Doolittle Raiders Hold Last Public Reunion

[308Mike]

Salute to the remaining heroes:

Famed members of the World War II Doolittle Bombing Raid on Tokyo hold final public reunion
Published April 18, 2013 | Associated Press


Doolittle Raider Lt. Col. Dick Cole, flies a B-25 in the skies over Destin, Florida on Tuesday April 16, 2013 during a flight as part of the Doolittle Raider 71st Anniversary Reunion. The Doolittle Tokyo Raid was a notable attack on the Japanese during World War II using B-25's. The B-25 pilots trained to take off from an aircraft carrier, which the plane was not designed to do. (AP Photo/Northwest Florida Daily News, Nick Tomecek) (The Associated Press)

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. – At 97, retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole can still fly and land a vintage B-25 with a wide grin and a wave out the cockpit window to amazed onlookers.

David Thatcher, 91, charms admiring World War II history buffs with detailed accounts of his part in the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, in which he earned a Silver Star.

Retired Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, 93, still gets loud laughs from crowds for his one liners about the historic bombing raid 71 years ago Thursday that helped to boost a wounded nation's morale in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

Cole, Thatcher and Saylor -- three of the four surviving crew members from the history-making bombing run -- are at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle for a final public reunion of the Doolittle Raiders. They decided to meet at Eglin because it is where they trained for their top-secret mission in the winter of 1942, just weeks after the Japanese devastated the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.

The fourth surviving raider, 93-year-old Robert Hite, could not make the event.

"At the time of the raid, you know the war was on and it was just a mission we went on, we were lucky enough to survive it but it didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time. I spent the rest of the war in Europe and with the guys in Normandy and taking bodies out of airplanes and stuff and I didn't feel like a hero," Saylor said Wednesday following a ceremony in which an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter maintenance hangar at the base was named in his honor.

Saylor joked with the audience of young airmen and local dignitaries.

"My reaction when I out found out we were bombing Japan from an aircraft carrier was that it was too far to swim back home so we might as well go ahead with it," he said.

The 16 planes, loaded with one-ton bombs, took off from the aircraft carrier on less than 500 feet of runway. They had only enough fuel to drop their bombs and try to land in China with the hope that the Chinese would help them to safety.

"We were all pretty upbeat about it, we didn't have any bad thoughts about what was going to happen. We just did what we had to do," said Cole, who was Doolittle's co-pilot.

Wednesday's event at the base is part of a weeklong series of activities planned by the military and community leaders to honor the men.

Thomas Casey, business manager for the Raiders and a longtime fan of the men, said the four survivors have decided they can no longer keep up with the demands of group public appearances.

"The mission ends here in Fort Walton Beach on Saturday night, but their legacy starts then," he said.

Casey said he hopes everyone who has had a chance to interact with the men will keep their legacy alive. "I want them to tell the story to their children, their grandchildren, their neighbors and keep their story going because their story is worthwhile telling."

At each reunion is a case containing 80 silver goblets with the name of each raider inscribed right-side up and upside down on a single goblet. The men toast their fallen comrades each year and turn their goblets upside down in their honor.

They have also saved a bottle of Hennessy cognac from 1896, the year mission commander James Doolittle was born. The Raiders had said the final two survivors would open the bottle, but they have since decided that the four survivors will meet in private later this year for the toast.

At Thursday's dedication of the Saylor Hangar, the three men posed for pictures beneath a vintage B-25 bomber and an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that sat beside it.

Col. Andrew Toth, commander of the F-35 squadron at Eglin, told the men, "You boosted the morale of this nation just four months after Pearl Harbor. Thank you for your dedication service."

Young airmen and women got the old veterans' autographs and thanked them for their service.

"I've seen the movies, you know `Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.' I think this is awesome because they actually trained here at Eglin and they did the ceremony to actually name a hangar after one of the guys, it's pretty cool," said Air Force Lt. Col. Mike Matesick.

Larry Kelley owns the vintage B-25 aircraft that Cole flew a day earlier during a demonstration of four restored B-25s from the World War II era.

Kelley choked up when trying to explain what it has meant to him to meet Cole and the other raiders over the last several years and to have the men fly in his aircraft.

"Here are some of the most famous aviators that came out of World War II and they've never put a nickel in their pocket for notoriety," he said. Instead, he said, any money from book signings and appearances has always gone to the James H. Doolittle Scholarship Fund for aviation students.

Kelley said sitting beside Cole while Cole took the controls of the B-25 and landed the aircraft was a highlight of his life as a World War II and aviation buff.

"Oh yeah, he did most of the flying today. He did the landing. He's dead on. I kept looking over the altimeter. I told him to hold 1,500 feet and I kept looking at the altimeter and it was dead on, not 1,499 feet, not 1,501 feet, he had it the altimeter pegged 1,500 feet," he said.

[Netpackrat]

Retired Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, 93, still gets loud laughs from crowds for his one liners about the historic bombing raid 71 years ago Thursday that helped to boost a wounded nation's morale in the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

One thing that is often overlooked, is that it was more than just a symbolic victory. It had a very real effect on the outcome of the war. For one, it hammered home to the Japanese populace that no matter what their leaders told them, they were far from invulnerable. And also, while we could hit them in their capitol city, ours was far out of their reach.

Second, it got the Japanese thinking defensively, in order to prevent it from happening again. It played a major role in their decision to capture Midway Island, which led to the decisive battle that was the turning point in the Pacific war.

[arctictom]

Balls these guys had big brass ones , shit, read the story's, good grief, a one way trip and landing in maybe friendly territory.

[308Mike]

Here's one of the articles about them in Air & Space Smithsonian in September 2011 - go to the link to see the photos related to the story:

The Raiders Remember
In an annual ceremony, the last of the Doolittle Raiders recall their part in victory over Japan.
By Paul Hoversten
Photographs by Robert Seale
Air & Space magazine, September 2011

DICK COLE IS STILL amazed that the first U.S. combat mission in World War II—a daring daytime raid to bomb Japan­ using Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell bombers flying off a Navy carrier—was assembled, trained for, and flown in less than 90 days. “You could never get that done now. It was one of the marvels of Jimmy Doolittle,” says Cole, 96, who was Doolittle’s copilot in the first of 16 B-25s that bombed Japan on April 18, 1942. Though Doolittle, a well-known air racer and accomplished engineer, had a fun side, “he was all business” en route, Cole recalls. “There was no chit-chat.” One reason may have been that all 80 volunteers on the raid knew a crash landing or bailout somewhere in the Far East awaited them at mission’s end: Because a Japanese patrol boat spotted the carrier, the bombers were forced to take off from the Hornet about 250 miles farther back from their intended departure point. There was no guarantee they’d have enough fuel to reach the landing strips in China they had counted on.

As Cole’s airplane passed over Japan, “we could see people waving at us. The Japanese had just had an air-raid exercise, so they probably thought we were part of that.” After dropping bombs on Tokyo, Doolittle flew to occupied China, where the crew bailed out in a night storm and, with the help of friendly villagers, evaded capture by the Japanese.

Cole served 28 years in the Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. Today he raises “the best weeds in Texas” on his five-acre farm in Comfort. The oldest of five remaining Raiders, Cole plans to attend next year’s 70th anniversary reunion in Dayton, Ohio, where he was born and grew up idolizing Doolittle.



FROM HIS PERCH IN the top turret of the seventh bomber, Ruptured Duck, engineer-gunner David Thatcher never got to fire his .50-caliber machine gun over Tokyo. “I didn’t need to,” he recalls. No fighters challenged the bomber, and although “there was a lot of anti-aircraft fire, it wasn’t very accurate. We were coming in over the wavetops. It was a Saturday, about noon. We could see people on the beach and they were cheering.”

After the aircraft bombed the Nissan steel factory, pilot Ted Lawson, who would later recount the raid in his book Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, headed for China, where he tried to land on a beach. “We were nearly out of gas, and couldn’t get high enough to bail out, so we had to come down anyway,” says Thatcher. In the darkness and rain, the bomber hit the water and flipped over, throwing everyone but Thatcher out through the plexiglass nose. After being briefly knocked unconscious, Thatcher managed to escape from the wreckage, and helped get his injured crewmates to safety—an act that won him the Silver Star, to go along with the Distinguished Flying Cross awarded to each Raider. (Doolittle, who feared court-martial for losing the bombers, was also given the Medal of Honor and eventually four stars. He died in 1993.)

After the raid, Thatcher was ordered to Europe where he flew 26 bombing missions aboard B-26s over Tunisia and Italy, including the first raid on Rome. Unlike the Doolittle Raid, those runs had fighter-escorts, usually Spitfires or P-40s. Discharged in 1945, Thatcher returned home to Montana, got married, and raised a family as a postal carrier in Missoula.

Now 90, Thatcher has made more than 40 reunions, which the Raiders have held annually since 1946, and plans to keep going as long as his health holds out. “I’m still able to mow the lawn and shovel snow in the wintertime,” he says. “It’s great to get together [at the reunions]. It seems like I learn something more about their experiences each time I go.” What helps is that the sponsoring city pays airfare, hotel, and expenses for the Raiders and their escorts, says Thatcher, who has brought his daughter along on recent trips.

THE RAID’S NINTH BOMBER, Whirling Dervish, missed its target: a military factory in southern Tokyo. Its bombs hit the Tokyo Gas and Electric Company next door. “We flattened that instead,” says Tom Griffin, the airplane’s navigator. “We didn’t know we’d hit it until some time later, when the facts came out about the mission.” For Griffin, the raid was just the start of a long war. Rescued after bailing out over China, he returned to combat duty as a navigator on B-26 bombing runs over North Africa and Italy.

On July 4, 1943, a week shy of his 26th birthday, Griffin was shot down over Sicily and taken prisoner by the Germans. “It was a long 22 months,” says Griffin, now 95. “I spent it trying to think up ways to escape. It was our job to keep the Germans busy, so we gave them as much trouble as we could.”

When the war ended, he returned home and opened an accounting office in Cincinnati, Ohio. Because tax time is the busiest period for accountants, he was able to begin attending the mid-April reunions only after he closed the practice in the early 1980s. Two other Raiders attend the reunions: Ed Saylor, an engineer on bomber 15, TNT, and Bob Hite, copilot on bomber 16, Bat Out of Hell, are not pictured. At a final reunion, the last two are to open a bottle of Hennessy cognac from 1896 (the year Doolittle was born) and toast their departed colleagues. Says Griffin: “Dick Cole and I have a big thing going about that, who’s going to be the last. We say it’ll be us and we’ll be having that toast.”

Historians say that although the raid caused minimal damage, it had great strategic impact. American morale, still hurting over Pearl Harbor, soared, and Japan at once saw itself vulnerable to air attack. That impression pushed the Japanese navy to try to capture Midway Island, a decisive loss that heralded Japan’s defeat.

Paul Hoversten is the executive editor at Air & Space/Smithsonian.

[Rod]

I screamed at the television this evening. Diane Sawyer started the piece about the reunion by saying the pilot landed a B-52 for the last time. Wife cracked up as I left the room then told me Sawyer corrected herself. Some guys I'd follow anywhere, at any age.

[Steamforger]

I screamed at the television this evening. Diane Sawyer started the piece about the reunion by saying the pilot landed a B-52 for the last time. Wife cracked up as I left the room then told me Sawyer corrected herself. Some guys I'd follow anywhere, at any age.

If for nothing else, just to say...