TOP GUN

“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 that 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’ at was in 1949. 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 piston-engine division, Harvey and his team were brought into a hotel ballroom where the almost 3-foottall stainless steel victory cup sat on a table.

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,” RaineyOrr 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 RaineyOrr 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.

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