Doolittle Raider (Tom Griffin), Who Shunned Title of ‘Hero,’ Dies

Good observations about the US policy of bringing top pilots (often Aces), back home to teach trainees how it was in real combat (as opposed to just reading about it).

A couple comments: At the National Archives in College Park, Md., some of the military record collections, esp. those of the Navy, have what are collectively called “After Action Reports”, but more specifically are intelligence debriefings of hundreds of pilots, navigators, ship crewmen, etc. on what happened during a battle(s) and how American equipment stood up against that of the Japanese, as well as which tactics worked or didn’t work.

There is one printed/mimeographed collection of such reports which I recently looked through with a friend who is gathering them for an article/book he is working on. Among the pilots was Major Pappy Boyington.

There are other pilot reports scattered in the Army Air Force records (Record Group 18), which have similar intelligence debriefings and talks. The P-38 was held by their pilots to be the equal of the Jap Zero if the pilots knew how to fly it properly. Other American fliers loved the P-40 Flying Tiger WarHawk (The Russians loved the P-39 Aerocobra as a tank destroyer).

Then came the “Flying Tank” P-47 and later the P-51 Mustang, probably the best all around aerial combat plane in the war. British actor Christopher Lee once flew in the Royal Air Corps, flying Spitfires and then, later, American Mustangs, which he loved. (”Chistopher Lee: Tall, Dark and Gruesome”, about 1999).

Our training programs, as noted, got better by the year, esp. when the new trainees worked with seasoned combat veterans on strategy and tactics.

At the end of the war, we had the best Air Force in the world. A salute to all of them and their mechanics and armorers. They did one helluva job.

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