At 101 years old, Dayton native Richard E. Cole is the last Doolittle Raider standing.
On Monday and Tuesday, he’s set for a homecoming of sorts to mark the 75th anniversary of the audacious raid commemorated in ceremonies and a World War II era B-25 bomber flyover at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
On April 18, 1942, 80 Army Air Forces airmen climbed into 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers in groups of five to fly off deck of the USS Hornet and travel across hundreds of miles of ocean to bomb Japan.
Cole was co-pilot to the raid leader, then Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, a legendary record-setting aviator.
“There was a bit of scariness but we had trained for 45 days,” Cole said in part in a telephone interview last week from his Texas home. “We were supposed to light up Tokyo and do as much damage as possible.”
The raid that struck five cities caused little damage but raised American morale and forced the Japanese to bring troops home to protect the homeland.
The U.S. launched the carrier-based strike in retaliation for the Japanese Navy’s devastating surprise attack against the U.S. fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that killed more than 2,400.
Cole and World War II-era B-25s flying in across the nation will mark the anniversary raid in public and private ceremonies at the Air Force museum Monday and Tuesday.
“Seventy five years later, this event still captures the public imagination because it was daring, unprecedented, and important,” said Air Force museum Doug Lantry. “… The Doolittle Raid was a pivotal event for American morale and Japanese military thinking.”
Only one will standIn a decades-old tradition Tuesday, Cole will turn over one of two silver goblets still standing upright among 80 to mark the death of fellow Raider David J. Thatcher, a retired postal carrier who died of a stroke last June in his Montana home at age 94.
When a Raiders dies, a survivor has turned a goblet upside down with the name of fellow airman engraved on it.
“You truly feel sorry that you’re turning over the cup of a comrade but somehow something sneaks into your thoughts about it not being you,” Cole said.
Jeff Thatcher, son of David Thatcher, will travel to Dayton to witness the private ceremony.
“I’m sure it’s going to be a real emotional moment to me because of the significance of the actual act of turning over the goblet,” Thatcher, 61, of Little Rock, Ark., said in an interview with this newspaper.
He witnessed the last silver goblet ceremony in 2015.
“I was impressed by the solemnity of it and just the whole tradition really kind of washed over me,” said Thatcher, president of the Children of the Doolittle Raiders, Inc. “Of course, emotionally it didn’t hit me like I’m sure it will this year because my father was there and he participated.”