April 18, 2007

Friends,

Today is the 65th anniversary of the remarkable raid led by then-Lt Col "Jimmy" Doolittle (later General James H. Doolittle). Of the 80 men who launched their B-25s from an aircraft carrier to bomb Japan just four months after Pearl Harbor, only 14 are left today. Half of them were able to travel here to San Antonio for the annual gathering of the Doolittle Raiders. A few newspapers have written stories about the raid this week, and some of those articles are linked here.

http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=18101

Yesterday, the 80 goblets that represent the 80 men who launched on that mission arrived at Randolph Air Force Base from their permanent place of honor at the National Museum of the Air Force near Dayton, Ohio. (Years ago, the goblets were on display at the Air Force Academy and I used to regularly walk by and scan the names on them. However, the Doolittle Raiders "belong" to the Nation as a whole so it is appropriate that the goblets are now in Dayton where they can be seen by the tens of thousands of visitors who stop there to learn about our Air Force and its heritage and heroes.) Four of the Raiders were on hand for the arrival of the goblets and to hear the 12th Flying Training Wing Commander thank them for the courage they showed six and a half decades ago in a legendary attack that bolstered the morale of our Nation while embarrassing the empire that committed the Pearl Harbor aggression.

Yesterday, I shook the hands of four veterans - Richard E. Cole (Doolittle's co-pilot on Crew 1, the first plane into the air on the raid), David J. Thatcher (Crew 7, gunner), Thomas C. Griffin (Crew 9, Navigator, later POW in Germany for two years), and Robert L. Hite (Crew 16, co-pilot, Japanese POW for three and a half years ). I thanked each of them for their service. I know that some of you also do that for today's service members and veterans. Some of you served yourself or were a family member of someone who was in the military. God bless you for that. On this day of remembrance of the Doolittle Raid, may God continue to bless this great Nation and those who serve us in the Armed Forces and other instruments of national power and community service.

Regards,

Jerry Ball '65