Lieutenant retired colonel Harry Stewart Jr, a decorated pilot from World War II who broke racial barriers as aviators of Tuskegee and obtained honors for his heroism of combat, has died. I was 100 years old.
Stewart was one of the last surviving combat pilots of the famous combat group 332 also known as the aviators of Tuskegee. The group was the first black military pilots in the nation.
The National Historical Museum of Airmen Tuskegee confirmed his death. The organization said he died peacefully at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Sunday.
Stewart obtained the distinguished flying cross for demolishing three German aircraft during a dog fight on April 1, 1945. He was also part of a team of four Tuskegee aviators who won the United States Air Force flight competition in 1949 in 1949 , although his achievement would not be a recognized achievement until decades later.
“Harry Stewart was a kind man of a deep nature and achieved with a distinguished service career that continued long after fighting for our country in World War II,” said Brian Smith, president and CEO of the National Historical Museum of Airmen Tuskegee.
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 saw planes at Laguardia airport, according to a book about his life entitled “Soaring to Glory: To Tuskegee Airmen account first -hand of World War II”. Following Pearl Harbor, a 18 -year -old Stewart joined what was later considered an experiment to train black military pilots. The unit was also known as the aviators of Tuskegee where they trained in Alabama or the red tails due to the red tips of their P-51 Mustangs.
“I did not recognize at that time the seriousness of what we face. I felt like it was a duty of mine at that time. I put myself up to my duty, ”said Stewart about World War II in a 2024 interview with CNN about the war.
Having grown up in a multicultural neighborhood, segregation and prejudice of the southern Jim Crow era were a shock for Stewart, but he was determined to finish and win his wings according to the book about his life. After finishing training, the pilots were assigned to escort American bombers in Europe. The aviators of Tuskegee are attributed significantly less escorted bombers than other combat groups.
“I had to really enjoy the idea of the panorama, I would say, the scene that I would see before me with the hundreds of bombers and the hundreds of combat planes and everyone pulled the condensation paths, and it was only the ballet in the sky and A feeling of belonging to something that was really great, ”said Stewart in a 2020 interview with WAMC.
Stewart sometimes said in a moderate way that he was too busy enjoying flying to realize that he was making history, according to his book.
Stewart had hoped to become a pilot of a commercial airline after leaving the military, but was rejected due to his career. Then he obtained a mechanical engineering degree from the University of New York. He moved to Detroit and retired as vice president of a natural gas gas pipeline company.
Stewart told Michigan Public Radio in 2019 that he moved to tears on a recent commercial flight when he saw who was driving the plane.
“When I entered the plane, I looked at the cabin there and there were two African -American pilots. One was the co -pilot, and one was the pilot. But not only that, what began to bring tears to my eyes is that both were women, ”said Stewart.
Last month, the Air Force briefly eliminated the training courses with videos of its aviators of Tuskegee and the pilots of the Women’s Air Force Service, or WASPS in an effort to meet the Trump administration offensive on the diversity initiatives , equity and inclusion. The materials were quickly restored after a bipartisan reaction.
