For Walter Palmer, it was all about the flying.

But for history, it was that and more.

Palmer, 89, was one of the then-overlooked but now-revered Tuskegee Airmen, black pilots whose heroics during World War II saved lives but were marginalized at the time because of racism.

In 2007, the Indianapolis man was among 300 other Tuskegee Airmen or airmen’s widows to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation’s highest honors.

The ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda was some 60 years late for the surviving airmen, now in their 80s and 90s and many in poor health, and too late for the hundreds more who had died.

About 450 Tuskegee pilots flew more than 1,500 missions, destroying more than 100 enemy planes in the air and many other targets on the ground. One destroyer escort and 57 locomotives were destroyed by the pilots, plus numerous railcars and river barges.

In all, 994 men were trained at the Tuskegee Institute as air crew, and another 16,000 to 19,000 men were trained as ground crew.

In addition to Palmer, there are believed to be at least six other surviving Tuskegee Airmen in Indiana, including three in the Indianapolis area.