James "Jimmie" Doolittle is today most famous for his audacious B-25 bombing raid on Tokyo in the opening months of America's entry into World War II, an attack featured in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor. But Doolittle's aviation legacy is much greater than this military attack. Doolittle was a true renaissance man of aviation, a daredevil aviator and racing pilot, an aviation executive, a military commander, a scientist, and a presidential advisor. He was also an inspirational figure to many young people in the early days of aviation.
James Harold Doolittle was born in Alameda, California, on December 14, 1896. His father was a carpenter and set off to Alaska in search of gold. Doolittle's mother brought Jimmie with her to join his father in Nome, Alaska, when he was three-and-a-half years old. When he was 11, he moved with his mother to Los Angeles, California, where he developed an interest in flying. He became a professional boxer and entered the University of California's School of Mines in 1915. In 1917 he enlisted in the Army Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps to train as a pilot and was soon promoted to lieutenant. Doolittle served in the United States Army Air Corps from 1917 until 1930, when he became a major in the Army Air Corps Reserve, where he served for the next ten years.
After he learned to fly, Doolittle served as an instructor pilot and began engaging in aerobatics. He started thinking of breaking aviation records. In 1922 he made the first cross-continental crossing in less than 24 hours, taking 21 hours and 19 minutes to fly in his De Havilland DH-4 plane from Pablo Beach, Florida, to San Diego, California, with only one refueling stop.
In 1923 Doolittle enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to obtain a master's degree and then a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering. When he received his degrees in June of 1925, fewer than 100 people in the world held comparable advanced degrees. In his doctoral dissertation, "Wind Velocity Gradient and Its Effect on Flying Characteristics," he combined laboratory data with test flight data to determine that a pilot needed visual aids or instruments to know the direction and speed of the wind and the direction in which the plane was flying. His dissertation countered the theory that many contemporary pilots held that they could "know" this information instinctually.
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