TOP GUN

44-4, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and began his career as a ghter pilot.

While many Tuskegee Airmen were already ying in Europe, protecting heavy bomber aircraft on their way to strategic targets, Harvey did not get that opportunity.

“ at’s because Hitler knew I was coming and he gave up the following month,” he joked. “I was supposed to ship in April 1945. And 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 says 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 explains 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 les — which included their o cial 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.’ e pilots said, ‘No way are we going to y 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 ying 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 rst lieutenant and Eddie Drummond is a second lieutenant… how about lieutenants Harvey and Drummond?’”

First ‘Top Gun’

In January 1949, the newly-recognized Air Force, thanks to the National Security Act of 1947, issued a directive to all ghter squadrons about an intramural weapons competition.

Each unit was to select its top three pilots to represent their ghter group at the rst-ever aerial gunnery meet to be held at Las Vegas Air Force Base, Nevada.

It was o cially 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. ey 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 chit-chatted, and his nal remark was, ‘If you don’t win, don’t come back.’ And with those words of encouragement, o we went.” e competition for “Top Gun” would prove formidable in the conventional piston category, ying the North American P-51 Mustang and the North American F-82 Twin Mustang. ese were some of the best pilots and aircraft maintenance teams in the country ying some of the most advanced aircraft in inventory.

It was May 1949.

“And we’re ying the obsolete P-47 underbolt,” Harvey said “It was big, clumsy — and heavy.” e 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-stra ng mission.

“Well, we won the meet,” said Harvey. “Our closest competitor was the P-51 out t… 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.

“We didn’t nd out, we, meaning us, the Tuskegee Airmen, didn’t nd 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.” e almanac was corrected in April 1995 to show the 332nd Fighter Group as the o cial winners of the 1949 weapons meet. ough the records were xed, one more mystery would remain.

‘That trophy will never be on display’ ey 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.

As winners of the rst Air Force “Top Gun” competition in the pistonengine 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. at was in 1949.

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 confesses, until that day, she never knew much about the Tuskegee Airmen.

She was about to get a rsthand lesson from the men who were there.

“I thought I was just gonna go and put a ower 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. rough 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, Mississippi.

It was there that she learned of the missing trophy.

“I just felt a connection,” Rainey-Orr said.

Unable to resist, she began a quest to locate it.

Not knowing what the trophy looked like, and with Temple, at that time, in failing health, she reached out to the family in hopes of nding 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. at clipping provided Rainey-Orr 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.

“ ey 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 Rainey-Orr 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 rst nationwide gunnery competition since the end of the war and it was the rst time that Black pilots had participated.

Why wouldn’t they want the trophy displayed?

After a lot of back-and-forth negotia- tions, 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 rst 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 RaineyOrr, 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 plans to celebrate his 100th birthday with true ghter pilot air.

He says close to 270 friends, family and guests from around the country, many of them “military brass,” will join him for a private gala celebration in Centennial, Colorado. ere will be 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?

Harvey will tell you.

“It doesn’t feel any di erent than the rst year,” he joked. “ Actually, I don’t remember the rst 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 agrees, and describes Harvey, whom she rst 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 rst in many areas, including becoming the rst Black pilot to y jets in Korea — and often unless he told the stories, they were forgotten.”

While saddened that she’ll miss 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 sacri ces in the service of our country,” she said, “because he had comrades who did not. ey survived the war, but didn’t get to see the respect.”

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

“I liked the rst one better,” Harvey said.