The last of 80 incredibly brave men ...
Posted on 04/18/2017 4:41:46 AM PDT by Zakeet
On April 18, 1942 - 75 years ago Tuesday - 80 incredibly brave men in 16 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities in retaliation for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
It was called the Doolittle Raid, after the group’s charismatic leader, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, a renowned avaiator even before the war.
Doolittle’s B-25 was the first to take off from the Hornet. Sitting beside him was a quiet, lanky young man from Dayton, Ohio, named Dick Cole.
On Tuesday, the 101-year-old will be at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton , Ohio. There, he will complete a decades-long tradition and turn over the goblet of his friend and fellow Raider David Thatcher, who died last year on June 22.
The tradition was that the Raiders would meet each year and drink a toast to those who had fallen. Each had their own goblet, and after each Raider died, his goblet would be turned upside down in its case. Cole, 101, will offer the toast this year by himself - he’s the last surviving Raider.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestate.com ...
The last of 80 incredibly brave men ...
In the video at the link Col Cole actually got to fly a B-25 some 60 years after that historic day.
When 101 years old you are, this good you will not look
I find this to be incredibly sad and in turn I am incredibly thankful to men and women such as he.
Guts. They had guts. How many today would volunteer for a similar perilous mission?
Sorry.....I’m slow today - don’t have my Yoda translator turned on.....:0)
Homage, honor, valor and country...thank you, you wonderful bunch who gave it all in order to provide some payback...a toast to you all...amen.
True words you spoke.
ping
There are still a lot of good soild brave men in the USA.
It is just that the progressives and old media want you to think that they are all Queer and snow flakes.
So they push that agenda.
It’s so sad that so few of that generation remain.
When I see some aspects of our military, I feel much the same way as you do. There is still a spark of the real American spirit there.
Then, when I see other aspects of the military, I can see that beginning in 1993, there has been civilian oversight that has done all in its power to emasculate and destroy the military with the social engineering agendas of various administrations.
And they have worked hard to extinguish that spark, but it lives on. I hope when the time comes, that our military will step up as LTC Cole did as a young man back in 1942.
So long ago.
technology has made that type of daring mission, where anything goes, a thing of history.
Only now do I really get how improvised the whole thing was. Flying large bombers off of an aircraft carrier that we couldn’t afford to lose, after a massive lose of our ships, that wasn’t designed for planes that big, that close to a naval superpower’s homeland, to just get some licks in for image sake? To then instruct the crews of those planes to make it to safety wherever they can because there is no backup?
That is just legend right there.
May the Lord bless him. Thank you brave man.
ping
They do all the time. Think Navy Seals and Special Forces. They did this for the last eight years despite a feckly anti-American ruling from the White House.
May God continue to bless and keep this brave man.
They don’t make many like him, any more.
Love these guys.. I just can’t figure out.. with our technology, with our educated armed forces, why do we keep losing?
These guys did it with almost no education, but darn they had the will and the courage. Thank you Colonel.. I envy your ability to endure and overcome. cheers!
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