History Book: Breaking barriers in the skies

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, February 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Last week, one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airman died at his home in Michigan, Lt. Col. Harry T. Stewart Jr. He was one hundred years old.

The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of all-black pilots during World War Two when American schools, churches, and the military were still segregated.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Stewart was just seventeen when he volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Here’s WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde.

CALEB WELDE: On September 16th, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Selective Service Act requiring all men from age 21 to 36 to register with local draft boards. It also prohibits the Armed service from “discrimination against any person on account of race or color.”

The same day, the War Department announces that the Civil Aeronautics Authority will be working with the U.S. Army to develop—in its words—“colored personnel” to serve as airmen. The Army settles on Tuskegee, Alabama as the place to train these men.

RADIO NEWSCAST: We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air, president Roosevelt has just announced.

The attack on Pearl Harbor only intensifies the Army’s resolve to develop a strong air force. And an air force needs pilots.

INTERVIEWER: What was it like when you got to Tuskegee?

In 2019, the Americans Veterans Center recorded this interview with Harry Stewart Jr.

STEWART: Well, of course, as a youngster of 18 years old, I was wide eyed and awestruck by all of the things I saw.

Stewart had volunteered to join the military. He passed the Pilot Cadet exam even though at the time, he didn’t even know how to drive a car.

STEWART: I had never met a group of talented men like this before with so much talent within the group itself. And the talent was broad-ranged…

The Tuskegee base is ninety-nine percent African American.

STEWART: We trained from the same playbook as the rest of the Army, Air Corps there. There was no difference as far as the training was concerned for the Negro soldiers versus the white cadets.

As far as the Army Air Corp is concerned, Tuskegee is an experiment. The Corp is still relying heavily on a 1925 Army War College report. The report claimed African Americans were unfit for any type of combat duty. The document was titled “The Use of Negro Manpower in War.” But the need for soldiers and airmen won out.

STEWART: The training itself, though, was arduous, it was quite demanding. The actual flight training itself took place over a period of 10 months, and was involved with three phases of flying.

First, a fabric 95-horsepower plane. Then, onto an all-metal 450 horsepower plane. Phase three: an actual fighter. Stewart got to train in a P-51 Mustang. He got orders to Italy in November of 1944.

NEWSREEL: The last 18 hours has brought the greatest air attacks of all time against Germany…

STEWART: We flew escorts for the B 24 Liberator bombers and the B 17 Flying Fortress.

Stewart’s first mission was helping to escort several hundred of these bombers. They were headed for targets near Vienna, Austria.

STEWART: Each one of those bombers had a crew of 10, which meant if that bomber were lost, it was shot down, that would be 10 men that were lost. So for those that we didn't lose, and we felt as though this was a feeling that we had done a great deal in saving the balance of those men who were flying.

The Tuskegee men eventually earned a reputation.

STEWART: Out of the seven fighter groups that were bomber escorts in the 15th Air Force which we were in, our group, or the 332nd, or better known at the time as the Tuskegee Airmen, had the best record. As far as the loss of bombers were concerned.

Of the nine hundred Tuskegee pilots, only about three hundred were deployed during World War Two. These men completed more than fifteen hundred combat missions. They destroyed or damaged around four hundred enemy planes. They even sank a destroyer.

NEWSREEL: General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe.

Stewart moved to Columbus, Ohio after the war. He stayed in the service through 1949. That same year President Truman signed an executive order to end racial discrimination in the military. Stewart was skeptical.

STEWART: And it turned out to be they they did a very, very good job. As far as integrating, the service was concerned, there was, you know, no discrimination. As far as the job requirements and the job offers and the job performances were concerned there.

Outside the military it was a different story.

STEWART: I tried and I applied for the a couple of airlines at the time there, but I was not hired. And the reason was that they were not hiring any African American pilots or crew members at the time within any airlines in the States.

According to his biography, a personnel manager at Pan-Am told him, “Just imagine what passengers would think if, during a flight, they saw a Negro step out of the cockpit and walk down the aisle in a pilot’s uniform?”

Stewart eventually did find a job working for the City of New York. He started going to night classes. In 1963, graduated with a Bachelors in engineering.

He went on to work for several corporations, and eventually settled with his wife outside Detroit. He’s survived by his daughter Lori.

INTERVIEWER: Anything else you'd like to add, sir?

STEWART: No, that's that's about it. As you know, I can say that. You know, it's been a blessing for for me, as far as my life is concerned, and I wouldn't change any of it for anything.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Caleb Welde.

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