Tuskegee Top Gun

HISTORY This Week

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History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

January 11, 2022. Lt. Col. James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada for the first time in 73 years. He’s there to accept a plaque celebrating the last time he was there—for the Air Force’s first ever weapons competition. Back then, Harvey and the other Tuskegee Airmen on his team had squared off against the best military pilots around. They tackled high-skill tests of simulated aerial warfare… and they won. But over the decades, the official record of their victory was lost or neglected. Who were these exceptional Black pilots? And what did it take to rescue their accomplishments from obscurity and bring them into the light?

Special thanks to our guests: Lt. Col. James Harvey III and Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. Lt. Col. Stewart is the co-author of Soaring to Glory. Thanks also to Zellie Rainey Orr, author of Heroes in War, Heroes at Home, and to Daniel Haulman, retired historian at the Air Force Historical Research Agency and author of Misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen, to be published in February 2023.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.0	History this week, January 11th, 2022.
0:09.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:12.0	Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.
0:19.0	He hasn't been on this base in 73 years.
0:23.0	Today, he wears a burgundy suit coat with an airplane pin on it, plus a patch,
0:28.0	embroidered with yet more planes, and the words Tuskegee Airmen.
0:34.0	When he was a younger man, Harvey served as a pilot in the Air Force's 330-second fighter group.
0:40.0	The first black airmen in the United States military, who fought during World War II,
0:45.0	and were named for their training ground in Tuskegee, Alabama.
0:49.0	But what really catches the eye about Harvey's outfit today is his black baseball cap.
0:56.0	It says, first Top Gun winner, 1949.
1:02.0	That is the year that Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey last stepped foot on Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
1:10.0	1949.
1:12.0	He was there for the Air Force's first ever weapons meet, when the military's most talented pilots,
1:19.0	the best of the best, competed against each other in simulated acts of aerial warfare.
1:25.0	Harvey was on a team of three pilots, the only black pilots competing, and they won.
1:36.0	But over the years that followed, the official record of their victory was either lost or neglected, or both.
1:44.0	Lieutenant Colonel Harvey has been lobbying to change that, and today, he arrives at Nellis Air Force Base
1:51.0	to accept a plaque commemorating the Top Gun victory.
1:56.0	Mission accomplished, but almost 73 years.
2:01.0	That's our lifetime for some people.
	...

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