My thoughts go to the Doolittle’s Raiders this Veterans Day, four of whom I recently spoke with during the 15th Annual American Veterans Center conference.
April 18th of this year marked the 70th anniversary of the “Doolittle Raid” on military targets on the Japanese home island of Honshu—a pivotal, morale-boosting retaliatory strike, just 131 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, demonstrating Japan was vulnerable to U.S. attack. Tom Casey, Raiders manager, set the scene at the AVC forum featuring them:
… It was a Saturday morning, the Empire of Japan. The City of Tokyo was very busy… at midday, when suddenly the citizens of Tokyo heard the sound of aircraft engines flying very low overhead and they looked up and they saw the underbody of a twin engine bomber. They were expecting to see the big red ball insignia of the Japanese Air Force under its wings. They didn’t see a big red ball; they saw a very little red ball inserted in a bright white star in a blue circle. What they were looking at was the insignia of the United States Army Air Force. The aircraft was a North American B25 model B. And, at its controls was one of America’s top aviators, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle. To his right was the very young lieutenant Richard Cole. On board also was a navigator, bombardier and a crew chief gunner. Within the next few minutes the citizens of Tokyo would hear the sounds of bombs going off within their city. Within the next hour, the citizens of the Empire of Japan and other major cities like Yokohama and Kobe would also hear the impact of bombs going off as 15 other B25s found their designated targets and started bombing the Empire of Japan.
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