George E. Hardy, Tuskegee Airman, dies at 100

Lt. Col. George E. Hardy, the last surviving member of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew combat missions during WWII in Europe, has died. He was 100 years old.

Hardy died on Thursday, a spokesperson for Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., told NPR on Saturday. The organization remembered his legacy as one of “courage, resilience, tremendous skill and dogged perseverance against racism, prejudice and other evils, in a social media post on Friday.

“Colonel Hardy was an amazing man. He was a patriot. He loved his family. He loved his community. He loved our organization,” Leon Butler Jr., national president of Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., told NPR on Saturday. “He worked very hard. He worked tirelessly to preserve the legacy, not for himself, but for those that he served with, and he cared about the families of other original Tuskegee Airmen.”

Born on June 8, 1925 in Philadelphia, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 18 in July 1943 and started pilot training at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in December of that year. He graduated from pilot training in September 1944 at age 19, and was commissioned a second lieutenant.

During World War II, he was part of the 332nd Fighter Group at Ramitelli Air Base, Italy and assigned to the 99th Fighter Squadron. He completed 21 missions across Europe, according to the U.S. Air Force. He was the youngest Red Tail fighter pilot with the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black aviators of the U.S. Armed Forces, according to the Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.

Hardy recalled during an interview with the Veterans History Project that while he was stationed in Italy he did not encounter the systemic racism that he did while in the states but there was still segregation.

“We had our own club in Naples…so you didn’t go to the White club,” he said in the interview. “That’s…the way life was.”

He left Italy as a first lieutenant when the war in Europe ended in 1945 and returned to the Tuskegee Army Air Field base where he was a supervising pilot until 1946 when it closed. He then went back home to Philadelphia before attending New York University and getting married in 1947.

Hardy was assigned to the 19th Bomb Group, where he was the only Black American officer, and sent to Guam in 1949. The following year, the Korean War began and he was transferred to Okinawa. During the Korean War, Hardy flew 45 combat missions and would again take to the skies in a conflict for the Vietnam War, where he flew 70 combat missions, according to the U.S. Air Force.

He retired from military service in 1971, according to an interview with AVI-8’s The Aviation Journal.

Hardy received numerous honors for his military service, including the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor, a Commendation Medal with one Oak Leaf Cluster and an Air Medal with 11 Oak Leaf Clusters. In 2007, he and other Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

While he was proud of his military service, his education was his greatest achievement, Butler Jr. said.

He graduated from South Philadelphia High School and received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in systems engineering-reliability from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology, according to the U.S. Air Force. Hardy also received an honorary doctorate of public service from Tuskegee University, the U.S. Air Force said.