Top Gun

Words Versus Military Tuskegee Top Gun Actions

August 22, 2022 by Scott Spangler

President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. It mandated the desegregation of the US military. Truman stood firm in the face of pushback from politicians and military officers of all ranks from all branches who opposed an integrated military. “I am asking for equality of opportunity for all human beings, and as long as I stay here, I am going to continue the fight,” he wrote in response.

The order concluded: “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.”

The United States Air Force was not even a year old when Truman signed his Executive Order, but its inaugural secretary, W. Stuart Symington, supported it. In December 1949, the Air Force reported that the number of integrated units had doubled between June and August of that year. Ebony magazine wrote that this effort represented the “swiftest and most amazing upset of racial policy in the history of the US military.”

In January 1949, the Air Force held its first aerial gunnery competition, then called Top Gun, at Las Vegas Air Force Base, now known as Nellis, said Lt. Col. James Harvey III (above), in the AARP Reporting for Duty YouTube episode, The Untold Story of the First Top Gun Competition. Now 98, he wears the red blazer of the Tuskegee Airmen, of which he was one, and ball cap embroidered with “1^st Top Gun Winner — 1949 P-47.”

The competition was open to all fighter groups; they would send their top three pilots and an alternate. The 82^nd Fighter Group team flew P-51 Mustangs. The teams from the 27^th, 52^nd, and 325^thfighter groups flew the hot, new P-82 Twin Mustang. The team from the 332^nd, Harvey, Alva Temple, Harry T. Stewart Jr., and Halbert Alexander, flew the obsolete P-47 Thunderbolt.

Being phased out of active duty, and with no war to fight, the Thunderbolts competed in a gunnery contest with no gunfights. But the pilots were motivated, Harvey said. Before the team left for the contest, the squadron commander, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., said, “If you don’t win, don’t come back.”

The teams would compete in four events: aerial gunnery, shooting at a towed target; strafing a fixed ground panel; dive bombing, skip bombing, and rocket firing. The P-82s of the 27^th won the aerial gunnery event with 34.720. Sighting down the Thunderbolt’s nose, and the 332nd was right behind them 32.840.

The P-51s of the 82^nd took the lead by winning panel strafing, with the Tuskegee P-47s second. Dive bombing was next, and “No one did good that day,” Harvey said. The positions did not change and the scores of the top two teams were 170.567 to 153.255. Skip bombing was another story. Each member of each member of the 332 team had a perfect score of 6 for 6, putting them in the lead with 353.255.

The 332nd won the final event, rocket firing, giving the team an overall score of 536.588. Behind them were: 82^nd 515.010; 27^th 475.325; 52^nd 253.189; 325^th 217.550. When 332^nd was announced as the winner, Harvey said, “The room was quiet. No one expected us to win. It was the last time the public would see the trophy for 55 years,” said Harvey, who went on to fly 126 combat missions in Korea and retired in 1965. “Our victory was swept under the rug.”

Historian Zellie Rainey Orr uncovered the trophy and it was put on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in 2004. Working with the Tuskegee Airmen, AARP’s Wish of a Lifetime learned of Harvey’s story and his wish to visit Nellis and see the 332nd listed first on roster of top gun winners. Working through the Air Force Foundation, AARP realized Harvey’s wish, and on January 11, 2022, a plaque was unveiled at Nellis AFB honoring this historic moment in Tuskegee Airmen history.

Actions speak louder than words in every instance. It took 73 years for the Air Force to recognize the 332^nd victory, but the group’s commander, Benjamin O. Davis became the branch’s first black general officer in 1954. He earned his second star in 1959, and a third in 1965. President Bill Clinton awarded a fourth 1998. Tuskegee Airman Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. became the Air Force’s first four star general in 1975, when the branch was just 26 years old. General Charles Q. Brown Jr. became black Air Force chief of staff in 2020, first for any service.

Roscoe Robinson Jr. became the Army’s first black four-star general officer in 1982. Admiral Joseph Paul Reason earned his fourth star in 1996. The Marines promoted their first black officer to general when Michael Langley got fourth star in August 2022, just months before the Corps’ 247^th birthday. — Scott Spangler, Editor.

Counting Down to Top Gun: Maverick

May 16, 2022 by Scott Spangler

As one crawling into the final third of life, I’m in no hurry to write my final chapters. That said, May 27—when Top Gun: Maverick is due in our local movie house—cannot get here soon enough. To accelerate the passage of time, I’ve been searching out the teases issued by those who attended the premier and other early screenings and wondering where TG:M will land on my list of favorite aviation movies, and whether it will add to the list or displace a film already held dear.

First on the list is Top Gun. In its VHS form, it comforted me the summer of 1987 as I (and several dozen of my fellow faculty members) recovered from a case of Hepatitis A acquired at the boarding school’s end of year staff picnic. Yes, I’m the son of a World War II naval aviator too big and too blind (and now way too old) to follow in his footsteps, and the movie feeds my daydreams of what might have been had I not grown too tall and nearsighted.

But that’s not why it leads my list. Nothing will displace the memory of recovering to the point I could stay awake for more than a few hours, and then to actually want to eat something, and to enjoy some human contact. Hepatitis A can be quite contagious, so serious hand washing is a must. To protect my wife, who was carrying our oldest in his final trimester, we rarely spend much time in the same room that summer. That was not so for my friend Brian, who flew Cobras for the Army before joining the school’s staff, and his wife. She made the best brownies, and we feasted on them almost daily while we wore out that VHS and compiled a list of previously unseen bloopers, like the randomly spinning attitude indicator. Movie or not, there is more to life than airplanes.

Feelings of nostalgia, for an era of aviation that ended before I was born, unite the next to films on my mental tabulations of favorites, The Spirit of St. Louis, with James Stewart, and The Great Waldo Pepper, with Robert Redford. They depict a younger time, a barnstorming environment of adventure and possibilities when flying was finding its way forward. The two films embody the stick-and-rudder romance of open cockpits without the oil-scented reality of hypothermia and the face-to-face encounter with precipitation and insects.

Teamwork is the foundation of my next two favorites, the World War II epic, Twelve O’Clock High and Flight of the Intruder. To my aesthetic sense, no other movie better sets the scene when Harry Stovall pedals to the fence around what was his B-17 station and time rewinds with the sounds of an unseen Flying Fortress starting each of his four engines, their props forcing flat the grass he stands in. Set in the two-seat cockpit of the A-6, Intruder focuses on small scale teamwork during a period of unpopular conflict.

Finally, there’s Fly Away Home, the 1996 film that presents a gorgeously photographed dramatization of Bill Lishman’s effort to reintroduce birds to their migratory ways. The movie, with Jeff Daniels as Lishman, and Anna Paquin as his daughter, works with Canada geese. Operation Migration worked with whooping cranes. As entertainment, the geese work better, and I feed the film into the Blu-ray player whenever I need an emotional pick-me-up.

The pandemic-delayed Top Gun: Maverick is not the only aviation film I’ve been patiently anticipating. Devotion, the story of Jesse Brown and Thomas Hudner, based on Adam Makos’s book of the same title, is scheduled for release in October. Like TG:M, it was filmed using real Corsairs, Skyraiders, and Bearcats. If the film is half as good as the book, it will be a winner in my estimation.

So, what aviation films are on your list? Take a minute to share them in the comments because there will surely be some that the JetWhine community has either not seen or heard of. If you enjoyed this story, why not SUBSCRIBE to JetWhine, if you haven’t already, and please share it with anyone who might find it interesting. — Scott Spangler, Editor

The Best and the Worst In-Flight Movies

April 26, 2012 by Robert Mark

I’ve been a movie geek since I was a kid. So how could I refuse Zac’s Colbert’s (relation to Stephen Colbert??) request to pontificate about which movies are his favorites during airline travel? I wonder if my friend Mary Kirby at the Airline Passenger Experience Association agrees?

Rob Mark, publisher

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As a movie lover who also enjoys traveling, in-flight entertainment is a regular and important feature of my life. As a result, I’ve been the consumer of some fantastic and atrocious choices of film when flying.

Best

Airplane!

This is one of the funniest and most critically successful spoof films of all time, holding a 98% rating on movie aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. The combination of deadpan acting, witty one liners and ludicrous sight gags is over 30 years old, but survived the test of time. It’s been imitated but never matched and is surely one of the best movies to help your flight go quickly … “But don’t call me Shirley.”