Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr, a decorated World War II pilot who broke racial barriers as a Tuskegee Airmen and earned honors for his combat heroism, has died. He was 100.
Stewart was one of the last surviving combat pilots of the famed 332nd Fighter Group also known as the Tuskegee Airmen. The group were the nation’s first Black military pilots.
The Tuskegee Airmen National Historical Museum confirmed his death. The organization said he passed peacefully at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on Sunday.
Stewart was born in Newport News, Virginia, on July 4, 1924. After living near Langley Field, a United States Air Force base located between Hampton, Virginia, and Newport News, Virginia, Stewart and his family moved to Queens NY near LaGuardia Airport and the North Beach Airport when he was two years old.
At 18 years old, Stewart volunteered for the United States Army Air Forces, taking and passing the Pilot Cadet exam. On June 27, 1944, Stewart completed cadet pilot training, receiving his wings and graduating in the Tuskegee Airmen Class 44-F-SE. Stewart learned to fly before he learned how to drive an automobile.
Stewart shot down three German aircraft in one day during World War II. He is one of only four Tuskegee Airmen, along with Joseph Elsberry, Clarence D. Lester and Lee Archer, to have earned three victories in a single day of aerial combat. He was awarded the Distingushed Flying Cross for that action.
Stewart was also a member of the all-African American 332nd Fighter Group Weapons pilot team that won the United States Air Force’s inaugural “Top Gun” team competition in 1949.
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.
George Hardy and fellow 1949 Top Gun winner James H. Harvey are now the only surviving Tuskegee Airmen.
Requiescat in pace.