Doolittle Raid: One Last Toast

WWII mission was a turning point back home.

DAYTON, Ohio — The last of the Doolittle Raiders, all in their 90s, offered a final toast Saturday to their fallen comrades, as they pondered their place in history after a day of fanfare about their 1942 attack on Japan.

“May they rest in peace,” Lt. Col. Richard Cole, 98, said before the three Raiders present sipped an 1896 cognac from specially engraved silver goblets. The cognac was saved for the occasion after being passed down from their late commander, Lt. Gen. James “Jimmy” Dolittle, who was born in 1896.

In a ceremony Saturday evening at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio, hundreds of people, including family members of deceased Raiders, watched as the three Raiders each called out “here” as a historian read the names of all 80 of the original airmen.

The three in attendance were Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, 93; Staff Sgt. David Thatcher, 92; and Lt. Col. Richard Cole, 98. Lt. Col. Robert Hite, 93, couldn’t travel because of health problems.

A B-25 bomber flyover helped cap an afternoon memorial tribute in which a wreath was placed at the Doolittle Raider monument outside the museum. Museum officials estimated 10,000 people turned out for Veterans Day weekend events honoring the 1942 mission credited with rallying American morale and throwing the Japanese off balance.

Acting Air Force Secretary Eric Fanning said America was at a low point, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other Axis successes, before “these 80 men who showed the nation that we were nowhere near defeat.”

“It was what you do … over time, we’ve been told what effect our raid had on the war and the morale of the people,” Saylor said in an interview. Thatcher said that during the war, the raid seemed like “one of many bombing missions.”

After Thomas Griffin died in February at age 96, the survivors decided at the 71st anniversary reunion in April in Fort Walton, Beach, Fla., that it would be their last and that they would gather this autumn for one last toast together instead of waiting, as had been the original plan, for the last two survivors to make the toast.