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Last Doolittle Raiders make final toast
- gadders 13y agoI can't help feeling that as these events "close down" and things like the death of Harry Patch [1] that it really is the End of an Era. I realise that phrase is completely overused but there will be a time during my lifetime when there are no WWII veterans alive, and a lot of knowledge will pass out of the world. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch
- pchristensen 13y agoI first heard about the Doolittle raid from the movie Pearl Harbor. Despite that movie's, ahem, flaws, it was an impressive story of fearlessness, ingenuity, and focus. Fast forward a decade, I visited the USS Hornet (http://www.uss-hornet.org/ http://www.uss-hornet.org/) in Alameda, CA, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that's now a museum, and found out that the Doolittle raid launched from the Hornet! (They also picked up and quarantined the Apollo 11 capsule and crew). Very, very worth a visit.
- tosseraccount 13y agoThere were two U.S.S. Hornets in WWII: CV-8 and CV-12 The Doolittle raid was launched from CV-8 a Yorktown class carrier. CV-8 was sunk at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands in 1942. The name was resurrected for CV-12 in 1943. CV-12 served until 1970.
- emp_zealoth 13y agoJust trying to imagine how it must have felt to be in one of the B-25's, just before the launch straight into the heart of an enemy - it boggles my mind
- sirkneeland 13y agoI am very glad we did. And yet I also hope we may never have to again.
- leokun 13y agoThose guys are and were courageous and competent and deserve recognition, but I have to ponder at making such a spectacle of celebrating people who dropped explosives on people, people who are now our allies. We are an incredibly militaristic society.
- mikeash 13y agoI think I support your sentiment in general, but in this particular case, the struggle against Imperial Japan was about as close to a storybook fight of good versus evil as we're likely to find, and I think celebrating those who put a stop to it is worthwhile.
- aaronem 13y agoIf you're looking for examples of "an incredibly militaristic society", you might want to start with, say, Prussia under Frederick the Great, or Imperial Japan circa 1942. Once you've familiarized yourself with at least those two, you'll be better equipped than you are now to recognize the risibility of using that phrase to describe the United States in 2013.
- rmason 13y agoIt totally amazes me that Hollywood has never remade the movie about Doolittle's Raiders. It has all the elements of a great movie: 1. A crazy idea by a White House staffer leads to the mission 2. Doolittle needs clearance by FDR to be allowed to fly 3. Doolittle's search for the best pilots leads him to recruit some total misfits 4. They're forced to launch early after being sighted by the Japanese picket boat 5. The raid over Tokyo so shocks the Japanese that it leads them to overreact to the threat, pull a carrier group back to defend the home island and the disaster of a decision by Admiral Yamamoto to attack Midway 6. Japan kills 250,000 Chinese civilians looking for the Raiders Its probably the best story about America's greatest generation in WWII yet is unknown to many young people. Here's some actual footage of the raid: https://archive.org/details/Doolittle_Raid_Launch_Footage_1942 https://archive.org/details/Doolittle_Raid_Launch_Footage_19...