[Dog Gone]

One of those guys gave a talk at the elementary school I was attending eons ago, and that was my first exposure to the story.

I have no idea today which man it was. I seem to recall that he autographed a book in my father's possession, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" which he probably still has, so it might have been Captain Lawson.

I'll ask next time I speak to him.

[Swordmaker]

My father was involved in the Doolittle raid... and, although not named, is mentioned in "30 Seconds Over Tokyo". In the book, the aircraft and crews were at McClellan Army Air Base north of Sacramento. They were there to have the final fine tuning of the engines (and whole engine replacement if ANYTHING was found wrong) before being flown to be loaded on the Hornet.

In the book, Lawson tells of being very upset when the crews were revving the engines beyond the manufacturer's specs while the planes were chocked and cabled to the ground. If I recall, they still had not been told what they were going to attempt to accomplish... especially the part about taking off in about a third of the distance the plane's manufacturer said was necessary, although they had already been practicing very short take-offs. Lawson was upset about the small rocks and dust that the engines were picking up and throwing against the planes and perhaps nicking the props. He complained to the ground crew chief... that ground crew chief was my Dad. He was the one in the cockpit revving the engines while his crew was checking for unusual vibrations, etc.

A couple of years before Dad died at age 85, he and I were at the Air Museum at McClellen and found pictures of his crew with the "Ruptured Duck" and other B-25 Mitchell bombers they had worked on displayed. My Dad called over one of the docents at the museum and proudly pointed to himself in the picture saying "That's me!" and asked if they would be interested in the names of the others in the picture. The docent called the museum's curator and Dad provided them with names and stories of the men in that picture and many others.

Later, my Dad also worked on the Enola Gay and a couple of the chase planes that followed her over Hiroshima. One of the chase planes was brought back to McClellan after flying through the mushroom cloud and a close friend of Dad's who lived about five houses down from us, picked up a rag in the back of the plane and wiped grease off his hands. Some nerdy types going over the plane with geiger counters yelled at him... grabbed him and took him out and literally scrubbed the skin off of his hands. Later (like 20 years) Dad's friend developed large and varied tumors on both hands... he outlived my Dad though.