WASHINGTON, Nov 10: For Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot, taking off from an aircraft carrier, flying hundreds of miles and bombing Japan was the easy part of the daring 1942 American air raid on Tokyo.
The worst moment came hours later, when he had to parachute out of his B-25 bomber over China in the middle of a heavy storm.
“That was the scariest time,” said Richard Cole, now 98 years old.
“There you are in an airplane over a land you are not familiar with, under a big weather front, very active with lots of rain, with thunderstorms and lots of lightning and you are going to jump out,” he said.
“There are lots of questions that are going through your mind.”
Out of the 80 men who took part in the storied Doolittle raid that boosted America’s morale in the early days of World War II, only four are still alive.
Cole and two of his fellow veterans, also in their nineties, attended a “final reunion” yesterday at the US Air Force’s National Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
In a ceremony webcast live and attended by family and dignitaries, the three elderly men toasted comrades who have died since the raid, as well as the five airmen who perished in the operation.
“Gentlemen, I propose a toast to those we lost on the mission, and those who have passed away since: thank you very much and may they rest in peace,” Cole said, as he and his fellow veterans raised goblets of cognac.
The Doolittle crews “inspired a nation,” Air Force chief General Mark Welsh told the veterans, and “you turned the tide of a war.”
The raid has been immortalised on screen and in numerous books, but Cole said he never expected the operation would take on so much importance.
“I never dreamed this thing would last so long and that so many people would be interested in it,” he said in a telephone interview with AFP.
The bold operation was led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, who became an American hero after 16 B-25 bombers under his command struck Tokyo five months after the Japanese decimated the US Navy at Pearl Harbour.
When he volunteered for the top-secret mission, Cole knew it would be dangerous but he only learned of the target aboard the carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific Ocean.
Once the crews were told they would be attacking Japan, there was “a lot of jubilation,” he said.
“But then it became kind of quiet because people were realising what they were going to be doing.” (Agencies)
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