Harry Stewart Jr.: Difference between revisions

Harry T. Stewart Jr.
Born	1924 Newport News, Virginia, US
Occupations	Military officer fighter pilot

Harry T. Stewart Jr (born 1924) is a retired U.S. Army Air Force officer, a Distinguished Flying Cross (United States) recipient, and one of World War II's most famous combat fighter pilots within the 332nd Fighter Group, best known as the all-African American Tuskegee Airmen, "Red Tails," or among enemy German pilots, “Schwartze Vogelmenschen” ("Black Birdmen").

Stewart is well-known for shooting down three enemy German aircraft in one day. He is one of only four Tuskegee Airmen to have earned three aerial victories in a single day of aerial combat: Joseph Elsberry, Clarence Lester, and Lee Archer (pilot).

Stewart is also best known as a member of the all-African American 332nd Fighter Group Weapons pilot team that won the U.S. Air Force's inaugural "Top Gun" team competition in 1949. Stewart, along with George Hardy (Tuskegee Airman), and fellow 1949 Top Gun winner James H. Harvey, are among the last surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Stewart — along with every member of the Tuskegee Airmen — received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. In 2019, Stewart co-wrote “Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II,” co-written by Philip Handleman.

Early life

Stewart was born in Newport News, Virginia in 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, New York near LaGuardia Airport and the North Beach Airport when he was two years old.

Military Career, Tuskegee Airmen

At 18 years old, Stewart volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps, 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.

After completing combat and fighter training at Walterboro Army Air Field in Walterboro, South Carolina, Stewart was assigned to the all-African American 332nd Fighter Group's 301st Fighter Squadron. After being shipped off to France, Stewart and his fellow pilots sailed from Marseille, France to a port in Taranto, Italy onboard the luxurious cruise liner, Citie Doran.

On April 1, 1945, Stewart shot down three enemy German Focke-Wulf 190s during a B-24 bomber escort mission near Linz, Austria. For this feat, the U.S. Army Air Corps awarded Stewart the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States). In all, Stewart completed 43 combat missions in the European Theater.

Stewart is one of only four Tuskegee Airmen to have earned three aerial victories in a single day of combat: Joseph Elsberry, Clarence Lester, and Lee Archer (pilot). Moreover, Stewart is one of only nine 332nd Fighter Group pilots with at least three confirmed kills during World War II:

• Joseph Elsberry - 332nd Fighter Group's 301st Fighter Squadron - 4 Confirmed Kills, 1 Possible
• Edward L. Toppins - 332nd Fighter Group's 99th Fighter Squadron - 4 Confirmed Kills, 1 Possible
• Lee Archer (pilot) - 332nd Fighter Group's 302nd Fighter Squadron - 4 Confirmed Kills
• Charles B. Hall - 332nd Fighter Group's 99th Fighter Squadron 3 confirmed kills
• Leonard M. Jackson - 332nd Fighter Group's 99th Fighter Squadron - 3 Confirmed Kills
• Clarence D. Lester - 332nd Fighter Group's 100th Fighter Squadron - 3 Confirmed Kills
• Wendell O. Pruitt - 332nd Fighter Group's 302nd Fighter Squadron - 3 Confirmed Kills
• Roger Romine - 332nd Fighter Group's 302nd Fighter Squadron - 3 Confirmed Kill, 1 Unconfirmed
• Harry Stewart, Jr. - 332nd Fighter Group's 301st Fighter Squadron - 3 Confirmed Kills

Butcher Hollows Aircraft Crash, Country legend Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gayle

On March 25, 1948, Stewart took part in a simulated armed reconnaissance with a formation of Tuskegee Airmen combat fighter pilots flying from Greenville, South Carolina's Shaw Air Force Base to their home base in Columbus, Ohio. Suddenly, Stewart's P-47 Thunderbolt fighter began to experience severe engine failure, sputtering at 20,000 feet above the mountainous terrain of Eastern Kentucky during a bad thunderstorm. Fearful of crashing his aircraft into the side of a mountain to his death, Stewart reduced his aircraft's altitude to 10,000 feet, bailing out of it. Since the P-47 Thunderbolt lacked an ejection seat, Stewart slid its canopy back, removed his seat belt, and directed the P-47 Thunderbolt's nose forward so that it would dip and safely eject Stewart forward when he released the control stick. However, the slipstream struck Stewart, forcefully propelling him to the aircraft's tail, fracturing his left leg in two between the calf and ankle.

After opening his parachute in the clouds, Stewart coasted to ground, landing on top of a dead pine tree. With Stewart's parachute firmly hooked over the tree top, Stewart's body dangled two-feet above the ground through the tree's dead branches. Possibly going into shock, Stewart noticed that he had lost a shoe on his broken, bleeding left leg. His otherwise white sock was now completely blood-soaked. Stewart cut himself down in the pouring rain, crawled under a rock overhang, and removed his white silk flying scarf, making a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Unbeknownst to him, Stewart had parachuted into the mountainous forest hills of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, a coal-mining community in Johnson County, Kentucky and childhood home of married 15 year-old Loretta Webb (born April 14, 1932), best known as 18-time GRAMMY Award-nominated country music legend Loretta Lynn. Though Loretta's location at the time of the crash is undocumented, Loretta's younger brother, Herman Webb (September 3, 1934 – July 28, 2018), was riding in the truck bed of Loretta and Herman's father Melvin Theodore "Ted" Webb (1906 – 1959)'s pickup truck when Herman heard a massive explosion unlike anything they have ever heard before despite living in a coal camp used to loud blasts. Stewart's vacated fighter plane flew across the Webb Family cemetery, crashing into a hilltop overlooking the Webb Family home and creating a crater 10 - 15 feet deep. One eyewitness to post-crash events saw Loretta's 22 year-old moonshiner husband, Oliver Lynn (“Doolittle” Lynn), driving his Jeep with Stewart's plane propeller attached to its side. One of Loretta and Herman's uncles made rings from the aircraft's stainless steel nuts.

Stewart's parachute was seen by Loretta and Herman's 9-year-old neighbor, Callie Daniels (now octogenarian Callie Daniels Johnson of Hager Hill, Kentucky, a retired elementary school cook) who mistook Stewart's white parachute for a large white eagle. Callie's father, Lafe Daniels (1910-1969), hopped on one of his horses and found Stewart underneath a rock cliff with two fractured legs. After a befuddled, quizzical stare down, Daniels sighed and put the injured Stewart on a 2nd horse, taking him to the Daniels Family home where Lafe's wife, Mary Daniels, was working in their backyard washing clothes in a large cauldron.

Mary tore up some bedsheets, disinfected and bandaged Stewart's legs. After giving Stewart "all-purpose" moonshine for pain relief to Stewart's chagrin (he had swore off liquor for Lent}, Daniels loaded Stewart back on the horse and galloped on a mud and gravel road to a local store on the main road. From there, Stewart was loaded into a pickup truck and transported to the local Paintsville Clinic in Paintsville, Kentucky, birth home of then-unborn Brenda Gail Webb (born January 9, 1951), best known as Crystal Gayle, Grammy Award-winning crossover country music singer, Herman Webb and Loretta Lynn's younger sister.

The clinic's physician and his team washed and placed Stewart in a bed, administering Stewart morphine for pain. Stewart recalled being in a hallucinated state as a result of the morphine and moonshine.

As news of the aircraft crash circulated, local people lined up to the clinic to view the African American combat fighter pilot. The town's mayor, Escom Chandler (1946–1949), visited Stewart, followed by the town's police chief, county sheriff and a Paintsville Herald news reporter ho ran a story about the crash of March 25, 1948. The article omitted Stewart's race.

At 1 a.m. on March 26, 1948, a U. S. Air Force representative from Columbus, Ohio arrived at the Paintsville Clinic and-transported Stewart back to base without any fanfare or formal sendoff from the community.

Stewart's wife, Dephine, did not find out about her husband's mountainous aircraft crash until Stewart arrived back to their home.

For many years afterwards, local legend, though patently false, held that the U.S. Air Force F-84 Thunderjets shot down a stolen B-52 bomber; the alleged culprit: an African American man conducting a bombing run on the town. However, in 2005, Danny Keith Blevins, a Johnson County, Kentucky teacher and president of the Van Lear Historical Society,-tracked down an aged Stewart in southern Michigan immediately after Stewart had completed his first solo fight in a power glider. Stewart was bemused when Blevins shared the local "stolen B-52" legend; Stewart knew that the B-52s didn't even exist in 1948.

Winner of the 1949 "Top Gun Competition"

In January 1949, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force sent out a directive to each Air Force group requesting their participation in an aerial weapons competition. Four months later in May 1949, Stewart joined the 332nd Fighter Group three-member propeller division pilot team to compete at the U.S. Air Force's inaugural "Top Gun" team competition held at the Las Vegas Air Force Base (now Nellis Air Force Base.

A grueling 10-day event, the competition comprised six events: aerial gunnery at 20,000 feet, aerial gunnery at 12,000 feet, dive bombing, skip bombing, rocketing firing, and panel strafing. His team lead from start to finish.

Stewart's team included the 99th Squadron's James H. Harvey (Born 1924), the 300th Squadron's Captain Alva Temple (September 5, 1917 – August 28, 2004), 99th Squadron's First Lieutenant 99th Squadron's First Lieutenant Halbert Alexander (June 12, 1922 – March 25, 1953), who served as an alternate pilot, and Staff Sergeant Buford A. Johnson (August 30, 1927 – April 15, 2017) who served as the team's aircraft crew chief.

The results (including the 3-foot high winning silver trophy stashed in a Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum storage area for 55 years), were absent from the Air Force archives until 1995. Flying in obsolete F-47Ns, a variant of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Stewart and his team won against U.S. Air Force fighter group teams in far more advanced aircraft. Stewart's team member, James H. Harvey remarked: "They knew who won, but did not want to recognize us."

Later Military Career, Heart Murmur

In 1950, Stewart received an honorable discharge from active duty. He served in the Reserves for several years, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Stewart remarked that he hid from his military doctors a heart murmur and a childhood bout with polio.

Post Military Career, Book Author

After returning from World War II, Stewart worked as a baggage man for a train depot. He also applied to become a pilot in the commercial airline industry; however, two separate airlines, including the defunct Trans World Airlines, denied Stewart because of his race. As recompense, Delta Airlines and American Airlines granted Stewart honorary Captain status in 2015 and 2018, respectively.

As a backup plan, Stewart completed his high school diploma and enrolled at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. While at NYU, Stewart served as President of NYU’s student council and chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Stewart retired as Vice President of the ANR Pipeline Company (formerly the Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company) in Detroit, Michigan, a large-scale interstate natural gas pipeline system operations.

In 2019, Stewart co-wrote “Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II,” co-written by Philip Handleman.

A widower, Stewart currently lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan with his daughter, Lori Collette Stewart. Lori worked as a technician on CBS' Survivor TV reality series.

See also

• Tuskegee Airmen
• List of Tuskegee Airmen Cadet Pilot Graduation Classes
• List of Tuskegee Airmen
• Military history of African Americans
• Dogfights (TV series)
• Executive Order 9981
• The Tuskegee Airmen (movie)