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“It was very cold up there and the missions were tiring because they were quite long. They lasted anywhere from five to six-and-a-half hours, and when we got back to the base all we could think of doing was hitting the sack and getting some rest and being prepared for the next day’s mission,” the retired lieutenant colonel said.  Being shot down and captured was not an option. The black Tuskegee Airmen were showing the world bigotry didn’t belong — except down below. On April 1, 1945, hate showed its face once again. “There were seven of us and we were going after targets of opportunity in Austria,” he said of the day his squad got into a dogfight with German fighter pilots. “Three of us got shot down. One was able to make it back to friendly territory before he crash-landed, one was killed outright when he was shot down and the third one, his plane was damaged so badly that he had to bail out,” said Stewart. That pilot was captured and lynched three days later by an angry mob. “The crowd, after being agitate