George Hardy, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who was one of the last surviving combat veterans of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black squadron in the segregated U.S. military during World War II, and who subsequently flew 45 mission in the Korean War and 70 in the Vietnam War, died on Wednesday in Sarasota, Fla. He was 100.
His death, at his home, was announced by the national office of the veterans organization Tuskegee Airmen Inc.
Colonel Hardy, a Philadelphia native, was 19 and had never even driven a car when he began aviation cadet training in September 1944 at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama. By early the next year, in the closing months of the war in Europe, then-Second Lieutenant Hardy was assigned to an Army Air Forces base in Italy, from which he flew 21 missions accompanying bombers to their targets over southern Germany in early 1945.
In addition to those high-altitude missions in P-51 Mustang aircraft, he made strafing runs on German trains, trucks or river barges and was once struck by small-arms fire. He knew he was hit, he recalled to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, when he saw a flash of light coming through the cockpit floor, which was usually dark.
Colonel Hardy reflected on the camaraderie between Black and white airmen during that period.
“When we got back to the base, we would get together and drink,” he told The Tampa Tribune in 2012. “They really appreciated us. But once we got back to the States, we were reminded that things hadn’t changed. When we walked down the gangway of the boat as it docked, there was a sign: Whites to the right, coloreds to the left. After all we had been through, it really didn’t feel too good.”
After a brief return to civilian life to study engineering, Colonel Hardy joined the newly formed Air Force in 1948, a year after the military was desegregated, and became a specialist in radar and long-range navigational equipment. Deployed to Okinawa, Japan, in 1950 during the Korean War, he was assigned to co-pilot B-29 bombers but had conflicts with a racist colonel who did not want him in the cockpit.
He remembered the colonel ordering him, “Hardy, get down out of the airplane,” as he was readying for his first mission. That same plane, he said, was shot down over North Korea, and two of the airmen who bailed out were captured and died in a prison camp.
Colonel Hardy, by then a first lieutenant, went on to have a distinguished run piloting B-29s. Back home, however, he continued to face indignities. During a stint in Fort Worth, he was refused housing on base. Time and a rise in ranks — he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1966 — helped improve the situation, he said.
Colonel Hardy spent years in supervisory roles involving the maintenance of electronic equipment before his final tour of duty, in Vietnam, where he piloted an AC-119K gunship. His decorations included the Distinguished Flying Cross and 12 Air Medal awards, recognizing single acts of extraordinary achievement or heroism.
He later worked in program management for the GTE Corporation in Massachusetts for more than 15 years. He also traveled throughout the United States telling the story of the Tuskegee Airmen’s fight against racial prejudice, their combat exploits and their military and civilian careers that followed. “Flying,” he told the Florida newspaper The Bradenton Herald in 2005, “made a better life for me.”
George Edward Hardy, the second oldest of seven children, was born on June 8, 1925, in Philadelphia. His father, Edward Hardy, was a podiatrist, and his mother, Alma (Vargas) Hardy, looked after the home.
Excelling in math, George at first wanted to pursue a career in engineering, but after he graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1942, he thought he would follow his older brother into the Navy as a mess attendant — one of the few jobs open to Black recruits in the rigidly segregated service. His father, however, “wanted better for me” than being a cook, Colonel Hardy said, and dissuaded him from signing up.
By early 1943, the Army Air Forces were desperate for pilots and began accepting applicants as young as 17 with high school degrees. George Hardy signed up and scored high on the exam for pilot training. As a young recruit, he had never been far from home and found the trip south an awakening.
“The Pullman ride out of Philadelphia was wonderful,” he told The Tampa Tribune. “But when we changed trains in Cincinnati, we found that when we went to eat, we had to sit at a table divided by a thick curtain, with whites on one side and Blacks on the other.”
“I used to say the Army’s No. 1 job was segregation,” he added. “Winning the war was No. 2.”
While in the military, he received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1957 and a master’s degree in systems engineering in 1964, both from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
Survivors include four children, Josephine, Gerald, Paul and Deborah Hardy, all from his marriage to Beatrice Goode, which ended in divorce; two stepchildren, Kelly LeDoux Lee and Christopher Lott; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His second wife, Katharine Lott, who was known as Bonnie, died in 2008 after 28 years of marriage.
In 2024, the National World War II Museum presented the Tuskegee Airmen with the institution’s highest honor for their accomplishments and patriotism in the face of discrimination.
Accepting the award on behalf of the group, Colonel Hardy said, “When I think about the fellows who flew before me and with me at Tuskegee, and the fact that we did prove that we could do anything that anyone else could do, and it’s paid off today … it’s hard to believe that I’m here receiving this award — with them.”