At the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in 2016, Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James announced a break from the sequential bomber designation protocol. According to that protocol, the Air Force’s next bomber would have been designated the B-3. The chosen designation of B-21 would instead evince the aircraft’s coming of age in the 21st century.
In addition, Secretary James revealed the B-21’s official nickname, Raider, which immediately gave the bomber an illustrious cache. Selected from among more than 2,100 entries in a naming contest, Raider was derived from the daring Doolittle Raid of April 1942, in which 80 volunteers — the Raiders — launched from the pitching deck of the USS Hornet to avenge the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor a little more than four months earlier.
Led by the indomitable James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, the crews bombed targets in and around Tokyo, flying 16 North American Aviation B-25B Mitchell medium bombers. The last surviving Doolittle Raider, Lt. Col. Richard E. “Dick” Cole, who had served as Doolittle’s copilot during the mission, was on stage at the naming ceremony.
