Tuskegee Top Gun James Harvey Turns 100

By Deborah Grigsby - Colorado Community Media

neer. As the war in the Pacific raged, engineers were needed to build and maintain the many makeshift jungle runways

American forces. But Harvey was more interested in flying planes

“experiment” in 1941 to prove the findings of the War College Report.

Tuskegee was an experiment that was designed to fail — to prove that Black men didn’t have the capacity to fly. Instead, the program produced some of the nation’s most proficient fighter pilots.

“I applied. I was accepted,” said Harvey. “However, I had and myself,” Harvey said.

Long were the hours and challenging were the tasks for Harvey, a self-described perfectionist.

“If everything is perfect, there’s no challenge after that,” he said. “I never dreamed or thought about washing out in flying school. I knew I was gonna make it because I did everything right.” Because, as a Black man, he had to.

“You only had so many hours or days to learn something and if you didn’t, you were out. It’s that simple,” Harvey said. “You only had a certain amount of time to learn something and if you exceeded that time, you were gone.”

When asked if he’s still a perfectionist, he grinned. “Well, I’m back at it,” he laughed. “I got married, so that was kind of the end of the perfectionism, but my wife passed, so I’m back at it again.”

Perfectionism.

“I’ve always been that way,” Harvey said. “Like Disney, when I was growing up … the Disney characters, I’d sit down and draw them — they were better than what Disney put out!”

His favorite? “Mickey Mouse, of course… I don’t think Minnie was on the scene yet.” than building places for them to land. So, he applied to the Aviation Cadet Training Program in hopes of being accepted into the Tuskegee Flight Training Program in Alabama, a separate school designated for Black pilots.

In 1925 the U.S. Army War College released a report called “The Use of Negro Manpower in War.” Many say this report “set the overall tone” for how the military viewed Black men. The report stated they “lacked intelligence and were cowardly under combat conditions” and lacked the “ability to operate complex machinery.” To prove this, the U.S. Army set up an to take an examination first, and there were 10 of us that reported to Bolling Field to take this test — nine whites and myself.”

Both Black and white candidates took the same preliminary tests to get into the Aviation Cadet Program. Black pilots, however, would be trained at a segregated field in Alabama. Testing for this program was known among service members to be notoriously rigorous and particularly unforgiving.

“Well, we took the examination, did everything they wanted us to do, and when the dust cleared, there were only two of us standing — this white guy

So, what should we call you?

Harvey earned his wings at Tuskegee Army Air Field on Oct. 16, 1944, near the end of the war. A graduate of Class 444, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and began his career as a fighter pilot.

While many Tuskegee Airmen were already flying in Europe, protecting heavy bomber aircraft on their way to strategic targets, Harvey did not get that opportunity. “That’s because Hitler knew I was coming and he gave up the following month,” he joked. “I was supposed to ship in April 1945.

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Tuskegee James Harvey

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I had my bags packed, ready to catch the train, and I got a message the war was over and they expected the wind-up of the whole European theater.”

On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, creating the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services and banning segregation in the Armed Forces. Harvey said the order was a step in the right direction, but it also meant his unit would be disbanded and its personnel integrated into other units that would “have” them.

Harvey explained how that became complicated for Black pilots. Prior to his departure, he and another Tuskegee Airman, Eddie Drummond, were to be transferred from Lockbourne Air Force Base in Ohio to a base in Japan. However, before they arrived, their personnel files — which included their official photos — were forwarded to the gaining military unit.

“So, you see, the wing commander had our picture,” Harvey said. “So, Eddie and I report to Misawa, Japan, and before we got there, he had all the pilots report to the base theater and he told them, ‘We have these two Negro pilots coming in and they will be assigned to one of the squadrons.’ The pilots said, ‘No way are we going to fly with them. No way.’”

Harvey said he and Drummond were told about the meeting by the pilots themselves. Regardless of the sentiment, Harvey and Drummond were there to stay and were assigned to a unit flying the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star. As they wrapped up their initial meeting, Harvey said the man who would be their new wing commander casually asked, “So, what do you want us to call you?” An uncomfortable moment of silence ensued.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m a first lieutenant and Eddie Drummond is a second lieutenant … how about lieutenants Harvey and Drummond?’”

First ‘Top Gun’

In January 1949, the newlyrecognized Air Force, thanks to the National Security Act of 1947, issued a directive to all fighter squadrons about an intramural weapons competition. Each unit was to select its top three pilots to represent their fighter group at the firstever aerial gunnery meet to be held at Las Vegas Air Force Base, Nevada.

It was officially called the United States Continental Gunnery Meet, which would later evolve into the USAF William Tell Competition. Other derivatives would include Gunsmoke and Red Flag.

Harvey’s unit, the 332nd Fighter Group, selected 1st Lt. Harvey III, 1st Lt. Harry Stewart Jr., and Capt. Alva Temple. They were all Black pilots, including the alternate pilot, 1st Lt. Halbert Alexander.

“We met with Col. Davis (Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.), prior to leaving for the competition,” Harvey said. “We chitchatted, and his final remark was, ‘If you don’t win, don’t come back.’ And with those words of encouragement, off we went.”

It was May 1949. The competition for “Top Gun” would prove formidable in the conventional piston category, flying the North American P-51 Mustang and the North American F-82 Twin Mustang. These were some of the best pilots and aircraft maintenance teams in the country flying some of the most advanced aircraft in inventory. “And we’re flying the obsolete P-47 Thunderbolt,” Harvey said “It was big, clumsy, and heavy.”

The lineup consisted of two missions of aerial gunnery at 12,000 feet, two missions of aerial gunnery at 20,000 feet, two dive-bombing missions, three skip-bombing missions, and a panel-strafing mission.

“Well, we won the meet,” said Harvey. “Our closest competitor was the P-51 outfit; they were only 515,000 points behind us.”

They were the winners, but …

Each year, the Air Force Association publishes an almanac citing overall force strength, statistics and such – including all winners of the weapons meet from 1949 through the present day. “But, each year when that almanac came out, the winner of the 1949 weapons meet was mysteriously listed as ‘unknown,’” Harvey points out. “[The Tuskegee Airmen] didn’t find out about this magazine until 1995.”

It was only by chance Harvey’s group commander stumbled across an almanac and noticed the winner of the 1949 U.S. Air Force Weapons Meet was “unknown.” The almanac was corrected in April 1995 to show the 332nd Fighter Group as the official winners of the 1949 weapons meet.

Though the records were fixed, one more mystery would remain.

‘That trophy will never be on display’

As the winners of the first Air Force “Top Gun” competition in the piston-engine division, Harvey and his team were brought into a hotel ballroom where the almost 3-foot-tall stainless steel victory cup sat on a table. They had a photo made with the trophy and it was the last day any of them would see it until more than half a century later.

In 1999, Zellie Rainey-Orr got involved with the Tuskegee Airmen as the result of a Tuskegee Airman pilot from her Mississippi hometown who died in combat — 1st Lt. Quitman Walker.

Rainey-Orr confessed that until that day, she never knew much about the Tuskegee Airmen. She was about to get a firsthand lesson from the men who were there.

“I thought I was just gonna go and put a flower on the grave of Quitman Walker,” she said. “I assumed he was buried here in Indianola, Mississippi and that’s when I would learn that no one knew where he was buried.”

Rainey-Orr reached out to the Walker family in an attempt to help locate the airman’s remains. Through her quest to help, she would eventually meet Alva Temple, the captain of the 1949 ‘Top Gun’ team at a 2004 event to award Walker’s medals posthumously at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. It was there that she learned of the missing trophy. “I just felt a connection,” she said.

Unable to resist, she began a quest to locate it. Not knowing what the trophy looked like, and with Temple in failing health, she reached out to the family in hopes of finding more details. Someone in Temple’s family mentioned that there was a newspaper story covering the event, dated May 12, 1949, on a bedroom dresser. That clipping provided RaineyOrr with enough information to start contacting military bases and museums. Within a week, she received a response from the National Museum of the United States Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio. “They said they had the trophy and attached a photo,” she said.

Rainey-Orr called Temple’s family on Sunday, Aug. 29 to share the good news, but was told Temple had passed the day before. “It was almost like his spirit guided me,” she said. “I didn’t know the story or the impact. I was just looking for a trophy.”

Oddly, while it took RaineyOrr less than a week to locate a trophy that had been missing for more than 50 years, it would take her much longer to get the

U.S. Air Force to agree to bring it out of mothballs. “I was talking to the historian at the Air Force Museum, the one who sent the photo, and I said I’d love to come see it,” she recalled. “And he (the historian) said, ‘It’s not on display — and it will never be on display.’”

Rainey-Orr was confused. She thought that this was an important piece of Air Force history; it was the first nationwide gunnery competition since the end of the war and it was the first time that Black pilots had participated. Why wouldn’t they want the trophy displayed?

After a lot of back-and-forth negotiations, the Air Force agreed to let the trophy be shown.

In December of the same year, Air Force Museum representatives took the trophy out of storage and delivered it to Detroit, Michigan, the home of another Tuskegee Top Gun, Harry Stewart, for its first unveiling at the National

Museum of the Tuskegee Airmen’s annual banquet.

After the banquet, the trophy was returned to the museum where it went on permanent display in early 2006.

Harvey was unable to attend the 2004 banquet in Detroit, but Rainey-Orr, who is now an author and Tuskegee Airman historian, prompted him to make the journey to Ohio in 2006.

When asked how he felt upon seeing the trophy on display, Harvey smiled and said, “Feels good. Feels very good — very, very good. Mission accomplished.”

About that 100th birthday

Harvey celebrated his 100th birthday with true fighter pilot flair.

Close to 270 friends, family and guests from around the country, many of them “military brass,” joined him for a private gala celebration in Centennial, Colorado. There were three birthday cakes, one fashioned into the shape of a Corvair F-102 Delta Dagger — “made of gluten-free marble and cappuccino,” of course.

What does one hope for after blowing out all of those candles? “Continued good health,” he said. “Continued excellent health.”

And what does 100 years feel like? “It doesn’t feel any different than the first year,” Harvey joked. “Actually, I don’t remember the first year, but I do remember the second — that’s when I got measles.”

His secret to longevity?

“I try to be a nice person to everybody — until they prove otherwise,” he said. “Just be nice to people. My motto has always been, ‘Do unto others as you have them do unto you.’ I live by that one and it works.”

Rainey-Orr agreed, and described Harvey, whom she first met in 2005 as caring and compassionate. “I just like to say he is a real example of what we sow, we get to reap,” she said. “He is a first in many areas, including becoming the first Black pilot to fly jets in Korea — and often unless he told the stories, they were forgotten.”

While saddened that she missed Harvey’s birthday bash, Rainey-Orr is happy for her friend. “I’m just so happy he got to live long enough to see the day, and to understand that people really do appreciate his sacrifices in the service of our country,” she said, “because he had comrades who did not. They survived the war, but didn’t get to see the respect.”

But the big question is, what does the first “Top Gun” think of the new “Top Gun: Maverick” movie?

“I liked the first one better,” Harvey said.. Editor’s note: This article is powered by COLab, the Colorado News Collaborative.