ATLANTA - (AP) Lt. Col. Charles "Chuck" Dryden, one of the first of the pioneering black World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, has died. He was 87.
Dryden died in Atlanta of natural causes, said Roger Neal, a spokesman for the National Museum of Patriotism in Atlanta. Dryden was on the museum's board of directors.
Dryden's 21-year military career included combat missions in Korea and assignments in Japan, Germany and U.S. bases. He retired from the Air Force in 1962. About 1,000 pilots trained as a segregated Army Air Corps unit at the Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama during World War II.
Dryden was a member of the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron and later the 332nd Fighter Group, which served in North Africa and Italy.
His P-40 airplane was nicknamed "A-Train," and Dryden titled his autobiography "A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman." It was published by the University of Alabama Press in 1997.
Last year, President Bush and Congress awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal. Some 300 surviving airmen -- including Dryden -- gathered in Washington for the ceremony in March 2007.
While attending the Washington gathering, Dryden told The Associated Press that he had mixed feelings about the event, since it came so many years after the war. But he added that the medal helped convince him that the country does recognize the airmen's contributions.
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