The Real Top Guns Were Black. Military Hid It In 1949, twenty years before the Navy's Top Gun school even existed, the U.S. Air Force held its first-ever Fighter Gunnery Meet at what's now Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. Four Tuskegee Airmen—Captain Alva Temple, Lieutenant James Harvey, Lieutenant Harry Stewart, and crew chief Staff Sergeant Buford Johnson—won the competition flying obsolete P-47 Thunderbolts against teams with far more advanced aircraft. When the 332nd Fighter Group was dec