June 27, 1944

James H. Ewing, an original Arkansas Tuskegee Airman, from Helena (Phillips County), graduated from the 44-F-TE class. He was assigned to Godman Field in Kentucky as a crew chief gunner with Special Order Ninety-one. In a non-combat routine flight from Godman Field in Kentucky to Gunter Field in Alabama, Ewing, along with six other crew members, was killed when their B-25 bomber went down in a swamp four miles east of Gunter Field in mid-June 1945. Arkansas’s original Tuskegee Airmen were part of a segregated group composed of African-American Army Air Corps cadets, personnel, and support staff known as the Tuskegee Airmen.