The Original “Top Guns”
The Tuskegee Airmen 332nd proved they were the best pilots in the 1949 1st competition
Issue #127 Friday Funday September 2, 2022
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Both of the “Top Gun” movies, the original in 1986 and the sequel in 2022, were commercially successful and purported to tell the story of the top aviators in the WWII U.S. Navy Air Corps just before the Air Corps officially became the United States Air Force.
However, sorry Tom Cruise, et al., the real original “Top Guns” and winners of the 1st Aerial Gunnery Competition in 1949 were members of the famous all-Black Tuskegee Airmen 332nd Divison of the Air Force who were arguably the most skilled aviators of World War II.
The actual “Top Gun” program
The first United States military real-world “Top Gun” program wasn’t set up by the Navy as described in the movies. It was actually an Air Force program that first took place in 1949. In January 1949, the chief of staff of the United States Air Force put out a call to all of the USAF fighter groups (including the Tuskegee Airmen) to send their top three scorers to represent their group at the first 10-day long Top Gun “weapons meet.”
The Tuskegee Airmen 332nd sent Capt. Alva Temple, 1st Lt. Harry Stewart, 1st Lt. James H. Harvey III, and alternate Halbert Alexander, who competed in older propeller-driven P-47N Thunderbolts. The airmen went to Las Vegas Air Force Base, now called Nellis Air Force Base, and pilots competed in five events -- aerial gunnery, dive bombing, skip bombing, rocket firing, and panel strafing.
Even though the white pilots had more modern fighter planes like the P-51 Mustang and the P-52 Mustang, the pilots from the Tuskegee 332nd won the entire competition.
When the winners were announced at the awards ceremony held at Bugsy Siegel’s Las Vegas Flamingo Hotel, the entire room was quiet. There was no applause and the public would not see the trophy for another 55 years.
For decades, the annual almanac of the Air Force Association listed the winners of the 1949 Top Gun competition as “unknown.” Finally, in the 1990s, the records of the meet at Nellis AFB were uncovered, and the victory of the Tuskegee Airmen 332nd Group was officially acknowledged.
The trophy was found in 2004, 55 years later. Zellie Rainey Orr, historian and president of the Atlanta chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc., uncovered it in a storage area at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio. It’s now on display at the museum there.
1st Lt. James H. Harvey III went on to fight in the Korean War, becoming the first Black jet fighter pilot and flying 126 combat missions. He retired from the Air Force in 1965.
As so often happens, the history of Black heroes/winners is whitewashed to change the actual story and instead make white people the heroes. The next time you hear anything about “Top Guns” or WWII aviator fighter pilots, remember that the best of the best was actually the Black pilots of the Tuskegee Airman 332nd division of the United States Air Force.
An excellent YouTube Video tells the story…
Have you heard of the Tuskegee Airmen? If so, did you know their full history? Let us know in the comments!
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