With members of a trailblazing black Air Force unit passing away at advanced ages, efforts to remain true to their memory carry on despite sometimes confusing orders from US President Donald Trump as he purges federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Colonel James Harvey III, 101, is among the last few airmen and support crew who proved that a black unit — the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airmen — could fight as well as any other in World War II and the years after.
He went on to become the first black jet fighter pilot in Korean airspace during the Korean War, and a decorated one after 126 missions. He was one of four Tuskegee Airmen who won the first US Air Force Gunnery Meet in 1949, a forerunner of today’s US Navy “Top Gun” school.
Photo: AP
“They said we didn’t have any ability to operate aircraft or operate heavy machinery. We were inferior to the white man. We were nothing,” Harvey said. “So we showed them.”
Shortly after Trump’s January inauguration, the US Air Force removed new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen.
The removal drew bipartisan outrage and the White House’s ire over what US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described as “malicious implementation” of Trump’s executive order.
The Air Force quickly reversed course.
Announcing the reversal, US Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin said in a statement that the initial removal was because the service, like other agencies, had to move swiftly to comply with Trump’s executive order with “no equivocation, no slow-rolling, no foot-dragging.”
The videos were shown to troops as part of DEI courses taken during basic military training. Some photographs of Tuskegee Airmen were also among tens of thousands of images in a Pentagon database flagged for removal.
“I thought there was progress in that area, but evidently there isn’t,” said Harvey, who blamed Trump for contributing to what he sees as worsening prejudice in the US.
“I’ll tell him to his face. No problem,” he said. “I’ll tell him, ‘You’re a racist,’ and see what he has to say about that. What can they do to me? Just kill me, that’s all.”
The Tuskegee Airmen unit was established in 1941 as the 99th Pursuit Squadron based at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The 99th became the 332nd Fighter Group, which by war’s end destroyed or damaged more than 400 enemy aircraft in North Africa and Europe during the war and sank a German destroyer in action.
Of the 992 Tuskegee Airmen trained as pilots starting in 1942, 335 were deployed, 66 were killed in action and 32 who were shot down became war prisoners.
In 1949, two months after the airmen’s gunnery meet victory in the propeller-driven class, the US Air Force integrated black and white troops and the Tuskegee Airmen were absorbed into other units.
It took the Air Force almost half a century to recognize 332nd’s last achievement: Its success in aerial bombing and shooting proficiency in the gunnery meet at what is now Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
For decades, the winners were listed as “unknown” and their trophy was missing.
“We won them all,” Harvey said. “We weren’t supposed to win anything because of the color of our skin.”
Harvey trained during World War II, but was not deployed to combat before the war ended. In Korea, he flew the F-80 Shooting Star jet and earned medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1965 and received an honorary promotion to colonel in 2023.
Trump in 2020 promoted another of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, Charles McGee, to brigadier general. McGee died in 2022 at age 102.
Harvey still regards the Air Force Gunnery Meet as his biggest accomplishment, one the Air Force finally recognized in 1993.
Their missing trophy was found in a museum storeroom not long after.
“We were good, and they couldn’t take it away from us,” Harvey said. “We were good, and I’ll repeat it until I die.”
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