Tuskegee Top Gun

Summary

HISTORY This Week — “Tuskegee Top Gun” (Jan 5, 2026)

Podcast by The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
Host: Sally Helm
Guests: Lt. Col. James Harvey III, Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr., historian Daniel Hallman, author Zellie Rainey Orr

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Episode Overview

This episode of HISTORY This Week uncovers the nearly forgotten story of the Tuskegee Airmen’s historic victory at the U.S. Air Force’s first-ever weapons competition—the original "Top Gun" contest—in 1949. Through deep interviews and archival recollections, host Sally Helm explores who these groundbreaking Black pilots were, the odds they faced, and their decades-long struggle to receive the recognition they deserved for changing military—and American—history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Return to Nellis Air Force Base (01:05)

• Lt. Col. James Harvey III, one of the original winners, returns to Nellis Air Force Base after 73 years to belatedly accept recognition for the team's 1949 victory.
  • “Mission accomplished, but almost 73 years. That’s a lifetime for some people today.” — Harvey (02:56)

Early Lives and the Dream to Fly (03:06)

• James Harvey’s Ambition: Growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, Harvey excelled at everything from athletics to academics. His perfectionism laid the foundation for his career.
  • “I was the anchorman on the gymnastics team, captain of the basketball team... class president and valedictorian.” — Harvey (03:40)
• Harry Stewart’s Inspiration: Stewart grew up watching planes land in NYC—he dreamed of flying but had to start with model airplanes.
  • “I used to go over and watch the planes land and take off... fantasize myself as being the pilot.” — Stewart (04:47)
• Both faced racism for the first time upon joining the military in the 1940s. Stewart recalls being segregated while traveling for basic training.
  • “The conductor pulled a green curtain around me so my being there wouldn’t offend the sight of other people.” — Stewart (05:53)

Tuskegee Training and Proving Themselves (09:59)

• The Tuskegee Airmen were both a bold experiment and an act of political will (1939 Executive action by FDR).
• Training was disproportionately rigorous for Black cadets.
  • “Everything we did had to be perfect… No exceptions.” — Harvey (12:41)
• Only about 40% of trainees graduated. Both Harvey and Stewart earned their wings and fought in WWII.

War Experience—Combat and Camaraderie (13:53)

• Stewart describes escorting bombers over Europe, often witnessing the dangers firsthand:
  • “It’s a sight that very few people have seen… ballet in the sky.” — Stewart (14:01)
  • “Flying combat is sheer boredom with moments of actual terror.” — Stewart recalling a general’s words (14:36)
• Stewart narrowly escapes death when a German plane chasing him crashes.

The 1949 “Top Gun” Weapons Meet (15:58–23:18)

• With the Cold War heating up post-WWII, the Air Force holds its first weapons meet, seeking the best pilots across all units.
  • “If you don’t win, don’t come back.” — Harvey quoting his CO before leaving for Las Vegas (17:38)
• Harvey, Stewart, and Capt. Alva Temple form the only Black team. They face dismissiveness from organizers and other pilots.
  • “They didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. Tell him to keep quiet.” — Harvey on team’s treatment (18:04)
• Five events: aerial gunnery, dive bombing, skip bombing, and rocket firing.
• A tragic accident occurs during dive bombing, shaking the group.
  • “That I don’t like to remember… soured everything through that period.” — Stewart (21:09)
• Skip Bombing Secrets & Turning the Tides:
  • Stewart and Temple score perfect 6/6; Harvey finishes the streak (22:14–22:37)
  • “That’s when we had the perfect score. That’s when we pulled ahead.” — Harvey (22:37)
• The Tuskegee Airmen win the 1949 meet—by more than 20 points.

Erasure and Rediscovery (23:34–28:13)

• Despite their win, the Airmen are denied a proper public celebration. Their photo with the trophy is rushed in a backroom:
  • “They were anxious for us to get out of there.” — Harvey (23:59)
• The trophy and their victory fade into obscurity; even official almanacs list winners as “unknown.”
• Stewart is denied commercial airline jobs on the basis of race (25:54).
• Hollywood’s 1986 “Top Gun” movie bears no mention of the original contest or its true winners.
• In 2004, Zelie Rainey Orr uncovers the trophy in storage, pushing for overdue recognition.
• The trophy finally goes on permanent display, and the team is properly recognized at Nellis AFB decades later.
  • “It felt good. Finally. Finally. Finally.” — Harvey (28:15)

Broader Impact and Civil Rights Legacy (28:24–29:36)

• Soon after, the Air Force carries out President Truman’s desegregation order. Stewart recounts the sense of true integration for the first time.
• The Airmen’s win—against all odds and prejudice—stands as a powerful refutation of racist beliefs.
  • “And this means the best of the best. It was like a vindication.” — Stewart (29:31)
  • “We proved them wrong again… Just because a person is a different color doesn’t mean anything.” — Harvey (29:36)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On facing racism upon military enlistment:

  • “I felt the twinge of...disgust or hatred...but I had my eye on the prize. My prize was to get my wings and become a pilot.” — Stewart (06:56)

• On standards and expectations:

  • “As far as the white cadets go...as long as they could get the [aircraft] off the ground and back on...that was it. Everything we did had to be perfect.” — Harvey (12:41)

• On victory’s hollow celebrations:

  • “The wrong group won...They didn’t plan on that.” — Harvey (23:47)
  • “You can see a 1 sauce bottle, salt and pepper shakers, sheet music stands...they were anxious for us to get out.” — Harvey (23:59)

• On erasure from the historical record:

  • “The winner of the 49 weapons meet was listed as unknown.” — Harvey (25:00)
  • “I was summarily dismissed...one of them said, you know, it's because of your color." — Stewart on seeking airline jobs (25:54)

• On finally receiving recognition:

  • “It felt good. Finally. Finally. Finally.” — Harvey (28:15)
  • “It was like a vindication.” — Stewart (29:31)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:05 – Introduction at Nellis Air Force Base
• 05:43 – First-hand experiences of racism in the military
• 09:59 – Arrival and training at Tuskegee
• 12:41 – Disparate standards, rigor, and attrition rates
• 13:53 – Combat stories: “ballet in the sky” and danger
• 15:58 – The 1949 Air Force weapons meet announced
• 17:38 – Forming the team, tensions, and dismissals
• 18:39–19:01 – Competition events, tragedies, and resilience
• 22:14–22:37 – Game-changing perfect scores in skip bombing
• 23:02–23:18 – Victory, immediate reaction
• 23:47–24:48 – Awkward, rushed trophy photo and swift erasure
• 25:54 – Post-war discrimination in airline employment
• 26:59-27:50 – Trophy rediscovered and displayed
• 28:42 – Military desegregation and legacy
• 29:31–29:36 – Refuting prejudice: vindication and “proving them wrong”

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Conclusion

This moving episode weaves together personal memories, untold history, and the decades-long arc of justice for the first Black Top Gun champions. The voices of Lt. Col. James Harvey III and Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. bring the story to life, offering listeners an intimate window into their perseverance against both enemy fire and systemic racism.

Final thought:
"Just because a person is a different color doesn’t mean anything... We proved them wrong." — Lt. Col. James Harvey III (29:36)

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Recommended Reading & More

• Soaring to Glory: A Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of WWII — Harry Stewart Jr.
• Heroes in War, Heroes at Home: A Tribute to the First Air Force Top Guns — Zellie Rainey Orr
• Misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen — Daniel Hallman (2023)

For more info or to reach the team: [e-mail]

Transcript

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[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

The History Channel Original Podcast history this.

[Sally Helm]

Week, January 11, 2022 I'm Sally Helm. Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. He hasn't been on this base in 73 years. Today he wears a burgundy suit coat with an airplane pin on it, plus a patch embroidered with yet more planes and the words Tuskegee Airmen. When he was a younger man, Harvey served as a pilot in the Air Force's 332nd Fighter Group, the first black airmen in the United States military who fought during World War II and were named for their training ground in Tuskegee, Alabama. But what really catches the eye about Harvey's outfit today is his black baseball cap. It says, First Top Gun Winner 1949. That is the year that Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey last stepped foot on Nellis Air Force base in Nevada, 1949. He was there for the Air Force's first ever weapons meet, when the military's most talented pilots, the best of the best, competed each other in simulated acts of aerial warfare. Harvey was on a team of three pilots, the only black pilots competing, and they won. But over the years that followed, the official record of their victory was either lost or neglected or both.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Lt. Col. Harvey has been lobbying to change that, and today he arrives at Nellis Air Force Base to accept a plaque commemor commemorating the Top Gun victory.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Mission accomplished. But almost 73 years. That's a lifetime for some people today.

[Sally Helm]

The Tuskegee Top Gun champions. Who were these exceptional black pilots? And what did it take to rescue their accomplishments from obscurity and bring them into the light? Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III is now 99 years old. But talking to him, I pretty quickly got a sense of what he must have been like growing up an ambitious, hard charging eldest child.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

I was the anchorman on the gymnastics team, captain of the basketball team, and then my senior year, I was class president and valedictorian.

[Interviewer]

You were doing it all well when.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

I was growing up, and up until the time I got married, I was a perfectionist. And then when you're a perfectionist and marriage don't go together.

[Interviewer]

But for years, perfectionism kind of worked for him.

[Sally Helm]

He'd set his mind to something and then do it. That's how it was with becoming a pilot.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

I was flying yard one day and I heard this sound overhead, and I looked up, it was 4P 40s flying. I said, I'd like to do that one day. That was it. So I pursued it.

[Sally Helm]

Harvey was growing up in a tiny Pennsylvania town.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And around the same time in New York City, a kid named Harry Stewart Jr. Was also dreaming of flight.

[Sally Helm]

He grew up near what is now LaGuardia Airport.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

I used to go over and watch the planes land and take off, and I used to fantasize myself as being the pilot at the time.

[Sally Helm]

But, you.

[Interviewer]

Know, they don't let kids fly planes.

[Sally Helm]

The closest he could get was flying model airplanes with his friends.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

They were made out of balsa wood, bamboo paper, and rubber bands. And we would race them, we would fly them and see how long we can keep them aloft.

[Interviewer]

Were you good, Colonel Stewart? Did you come in first in those balsa wood competitions?

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

I would say I was in the middle of the pot.

[Sally Helm]

Really?

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Yeah.

[Sally Helm]

Stewart grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood. Meanwhile, Harvey was from the only black family in his Pennsylvania town. But both men told me their first real experience with racism happened when they joined the military as young people in the early 1940s.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Stewart enters the service in 1943 at.

[Sally Helm]

Age 18, alongside friends from his New York neighborhood. And he leaves home for training.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

My parents had warned me of what it would be like training in this house there. And the day I went into the service, some of the other kids in the neighborhood, and I guess four of them were white, we went down to Pennsylvania Station to catch the train. And when we got to Washington, the conductor came back and he pointed to me and he said, you'll have to go up into the first car. And I knew what he was aiming at. And the fellows said, we'll go with you, Harry. And the conductor said, no, no, no, no. That's for the colored people up there. You'll have to stay back here. Later on in the day, I had a pass to eat in the dining car. And when I sat down, the conductor pulled us a green curtain around me so my being there wouldn't offend the sight of the other people who were eating in the dining car there.

[Sally Helm]

Do you remember what you felt?

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Yes, I felt the twinge of, well, I don't know whether you call it disgust or hatred or whatever you would call it, but I had my eye on the prize. Hold on there. And my prize was to go ahead and hit my wings and to become a pilot.

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[Sally Helm]

Stewart arrives at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and has another novel experience, being surrounded by an all black group of peers, men who would become fellow members of his fighter group and his friends. Black men had only recently been allowed in the Army Air Corps at all. Pilots held the rank of officer, and for many years the army didn't want black officers in charge of white troops. But in 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt overrules that backwards view. He approves a law that allows black pilots in the Army Air Corps and creates training programs at historically black colleges. In 1941, airfields open in and around the all black Tuskegee Institute. That's where Harry Stewart ends up. There is an idyllic campus.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

I remember the trees and the foliage.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

That they had there.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

They were just absolutely beautiful. Lovely, lovely, lovely campus.

[Interviewer]

There's also a bit of hazing by.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

The upperclassmen, all sorts of jokes and that type of thing designed to tapping you up.

[Sally Helm]

Stuart has to complete some coursework at Tuskegee, but soon enough he is sitting down in the cockpit of a plane. This young kid just out of high school.

[Interviewer]

Did I read in an interview you gave that you learned to fly a plane before you learned to drive a car?

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That's correct.

[Sally Helm]

Wow.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

When I got my wings, I still didn't know how to drive a car.

[Interviewer]

The plane is not quite as he had pictured it.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

I had just imagined what the controls would be like on an aeroplane from the little model aeroplanes that I built. But the controls were just a little bit opposite to what I had been using.

[Interviewer]

You were using them from the models in your head. Those models you were flying In New York.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That's right. But I soon overcame that.

[Sally Helm]

James Harvey, who had been valedictorian of his class back in Pennsylvania. He winds up at Tuskegee, too.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He'd actually tried to enlist in the military before and had been turned away. But three months later, the military called him up and drafted him.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

They were hurting for people, period.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But the Air Corps still limited the number of block pilots it let in.

[Sally Helm]

As a retired military officer and historian put it, this whole Tuskegee program was seen as at best an experiment and at worst, an unwarranted political intrusion. Harvey told us you could feel that in the training, which was notoriously tough.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

As far as the white cadets go. All they had to do was demonstrate they could get the aircraft off the ground and back on the ground safely. That was it. Everything we did had to be perfect. Everything. No exceptions.

[Sally Helm]

So there was a higher bar for.

[Interviewer]

The Tuskegee Group, for the black Airmen?

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Yes. Yes.

[Sally Helm]

It's a rigorous program. Aspiring pilots have to complete all the physical training of joining any military unit, plus learning navigation and the mechanics of flight. Here's Lieutenant Colonel Stewart.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

When I first got to Tuskegee, I remember the commanding officer gave us a speech, and he says, I want you to look at the man at your left, and now I want you to look at the man at your right, and they will not be there when you graduate. And that's true.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Only about 40% of those who started their training at Tuskegee end up graduating, including both Harvey and Stuart. In June of 1944, Stuart gets his wings. A few months later, he's assigned to the 332nd Fighter Group and deployed overseas. His job is to escort Allied bombers over Central Europe.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Something like 5, 600 bombers and almost a light number of fighters there.

[Sally Helm]

So there were a thousand planes in the sky?

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Oh, yes. It's a sight that very few people have seen. And you probably notice when you look up in the sky sometimes, and you see the airliners come across and they're leading these white streamers, and they're called vapor trails. Well, can you imagine? I'd see these streamers, these arches in the sky there, and the beautiful white streaks that the engines were leaving there. And that's what I call the ballet in the sky.

[Sally Helm]

Ballet in the sky. It sounds beautiful.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That is beautiful.

[Interviewer]

It almost sounds peaceful.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

And that's how there was a general. It was describing what flying combat was like, and it's sheer boredom with moments of actually terror. So that's. That's what it was.

[Sally Helm]

During one attack, a Plane in Stuart's group is shot down. The pilot is killed on the spot. Another man parachutes to earth only to be snagged and hanged on a lamppost.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

On Stuart's wall today there's a depiction of one of the many German fighter jets that tried to down his plane.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That's an enemy plane that's on my tail. He's trying to shoot me down. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess you would say he lost control of the plane and flew into the ground and he was killed just as well. It could have been me.

[Sally Helm]

The war ends in 1945 and both Stuart and Harvey remain in the Air Corps, which becomes the air Force in 1947. The Cold War is now brewing. So although there's not active combat happening, the Air Force wants to keep its pilots sharp. And a notice goes out.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

In January of 49, the chief of staff of the Air Force sent a directive out to all the fighter groups in the United States that they were to have this intramural weapons competition between each fighter group on each base.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Competitions finding out who the best pilots were and the various groups that were flying at the time.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

And they were to select their three high scorers to represent their group in the first ever Top Gun weapons meet to be held by the United States Air Force in May of 49.

[Sally Helm]

Lessons learned in tactical weapons competition will pay huge dividends for all of us should the need arise to engage. Another aggressor says the program of events. Only the best of the best pilots are chosen to compete.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

They took the most recent scores that we had on our training flights and that's how I happened to get picked at the time.

[Interviewer]

That's how you happened to get picked because you were really good, you had the highest score.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

We didn't know what was going on until the names were mentioned. And then when the names were mentioned, okay, we're the members, let's go.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Then First Lieutenant James Harvey and first Lieutenant Harry Stewart end up on the same three man team. They're joined by a Captain Alva Temple. They also have an alternate, First Lieutenant Halbert Alexander, in case someone has to drop out then.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

From there we were headed to Las.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Vegas Air Force Base to enter a 10 day competition.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Before we left, we met with our commanding officer and he said, if you don't win, don't come back.

[Sally Helm]

Soon after arriving in Las Vegas, Harvey says he got the sense that some of the officers running the event weren't thrilled that the black pilots and their support crews would be competing. Like when a member of the TUSKEGEE team met with the rules committee to talk about the details of the contest.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

They didn't want to hear anything. He had to say nothing. Tell him to keep quiet. Well, that ticked him off. We asked him how his meeting went and he told us. That ticked us off. So the only thing for us to do now is to go out and win this thing.

[Sally Helm]

Easier said than done. Remember, everyone in this competition has been selected because they are at the very top of their units. Over 10 days, they'll tackle five events, a mix of dropping bombs, shooting targets, and firing rockets, all from the air.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Ten days of serious flying.

[Sally Helm]

Some of the most strenuous and dangerous events that have ever been designed for a military competition are about to unfold in one case, tragically. And the Tuskegee team from the 332nd Fighter Group, they're the underdogs.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

We were sort of ignored by the rest of the pilots out there. When I say ignored, I don't think they looked at us as being any kind of competition for them.

[Sally Helm]

Those other pilots have no idea what's coming. On a May day in the Nevada Desert, the 1949 U.S. air Force weapons meet begins. The first event is aerial gunnery.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

You have this multi engine aircraft who towed this target facing you. He just fired in the air to.

[Sally Helm]

Try to hit a target essentially from the air. It was like an aiming test.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

That's right. Now, how can they tell whose bullets go through the target? We'll take three colors. Red, green, and blue. They would dip the bullets into that.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Color wax so that when the bullet hits the target, it leaves a trace of the color there.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Each pilot had a different color bullet, and on the ground, we had three different people. Each one assigned a color to count the bullet holes in the target.

[Interviewer]

How'd you do in that first event?

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Better than the other squad.

[Sally Helm]

Captain Temple, the captain of the Tuskegee team, gets the highest score of any competitor. At the end of the first two shooting events, their group is in second place.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Next up is dive bombing. Plunging toward a target on the ground, dropping a bomb, and then quickly pulling up without crashing.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

It's not too easy. No one did very well in diving bombing.

[Sally Helm]

In fact, it's a really dangerous event when not executed perfectly. During the competition, a member of the Tuskegee maintenance crew asks to fly along with one of the other team's pilots.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

But that pilot, he didn't start pulling out soon enough. And he hit the ground, killed both of them.

[Sally Helm]

Lt. Col. Stuart had said, seen men die in combat before, but these deaths shook him.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That I don't like to remember. Soured everything through that period.

[Sally Helm]

Still, the Air Force decides that the competition must go on. With the meet more than half over, the Tuskegee Airmen are still in second place, almost 20 points behind the leading team.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But they have a strategy for the next event, skip bombing, which requires you to drop a bomb so that it bounces and propels through a vertical target.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

You come in very low to the ground, and you release your bombs. I won't give our secret as to why we hit 100%, but I won't tell you how we got there.

[Interviewer]

You won't tell me.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Even now, you may go out and win a contest.

[Interviewer]

Colonel Harvey, I'm not close to winning a skip bombing contest. I promise I'll tell you how he did it.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

When the target goes under the nose of the aircraft, he punched the bomb off.

[Sally Helm]

Captain Temple is up first. He hits his targets six for six. Then goes Stuart, six for six.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

I was number three.

[Interviewer]

So the two people before you had both had a perfect score. Six for six.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Right. Then I had one.

[Sally Helm]

Harvey hits all six of his targets perfectly, too.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

That's when we had the perfect score. That's when we pulled ahead.

[Sally Helm]

By the time they start the final event. Rocket firing, the Tuskegee Airmen have taken the lead. And in rocketry, Temple had a good score.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Stuart and I missed my one rocket.

[Interviewer]

Still a good score. Five out of six, but it's a good score.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

We still won the event, though.

[Sally Helm]

Finally, on May 12, almost two weeks after they'd arrived in Las Vegas, it's time to tally the scores. And the winners of the Propeller Plane Division, with over a 20 point lead, are the Tuskegee Airmen.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

We win the weapons meet. First ever weapons meet. They said we couldn't fly. We didn't have the ability to fly aircraft or operate heavy machinery. We were inferior to the white man. We were nothing. They proved him wrong at every turn.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

But the euphoria didn't last that long.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Lt. Col. Harvey says he recalls a distinct feeling around the awards.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

The wrong group won the meet. They didn't plan on that.

[Sally Helm]

When it came time for their team to be photographed with the trophy, Lt. Col. Harvey remembers being ushered into a hotel room.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

They quickly set up this table, put the trophy on it, had us stand behind it, took our pictures. Okay, out. You see that picture today, and it was so hastily set up. And if you look between the base of the trophy and Colonel Temple on the right, you can see a lot of stuff in there. You can see a one sauce, bottle, salt and pepper shakers, sheet music stands. That's how quickly they set this thing up. They were anxious for us to get out of there.

[Sally Helm]

Lt. Col. Stewart still holds on to that photo.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That's the loving cup that they had.

[Sally Helm]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

You're showing me a picture of the trophy itself.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

That's the trophy? Yes, that's the trophy itself.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Wow.

[Sally Helm]

But that is the last these men see of the trophy for decades. It gets shipped off to the Smithsonian for storage. And it's pretty much the last they hear of their win, too.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

We won in May of 1949. Once a year, the Air Force association puts out an almanac. When the almanac came out, the winner of the 49 weapons meet was listed as unknown.

[Sally Helm]

Unknown. We asked Tobias Nagel, editor in chief of Air and Space Forces magazine, about it. He told us that the magazine, quote, never intentionally sought to hide the accomplishments of the remarkable Tuskegee Airmen. He did confirm that the victory was omitted from some issues of the almanac.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But added that as the editors uncovered.

[Sally Helm]

Historical facts in subsequent years, the records of those early competitions were published correctly. After the contest, Lt. Col. Harvey stays in the military. He becomes the first black combat pilot to fight in the Korean War. Lt. Col. Stewart leaves the Air Force in 1950 and tries to get a job as a commercial airline pilot.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

And I summarily dismissed, one of them said, you know right out. You know that, yes, it's because of your color there. The other one never gave me any response. I was summarily dismissed right at the reception desk.

[Sally Helm]

Years pass. In 1986, a film called Top Gun is the highest grossing movie in the US it tells the story of a naval contest with officers competing to win a weapons meet. But few remember that first Air Force competition in Nevada, including Stewart himself.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

I had forgotten about the trophy and.

[Sally Helm]

The competition until, in 2004, a woman named Zellie Rainey Orr is researching a Tuskegee airman from her town in Ohio, and she meets Captain Alva Temple, the captain who had teamed up with Harvey and Stuart at the weapons meet all those years before. Orr decides to track down the missing trophy.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

All it took were a few phone calls to find out it was in storage at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

Some people thought there was some kind of skullduggery or something like that, but I don't think so. I just think it was a mishandling.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The Air Force Historical Research Agency directed us to former agency historian Dr. Daniel Hallman, who told us that he believes the Air Force did not hide the trophy in a racist attempt to hide the achievement of the Tuskegee pilots. The trophy acknowledged four winning teams from 1949 and 1950, and only one of those was black. The Air Force and its museum told us the museum can only display about 10% of its collection at any given time. So while the trophy was on display for an exhibit in the 80s, it was then stored until it went on permanent display in 2005.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

Now, the story didn't end there. The story ended January 2000. Finally got recognition, and it's at Nellis Air force base. The 332nd Fighter Group, or the Tuskegee Airmen, won the first ever Top Gun weapons meet. It's finally put in place.

[Interviewer]

How did that feel?

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

It felt good. Finally. Finally. Finally. Yeah.

[Sally Helm]

It took decades for the accomplishment to be recognized. And over those decades, in the military itself, there was progress. Stewart recalls. Shortly after their win in 1949, the Air Force implemented President Truman's order to desegregate the armed forces.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

The base that we were on was disbanded and all of the personnel were sent to the four corners of the earth. And there was true integration.

[Sally Helm]

The move was a long time coming. Black Americans in the military had more than proven themselves over and over for centuries.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

And yet there was always the brunt that you had to take of this prejudice that was going on. You couldn't really get an equal footing or any respect or dignity.

[Sally Helm]

One of the most powerful refutations of that broken system was given by the Tuskegee Airmen in 1949 in the skies above the Nevada desert to win the Top Gun contest.

[Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr.]

And this means the best of the best. It was like a vindication.

[Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III]

We proved them wrong again. They're always proving them wrong. Just because person is a different color doesn't mean anything. I don't know where they get this stuff from. But anyway, we proved them wrong.

[Sally Helm]

Thanks for listening to history this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. If you want to get in touch, please shoot us an email at our email address historythisweekhistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail. 212-351-0410. Thanks to our guests, Lieutenant Colonel James Harvey III and Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Junior.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Lieutenant Colonel Stewart is the co author of a book Soaring to a Tuskegee Airman's Firsthand Account of World War II.

[Sally Helm]

Thanks also to Zellie Rainey Orr, author of Heroes in Heroes at A Tribute to the First Air Force Top Guns and to Daniel Hallman, retired historian at the Air Force historical research agency. Dr. Hallman's new book, Misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen, will be out in February 2023. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was story edited by Jim o' Grady and sound designed by Dan Rosado. History this Week is also produced by Corinne Wallace and me, Sally Helm. Our associate producer is Emma Fredericks, our senior producer is Ben Dickstein, our supervising producer is McCamey Lynn and our executive producer is Jesse Katz. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this Week, wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week.