Tuskegee Airman Harry Stewart by Todd DePastino
In May (2024), Harry Stewart joined us on Greatest Generation Live. Harry grew up during Jim Crow, served in a segregated military, and has lived to be one of the most decorated US combat pilots. Having him talk with us about his service was like having history come alive before our very eyes. Harry Stewart flew 43 missions in a North American Aviation P-51 Mustang with the 332nd Fighter Group, the so-called “Red Tails.”
Like all Black servicemembers in World War II, Harry fought two wars: one against the enemy, the other against the racism that barred all but a few African Americans from elite units like the Red Tails. Legend has it that Harry cooed at airplanes from his crib in his home near Langley Field, VA. As a teenager growing up in Queens, NY, he would hang out at North Beach Airport (today’s LaGuardia) and dream of taking flight.
Eighteen years old in 1943, Harry volunteered for the Army Air Corps, passed his aviation cadet exam, and, after Basic Training at Keesler Army Airfield, MS, started pilot training at the segregated Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama. One moment he’ll never forget is crossing into the South from New York on a train. The conductor directed him to the “colored car” apart from white passengers.
After receiving his commission and completing training, Harry joined the 15th Air Force in Italy at Ramitelli Airfield and began flying bomber escort missions in Central Europe. Harry still beams at the thought of flying the P-51, an aircraft so responsive “it was like you had melded into one machine.”
The most memorable of his 43 missions was April 1, 1945, Easter Sunday. The mission was to marshalling yards in St. Polten, Austria. Just a General Jimmy Doolittle had released Eighth Air Force to chase down targets of opportunity after escorting bombers to their destination, so too did the Fifteenth Air Force give Harry’s unit permission to strike reiver barges, transportation lines, and any enemy aircraft might encounter.
It was late in the war, but there were still plenty of German Focke-Wulf Fw-190s swarming. Harry managed to get behind two of them undetected and downed them both. Then, a third Fw-190 did the same to Harry. “I thought I had had it,” says Harry, of the moment he saw the enemy tracer bullets whiz by his cockpit. “He had me dead to rights. I panicked and dove to the ground.”
Harry pulled his P-51 into tight turns on a 2000-foot dive in a furious effort to shake the German fighter. Harry’s aerial acrobatics, made of desperation, lured the enemy pilot into shadowing Harry’s maneuvers. Coming out of a turn, the Fw-190 lost control and slammed into the ground. Harry got credit for the kill. Though he didn’t shoot it down.
When Harry landed, he learned that three of the seven planes in his unit had been shot down that day. One of his friends, fellow pilot Walter Manning, had successfully bailed out of his P-51. An Austrian police officer rescued Manning from the clutch of a mob and placed him in a Luftwaffe Air Base cell. A pack of Nazi Werwolf guerillas, incited by the SS, broke seized Manning, beat him mercilessly and lynched him from a lamppost.