I managed to find a number and called his aide to setup an interview for our little company paper.
Long story short, we (me and sidekick) got to talk to General Doolittle for little more than an hour. Of course he told the story about the raid, which I'm sure he had told thousands of times before that day, in addition to other things. It was quite the experience.
This pic of General Doolittle getting his fourth star was hanging on his wall
Doolittle was THE definition of “the right stuff” in my opinion.
Great picture of real Americans.
How did Arizona go from a Barry Goldwater to a Juan McStain?
What an EXCELLENT photo !
That was the place to be. I was in DLI in 83-84, Russian language. Interviewed one pf the older Russian female teachers who had lived through the siege of Leningrad and used the information for an article on that siege in a magazine.
My one and only paid published article. I am told that means I am a pro. Cause I got paid.
As much courage as that raid took and the fact that it led to the Battle of Midway where the Kido Butai (Japan’s mobile strike force which had been kicking the crap out of the Allies) was wiped out, Jimmy Doolittle’s biggest contribution was probably when he took over command of the 8th Air Force.
He ordered the fighters to STOP protecting the bombers....to STOP escorting them closely. Instead their mission would now be to destroy the Luftwaffe. We were willing to incur extra high casualties among the bomber crews for a short time in order to break the back of the Luftwaffe by specifically hunting their fighter planes, and following them down to their airfields and attacking them there if necessary - whatever it took to knock out the German fighters. It worked. After “Big Week” in Spring of 1944 when we attacked Berlin specifically to force them to come out to fight, we destroyed so many Luftwaffe fighters that we had air dominance over Europe after that.
The loss rate for the Bombers went way down and British and American fighter-bombers were free to roam at will over the battlefield.