flight to Prague from Italy on 23 December 1944. He was on his 68th mission and had previously been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. On 27 July 2018, his remains, which had been recovered in Austria a year earlier, were conclusively identified and confirmed to his daughter – included with them was a ring inscribed from her mother to her father and dated 1943. The day before to the announcement, his wingman, 2nd Lt. Robert L. Martin, had died at 99, in Olympia Fields, Illinois. The bodies of 26 other Tuskegee Airmen who disappeared in WWII remain unrecovered. In 2019, Lt. Col. Robert J. Friend, one of 12 remaining Tuskegee Airmen at the time, died on 21 June in Long Beach at the age of 99. He had flown 142 combat missions in World War II. A public viewing and memorial was held at the Palm Springs Air Museum on 6 July. He had spoken about his experiences in many different events before to his death, such as in John Murdy Elementary School's "The Gratitude Project" in Garden Grove. On January 16, 2022, Brigadier General Charles McGee died in his sleep at the age of 102. His 30-year military career included 409 combat missions in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam War. Legacy and honors On 29 March 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were collectively awarded a Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. The medal is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution. The airfield where the airmen trained is now the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice, got his start defending Tuskegee bomber trainees. The 477th Bombardment Group was formed in 1944 to extend the so-called "Tuskegee experiment" by allowing black aviators to serve on bomber crews. The aim was to send pilots—many of them veterans of the original Tuskegee fighter group—back to the States for training on B-25 bombers. While in Indiana, some of the African-American officers were arrested and charged with mutiny after entering an all-white officers' club. Marshall, then a young lawyer, represented the 100 black officers who had landed in jail as a result of the confrontation. The men were soon released (although one was later convicted of violent conduct and fined). Robert W. Williams Jr, a navigator/bombardier in the 477th Bombardment Group, became a judge in the First Judicial District, Commonwealth of