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Tag: Lt. Col. Dick Cole

Lt. Col. Dick Cole, the Doolittle Raiders made history, planted the seeds for today’s Air Force
April 22, 2019 — When Lt. Col. Dick Cole pushed the throttles forward April 18, 1942, to coax the lumbering, indecisive B-25 Mitchell bomber off the rolling deck of the USS Hornet for an audacious raid on Tokyo, he had no conception of space as a warfighting domain. “Cyber” would not be a word for several more decades; drones, GPS and mid-air refueling were nothing more than fanciful science fiction... MORE

On April 18, 1942, airmen of the US Army Air Forces, led by Lt. Col. James H. (Jimmy) Doolittle, carried the Battle of the Pacific to the heart of the Japanese empire with a surprising and daring raid on military targets at Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya and Kobe. This heroic attack against these major cities was the result of coordination between the Army Air Forces and the US Navy, which carried the sixteen North American B-25 medium bombers aboard the carrier USS Hornet to within take-off distance of the Japanese Islands. A pair of alert escorts follow the USS Hornet to protect her lethal cargo of B-25 bombers. The aircraft carrier Hornet had 16 AAF B-25s on deck, ready for the Tokyo Raid.