One of few surviving Tuskegee Airmen passes away

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one of the few surviving planes that were used to train the Tuskegee Airmen before its display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016 Associated Press/Photo by Paul Holston, file

One of few surviving Tuskegee Airmen passes away

Services celebrating the life of former Tuskegee Airman Homer Hogues will be held this weekend. He died on Tuesday, just two days after his wife passed away. Hogues joined the Army Air Corps in 1946 and served as an airplane mechanic for the 99th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group. He was 96 years old.

Weren’t the Tuskegee Airmen just pilots? The term is often used to denote the black combat pilots who trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. But the term also refers to the thousands of men and women who helped support the pilots and their aircraft.

Dig deeper: Read Kim Henderson’s report in WORLD Magazine about the United States’ ongoing search for its missing veterans.