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Lowell Steward
| Second Lieutenant Lowell Steward (deceased) Entering the Tuskegee flight school for training in July 1942, Lowell Steward graduated as a fighter and was sent to Italy in 1944 with the 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group. From Capodichino Air Base in Naples he flew a number of missions in Bell P-39 Airacobras and Curtiss P-40 Warhawks. He was subsequently based in Ramitelli Airfield where he flew many more missions in North American P-51 Mustangs. In total, he flew 143 missions and remained in the service until July 1946. After the war and upon his return to Los Angeles, he helped to organize the Los Angeles chapter of Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. and to found a scholarship foundation in the name of the Tuskegee Airmen. In 2007, Steward attended President George W. Bush's presentation of the Tuskegee Airmen with the Congressional Gold Medal. On December 14 2014 Lowell came down with a cold that led to pneumonia and sadly died on December 17th in the Community Memorial Hospital of natural causes at the age of 95. |
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Fighting Red Tails by Robert Taylor. With their distinctive red tails, P-51 Mustangs of the 332nd Fighter Group - the famed Tuskegee Airmen, climb to operational height as B17 Fortresses from the 483rd Bomb Group manoeuvre into formation at the start of another long and dangerous mission over Germany, Oct 1944. A welcome sight for the Fortress crews, the renowned all-black Tuskegee pilots were credited for never losing an escorted bomber to enemy aircraft. For the first time ever Robert pays tribute to the Tuskegee Fighter Pilots in this stunning portrait of one of the most famous fighter units of WWII. |
Opening Sky by Robert Taylor. With the morning sun glinting on their fuselages, P-51 Mustangs of the 78th Fighter Group cross the Dutch coastline far below, as they head back towards their base at Duxford, England at the end of a long sweep east of the Rhine crossing, Spring 1945. The final months of the war in Europe lie ahead, and for the P-51 pilots victory is within sight. Finally, after years of toil, the sky was theirs. |
Red Tail Escort by Richard Taylor. With the words of his Group CO ringing in his ears, a pilot of the 332nd Fighter Group returns to protect a crippled American B17 bomber after downing two Me109s in quick succession. Agonisingly, two more enemy fighters were left to escape but the pilot knew that under the strict leadership of Colonel Benjamin O Davis, his mission, and that if the other all-black pilots of the 332nd, was solely to protect the bombers. That iron discipline was to earn this famous unit the respect and admiration of hundreds of bomber crews, and to create a legend. Despite lingering racial prejudice and some opposition within the Air Force, President Roosevelt had ordered the USAAF to form an all-black fighter pilot unit, its crews to be trained at Tuskegee in Alabama. To the surprise of their critics, the Tuskegee Airmen were to prove their detractors spectacularly wrong from the first day they went into action in Italy in May 1943. Flying first with the Twelfth Air Force, then the Fifteenth, the four squadrons of the 332nd completed over 15,000 combat sorties, destroyed over 250 Luftwaffe aircraft in the air and on the ground, 950 railway trucks and locomotives, and even sunk a destroyer by machine gun fire! The Group was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, their pilots decorated with over 1000 medals for gallantry. But above all, with the spinners and tails of their P-51 Mustangs brightly painted red, the Red Tails as they were affectionately known, became the only US Fighter Group that never lost a bomber in their care. The Tuskegee Red Tail pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group are a more than welcome sight as they close in to escort home a damaged B17 Fortress of the 483rd Bomb Group. Seen high over the Italian Alps during the summer of 1944 this poignant scene conveys precisely the story of the legendary Red Tails. |
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