
- General
- CBS News
Detroit student pilots perform flyover to honor Tuskegee Airmen: "They mean a lot to this country"
Clear skies in Detroit on Friday made the perfect backdrop for a special flyover for one of the nation's heroes. "I was very excited, very happy to honor the Tuskegee Airmen. They mean a lot to this country and the Air Force history," said student pilot Trinity Sims. Lt. Col. Harry Stewart was one of the two last surviving combat pilots of World War II's famous 332nd fighter group, the Tuskegee Airmen. After Stewart's death in February at the age of 100, the team behind the Tuskegee Airmen National Museum wanted to honor his legacy with the next generation of pilots. On Friday, they conducted a flyover before Stewart was laid to rest. "It's an honor for me, I really appreciate the opportunity to do this," said student pilot Angel Araus. Museum vice president Larry Sargent says the students taking flight are just some of the incredible young people who are part of the airmen's enduring legacy. "We still have a ceiling here yet to break, and here we're instrumental in doing it," said Sargent, Vice President. Surrounded by aircraft that have flown throughout history, Sargent remembers the lessons he learned from Stewart and the men who flew alongside him. "We must do a job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn couldn't have done a better job to be accepted, because they'll challenge us in everything that we do. But if we got that covered, nobody else can top us," said Sargent.
Boston Globe
05-02-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Decorated pilot Harry Stewart, Jr., one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, dies
Stewart earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for downing three German aircraft during a dogfight on April 1, 1945. He was also part of a team of four Tuskegee Airmen who won the U.S. Air Force Top Gun flying competition in 1949, although their accomplishment would not be recognized until decades later. Advertisement 'Harry Stewart was a kind man of profound character and accomplishment with a distinguished career of service he continued long after fighting for our country in World War II,' Brian Smith, president and CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum, said. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Born on July 4, 1924, in Virginia, his family moved to New York when he was young. Stewart had dreamed of flying since he was a child when he would watch planes at LaGuardia airport, according to a book about his life titled 'Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airmen's Firsthand Account of World War II.' In the wake of Pearl Harbor, an 18-year-old Stewart joined what was then considered an experiment to train Black military pilots. The unit sometimes known as the Tuskegee Airmen for where they trained in Alabama or the Red Tails because of the red tips of their P-51 Mustangs. 'I did not recognize at the time the gravity of what we are facing. I just felt as though it was a duty of mine at the time. I just stood up to my duty,' Stewart said of World War II in a 2024 interview with CNN about the war. Having grown up in a multicultural neighborhood, the segregation and prejudice of the Jim Crow-era South came as a shock to Stewart, but he was determined to finish and earn his wings according to the book about his life. After finishing training, the pilots were assigned to escort U.S. bombers in Europe. The Tuskegee Airmen are credited with losing significantly fewer escorted bombers than other fighter groups. Advertisement '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, and 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. Stewart would sometimes say in a self-effacing way that he was too busy enjoying flying to realize he was making history, according to his book. Stewart had hoped to become a commercial airline pilot after he left the military, but was rejected because of his race. He went on to earn a mechanical engineering degree New York University. He relocated to Detroit and retired as vice president of a natural gas pipeline company. Stewart told Michigan Public Radio in 2019 that he was moved to tears on a recent commercial flight when he saw who was piloting the aircraft. 'When I entered the plane, I looked into the cockpit there and there were two African American pilots. One was the co-pilot, and one was the pilot. But not only that, the thing that started bringing the tears to my eyes is that they were both female,' Stewart said. The Air Force last month briefly removed training course s with videos of its storied Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs in an effort to comply with the Trump administration's crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The materials were quickly restored following a bipartisan backlash. Advertisement
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Decorated Tuskegee fighter pilot from Queens dies at 100
Retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, Jr., credited with taking down three Nazi planes in one fight while flying with the Tuskegee Airmen, has died at age 100. Born on July 4, 1924 in Virginia, Stewart developed his love for planes after moving to Queens, near what is now LaGuardia Airport. Stewart's legacy includes being among the first military pilots to win the Air Force 'Top Gun' contest in 1949, when his Black 332nd Fighter Group defied the odds by defeating teams of white pilots in a competition near Las Vegas. He spoke about his road to becoming a World War II hero during a 2024 Veterans Breakfast Club podcast. That included hanging around what was then called North Beach Airport and imagining himself in a cockpit. 'I used to walk over to the airport as a kid and hang out near the fence there and watch the planes take off and land and fantasize about my being the pilot of that aircraft flying people to different places,' he recalled. He later enjoyed going to see the P-39 Airacobras stationed in Queens shortly before World War II began. 'I took a big interest in that and used to go down, hope I could see one of them take off or land or something like that because they were considerably faster than most of the transport planes that were flying out of LaGuardia at the time,' he said. Stewart said he overcame polio and a heart problem before joining the Army Air Corps in 1943 and training to fly with about 900 other Black airmen in Tuskegee, Ala. He recalled being one of 355 Tuskegee pilots assigned to fly overseas and participate in combat during the war. His shining moment came on Easter Day 1945 over Germany when his squadron was attacked by Nazi fighter planes while on an escort mission. According to military site Task & Purpose, Stewart shot down two of those attackers and outmaneuvered a third plane, which got behind him, but crashed while trying to match his navigation skills during a dive maneuver. Three of the eight planes with his group were lost in that battle. Stewart reportedly completed 43 missions with his 'Red Tails' squadron and was decorated with a Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal. He joked with the Veterans Breakfast Club that while flying over Europe at age 19, he still didn't know how to drive a car. 'That was because I was from New York City and, you know, we had the rapid transition system,' he said. 'A car was almost prohibited because of the traffic and that type of thing.' Stewart died at his home in Michigan on Sunday.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
One of the last remaining Tuskegee World War II veterans dies at 100
Retired Lt. Col. Harry Stewart, Jr., one of World War II's few remaining members of the original Tuskegee Airmen, died peacefully in his home in Michigan on Sunday, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum confirmed. He was 100. Stewart was one of two surviving combat pilots from the World War II-era 332nd Fighter Group, a segregated all-Black wing of the United States Army Air Force. 'We are deeply saddened by his passing and extend our condolences to his family and friends around the world,' said Brian Smith, the president and CEO of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum in Detroit. 'Harry Stewart was a kind man of profound character and accomplishment with a distinguished career of service he continued long after fighting for our country in World War II.' Born on July 4, 1924, in Newport News, Virginia, Stewart was among the first 1,007 Black Army pilots in the 1940s who were trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama. From childhood, Stewart took a keen interest in flying. After moving to Queens, New York, with his family at the age of two, a young Stewart 'used to walk over to the airport as a kid and hang out near the fence there and watch the planes take off and land and fantasize about my being the pilot of that aircraft flying people to different places,' Stewart recalled during a Veterans Breakfast Club podcast. 'Then later when WWII was about to start, there was a squadron or company of P-39s Airacobras that was stationed there, and I took a big interest in that.' Despite a bout of polio as a child that left his right calf partially paralyzed, at 18 Stewart enlisted and was accepted into the Army Air Corps in 1943, before receiving his wings in June 1944. Assigned to the 301st Fighter Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group — known famously as the 'Red Tails' for their plane's distinctive coloring — Stewart's Fighter Group was among the few assigned to active combat duty. 'When the Army Air Corps said that they would recant and they would build a field, but it would have to be just for the Negro trainees there, I was willing to accept that in order to go ahead and get my wings,' Stewart told Friends of the National World War II Memorial in a 2024 interview. 'That was the prize as far as I was concerned. I was frankly willing to do anything to go ahead and get my wings. 'That's not also to say that I didn't have a strong streak of patriotism. I was a patriot, but I was also willing to turn my face the other way when it came to segregated training.' During the war Stewart would fly an incredible 43 missions, earning an Air Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery while escorting U.S. bombers over occupied Europe. One of Stewart's more memorable missions came on April 1, 1945, when he shot down three German aircraft in a single day. He became just one of four Tuskegee Airmen to achieve such a feat. In his book, 'Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II,' Stewart recounted that he, along with seven others, were escorting a B-24 formation near Linz, Germany, after a succession mission to attack the marshaling yards at St. Pölten, Austria, when they encountered several German Focke-Wulf Fw-190s. 'I remember the excitement. … The thing about it was there were seven of us who were flying along, and we were on what's known as a fighter sweep and we were going around the Daube around one of the towns there, and I saw these two fighters in formation,' Steward told the Friends. While he wasn't initially the lead, he soon became the point man and in quick succession took out two enemy aircraft. However, after taking a slight turn Stewart heard yelling. 'He's on your tail.' The third and final Focke-Wulf had maneuvered behind the fighter pilot. Pulling all sorts of 'tricks' Stewart aimed the nose of his plane down, spiraling towards earth, he recalled. The Luftwaffe pilot followed suit but had overcontrolled and quickly spun out, crashing to the ground. Stewart managed to pull out of the dive and was credited with his third and final kill. After the war, Stewart earned a mechanical engineering degree from New York University but did not stop flying, becoming one of four pilots who formed a team from the 332nd Fighter Group to compete in the first ever 'Top Gun' Weapons contest trophy at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada, in May 1949. Stewart and the Tuskegee crew flew P-47s and defeated pilots flying more modern jets. When asked about the Tuskegee legacy, Stewart implored, 'I hope they remember when they hire a pilot or an astronaut … or hire a person in any endeavor that not heretofore been open to a Black is that they give that person their due consideration. Not based on their color but based on what they know and what they can contribute.' Of the original 355 Tuskegee Airmen who flew in World War II, only Lt. Col. George Hardy remains today.
