(Photo credit United State Air Force)
Posted on 04/09/2019 11:47:54 AM PDT by jazusamo
Sad news—the last Doolittle Raider has died. Lt. Col. Richard Cole passed away Monday at the age of 103.
Cole was the final surviving member of the daring raid on Tokyo by carrier-launched B-25s. As I wrote for his 100th birthday in 2015:
Col. Richard Cole was the co-pilot of "Crew 1," which means he sat alongside Col. Jimmy Doolittle at the tip of the tip of the American spear aimed at Imperial Japan. The Doolittle Raid on April 18, 1942, was a virtual suicide mission. It was a daring sea-launched bombing mission in the earliest days of World War II.
After Pearl Harbor, Americans were desperate to hit back, and that first hit was the Doolittle Raid. Sixteen Army Air Force B-25s took off from the USS Hornet to hit multiple Japanese cities. The plan was to fly to China because a B-25 could not land on an aircraft carrier. Only one of the 16 planes actually landed safely -- in the Soviet Union. The fate of the rest of the crews was a story of heroism and sacrifice.
Many didn't survive. Some were beheaded by the Japanese. The Japanese burned entire towns in occupied China that helped the Raiders.
One of the first teams that went into Japan after the bombing of Nagasaki was a unit solely focused on finding and extracting the surviving Doolittle Raiders imprisoned in Japan. America knew they were treasured heroes.
In 1942, the Doolittle Raid bucked American spirits. For four months after Pearl Harbor, Americans wanted to punch back. While not causing serious infrastructure damage, the Doolittle Raid caused a profound psychological blow to the Japanese. All of Tokyo learned that the United States could punch the Japanese homeland from across the Pacific.
In three years, swarms of Boeing B-29s based on Guam, Tinian, and Saipan would be leveling Japanese cities, culminating in the nuclear attacks of August 1945 that caused the end of the war in the Pacific.
Richard Cole deserves a salute from all Americans today. An American hero in the truest sense of the word has passed.
The Doolittle Raid - April 18, 1942. 4:53min
Ditto that.
Yes, real men, real heroes. So sad to look at his generation of 16-24 year olds, and the present generation of 16-24 year olds...
Hear, hear.
Visited the National WWII Museum this weekend in New Orleans. Definitely worth seeing if you ever get the chance.
They had a nice section dedicated to the Doolittle Raid.
I got to meet Jimmy Doolittle not long before he passed - one of my life highpoints.
RIP raiders. Your bravery is celebrated.
Wow! The end of an historical era! What great men they were!
If I remember correctly the last surviving member was supposed to drink a toast to the others but when all but one were gone, he was too old to attend a ceremony.
Brave, and capable men. I remember a program on “The History Channel” where a modern pilot attempted a takeoff from the same length as the Raiders did while practicing at Eglin Field.
When he couldn’t do it, he mentioned that they had 115 octane gas back then.
WOW! I got all of the remainer’s signatures on a pencil drawing of a B-29. True heroes!
In the 20’s Doolittle worked for Shell and was instrumental in the development of high octane gas for aviation.
A fascinating man.
Absolutely
Back in the ‘80s, my brother was an auto insurance adjuster and said that when he went to see a client at the Eglin AFB in Florida, the guy showed him the runway where the B-25 pilots practiced their takeoffs.
He said you could still see the white stripe across the runway, where they had to be airborne. It simulated the end of the flight deck of the carrier.
This is eerie for the wife and I and I’m not superstitious.
Last night she was looking through the cable movie selections and she put on 30 Seconds Over Tokyo with Spenser Tracy and Van Johnson. We had both seen it over 50 years ago but didn’t remember much of it. Neither of us had any inkling that the last Raider passed away yesterday.
Click the Pic
Requiescat in pace
We watched it last week.
RIP, Colonel.
“So sad to look at his generation of 16-24 year olds, and the present generation of 16-24 year olds”
Remember, they were a product of their times, as are kids today. If anyone is to blame, it would be their parents and elders.
Here is my essay about the raid. The last link is to an interview with him.
The Doolittle Raid April 18, 1942
One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster morale became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Only improbable, audacious ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska. Captain Francis Low, a submariner, first broached to Admiral Ernest King the idea of flying Army Air Corps medium bombers from an aircraft carrier. King thought Low’s “foolish idea” might have merit and ordered him to contact Captain Donald Duncan, King’s air operations officer. Duncan reviewed the specifications of all Army Air Corps bombers and decided the B-25B could do the job. King then sent Low and Duncan to General Hap Arnold who bought the idea. Arnold quickly agreed, because he and Jimmy Doolittle had independently made the same assessment.
By mid-January 1942 Doolittle began assembling the planes and crews. As one of the first MIT aeronautical engineering graduates with a PhD, he agreed with Duncan’s assessment in choosing the B-25B, and he knew exactly how to turn a possibly into a reality. Few Army personnel underwent training or had experience for operations involving ocean navigation. Therefore, crews were chosen from the 17th Bombardment Group flying anti-submarine patrols from the newly build airfield at Pendleton, Oregon.
Unaware of this pending mission, the 24 crews flew to Minneapolis where the bombers received extensive modifications. Installing auxiliary fuel tanks increased capacity over 70%. Range eventually increased from about 1,000 to 2,500 miles by also utilizing flying configurations and practices designed to conserve fuel. Increased fuel weight then required removing a 230 pound liaison radio. The lower twin 50cal. remote control turret was later removed at Eglin Field Valparaiso Florida saving 600 pounds. An armored 60 gal fuel tank was then inserted. Cameras were installed to record bombing results.
While in Minneapolis Captain David M. Jones told the officers their destination was not Columbia, South Carolina for anti-submarine patrol. They were asked to volunteer for a dangerous, important, and interesting mission for which no information could be given. Nearly everyone volunteered even though most were new to their trade. Of the 16 pilots Doolittle actually took on the raid, only five had won their wings before 1941 and all but one was less than a year out of flight school.
Jimmy Doolittle, now a Lieutenant Colonel, met all 140 of them in Eglin’s operation’s office. He said, “If you men have any idea that this isn’t the most dangerous thing you’ve ever been on, don’t start this training period…..This whole thing must be kept secret. I don’t want you to tell your wives…..Don’t even talk among yourselves about this thing. Now does anyone want to drop out?” Nobody dropped out.
The crews began training with Lieutenant Henry L. Miller, USN (who later became an “Honorary Tokyo Raider”) on Elgin Field 48 days before the raid. The crews used a remote runway flagged to mark available carrier deck length. In three weeks the crews learned to take off at near stalling speeds of 50-60 miles per hour, overloaded, and in just over a football field length. At Pendleton pilots had used a mile long runway to build up speed to 80-90 miles per hour.
As the mission armament officer, Captain Charles Ross Greening improvised substitutes after removal of the top secret Norden bombsight and the lower gun turret. At Elgin he and Tech Sergeant Edward Bain designed a substitute bomb sight with two pieces of aluminum. The “Mark Twain” device could be rapidly fabricated in the base metal shop and provided superior accuracy for this low-altitude bombing assignment. On board the Hornet, Greening accomplished the planned installation of a pair of black-painted broom handles simulating machine guns in each aircraft’s tail cone to intimidate attacking fighters.
After training twenty-two bomber crews hedgehopped across country to San Francisco. The sixteen crews who reported no problems had their planes lifted aboard ship. Those who reported problems, however minor, were devastated when Doolittle excluded them from the mission.
The Hornet left the U.S. and joined the Enterprise at sea April 13, 1942. Admiral Chester Nimitz, in charge of the Pacific Fleet had now risked two of his four aircraft carriers in this venture along with 14 escorts and 10,000 total crew members. The task force steamed towards Japanese home islands just four and one-half months after the Pearl Harbor disaster. From radio traffic analysis, the Japanese knew the carriers that had eluded their six carrier strike force on December 7 were underway somewhere in the Western Pacific. Unbeknownst to the Americans, along with other special measures, the Japanese patrolling picket boats were 650 miles, not 300 miles, offshore to provide the intelligence needed for an overwhelming counterattack.
The Army crews shared quarters with the navy squadrons. Edgar McElroy, pilot of #13 aircraft remembers bunking with two members of Torpedo Bomber Squadron Eight. He later learned that they along with all but one member of the squadron died attacking Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway.
Once the Hornet was at sea, Doolittle told the raiders their mission was to attack Japan. When the ship’s captain passed the word, the Navy crew exploded into cheers. While underway towards Japan, the industrial targets were briefed by Lt Stephen Jurika who was naval attaché in Tokyo 1939-1941. He imparted information from not only his own travels, but from a Soviet counterpart who had spent several years researching possible bombing targets. The Soviet Union was long aware of Japan’s plans to attack the U.S.S.R. (strike north against the traditional enemy), or to attack colonial possessions of the U.S, Netherlands, and Britain (strike south for desperately needed natural resources such as oil).
On April 18 the U.S. task force encountered this new picket line 170 miles before their planned launch. The pilots rushed to their planes as the ship plowed into the wind and 30-foot swells. Each aircraft received at this last minute up to 11 extra 5gal gas cans. A Navy officer twirled a flag, listened for the right tone from the revving engines, and felt for the precise moment to release them on the pitching deck. The pilots, who had never flown from a carrier, saw the ship’s bow reaching into a grey sky, and then plunging into a dark angry ocean sending salt spray across the deck. When released, they quivered down a bucking flight deck keeping the left wheel on a white line to just miss the superstructure by six feet. Every plane and 80 crewmen lifted safely from a rising deck into the stormy sky; even Ted Lawson who discovered he had launched with flaps up and initially fell towards the ocean. The bombers proceeded independently to Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, and Kobe. They carried three 500 pound demolition bombs and one 500 pound incendiary cluster.
Colonel Doolittle considered the raid a failure. Doolittle saw the raid as secondary to the bombers safely arriving and providing Chiang Kai-shek and Claire Chennault an offensively capable air force. Every plane had been lost, because they were unable to reach safe landing sites. One plane and crew was interred in the Soviet Union, but was allowed to escape in 1943. Fifteen crashed in China resulting in three crewmen deaths. The Chinese who spirited the others to friendly hands paid a terrible price. Hirohito was enraged and authorized a reprisal expedition into Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces. According to Curtis LeMay, the Japanese not only destroyed military bases and infrastructure, but turned villages into cinders and killed 250,000 civilians.
Eight crew members were captured, and all were condemned to death. Premier Hideki Tojo asked Emperor Hirohito to commute all the sentences, but the Emperor allowed three to be executed. One later starved to death in Japanese prison camps.
The raid proved a crucial psychological boost demonstrating Americans could do the impossible even if their battle fleet was blasted to wreckage, and they were losing an army in the Philippines. The Japanese Imperial Navy suffered a devastating loss of face, because Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had guaranteed the Emperor that the Americans would never attack their home islands. The raid confirmed Yamamoto in his determination to attack Midway, and there begins another story.
I Could Never Be So Lucky Again by James H. Doolittle with Carroll V. Glines
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Ted Lawson
Hirohito: Behind the Myth by Edward Behr
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini
Charles Ross Greening, Colonel United States Air Force
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/crgreening.htm
Greening, Colonel Charles Ross (1914-1957), HistoryLink.org Essay 10320
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10320
Captain David M. Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Jones
The Navy Targets Tokyo
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2015-04/navy-targets-tokyo
Letters from the Precipice of War (Steven Jurika)
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2014-01/letters-precipice-war
Sorge: A Chronology (Excerpts 1942)
http://richardsorge.com/excerpts/1942/index.html
The Official Website of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders
http://doolittleraider.com/
Doolittle Raiders 70th Anniversary:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&qpvt=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&FORM=IGRE
http://doolittlereunion.com/
GENERAL DOOLITTLE’s REPORT ON JAPANESE RAID
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/rep/Doolittle/Report.html
North American B-25 Mitchell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Mitchell
Pendleton Field
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=C9A94F93-E10A-57A0-B694B0AFFE69184C
A final toast for the Doolittle Raiders
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/opinion/greene-doolittle-raiders
80 Brave Men the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Roster
http://www.doolittleraider.com/80_brave_men.htm
Jonna Doolittle Hoppes “Jimmy Doolittle Raid” presentation at Historic Flight Foundation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgt8PMoRGG8
Doolittle Raiders: The Last Reunion (VIDEO)
http://salem-news.com/articles/may302013/doolittle-raiders-rn.php
Doolittle Raider forum, etc.
http://www.doolittleraider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=128&t=579
http://www.dontow.com/2012/03/the-doolittle-raid-mission-impossible-and-its-impact-on-the-u-s-and-china/
http://www.historynet.com/countdown-to-the-doolittle-raid.htm
A VETERAN’S STORY: Interview with The Last Raider
http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/veterans-story-interview-raider.html
Great keepsake!
That is a bit spooky.
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