One Final Toast for the Doolittle Raiders
A little more than four months after the Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States struck back on April 18,
1942, with the daring Doolittle Raid. Lieutenant Richard E. Cole, who
served as Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot, is the only one of the 80 raiders
still living, and today the 101-year-old veteran commemorated the 75th
anniversary of the Doolittle Raid by continuing an annual tradition of
raising a silver goblet and toasting his fallen comrades with 1896
cognac.
Dick Cole had always dreamed of soaring into the clouds, but he never
dreamed that one day he would fly into the history books alongside his
boyhood idol.
As a youngster growing up outside Dayton, Ohio—hometown of the Wright Brothers—Cole pasted newspaper articles chronicling the exploits of pioneering aviators into his scrapbook and often made the 30-minute bike ride to McCook Field where he sat and watched daredevil pilots such as James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, who in 1922 made the first cross-country flight in under 24 hours, train and test new aircraft at McCook Field.
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As a youngster growing up outside Dayton, Ohio—hometown of the Wright Brothers—Cole pasted newspaper articles chronicling the exploits of pioneering aviators into his scrapbook and often made the 30-minute bike ride to McCook Field where he sat and watched daredevil pilots such as James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, who in 1922 made the first cross-country flight in under 24 hours, train and test new aircraft at McCook Field.
-go to link-
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