WWII vet was a Tuskegee Airman

John L. Harrison Jr., 96, of Philadelphia, a World War II veteran and Tuskegee Airman who went on to fly Air Force planes for more than two decades, died Wednesday of natural causes at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse.

Born in Kansas and reared in Omaha, Neb., Mr. Harrison had an early infatuation with airplanes. “Johnny Boy, you can do anything anyone else does, but you have to prepare yourself,” his parents told him.

He graduated from Omaha University, and did further study at the University of Southern California and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

After reading about the first class of African-American pilots to train for combat during World War II, Mr. Harrison signed up in February 1943 to join Class 43-K, composed entirely of black recruits. He served with the Army Air Forces, the predecessor of the Air Force, until 1946.

The fliers encountered discrimination “based on the color of our skin,” he said in a September 2009 oral history, but the harsh treatment by white officers only heightened the men’s sense of camaraderie.

They painted the tails of their planes red, becoming the famed Red Tails, and distinguished themselves in combat by fending off enemy aircraft that threatened Allied bombers.

“We were Americans, we were young, and we wanted to defend our country, just like everyone else,” he said in the history, recorded at a Tuskegee Airmen’s air show.

Once Mr. Harrison completed basic training, he was promoted to second lieutenant, and advanced to specialized training on the B-25 Mitchell bomber and assigned to the 477th Medium Bombardment Group as a fighter pilot.

He was in combat in Italy during World War II, and was among the Tuskegee Airmen who in 2007 were awarded Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush and Congress.

After the war, he loved flying so much he stayed in the Air Force. He was the first African-American pilot and flight commander to regularly fly passengers and cargo across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for the U.S. Military Air Transport Service. He crossed the Pacific 50 times, and the Atlantic 30 times, his resume indicates.

In the early 1950s, Mr. Harrison was stationed in Hawaii, from which he flew to Japan, the Philippines, Wake Island, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.

In the mid-1950s, he flew to the Arctic, Greenland and Iceland. He also piloted C-118 Liftmaster Transports to Scotland, France, Spain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.