ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA — Lt. Col. Charles "Chuck" Dryden, one of the first of the pioneering black World War II pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen, died Tuesday. He was 87.

His 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.

Dryden was selected for aviation cadet training as part of a segregated Army Air Corps unit at Tuskegee Army Flying School in Alabama in August 1941, only a month after the program began and four months before the U.S. entered World War II.

Dryden's P-40 airplane was nicknamed "A-Train," and he titled his autobiography "A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman," published in 1997.

In March 2007, Dryden and some 300 surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen gathered in Washington to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.