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The Air Force Museum Foundation will sell 400 tickets for a 6 p.m. Saturday, April 18 ceremony honoring the Doolittle Raiders surprise bombing raid over Japan and the arrival of the Congressional Gold Medal at the museum. Tickets cost $45 and may be purchased beginning 9 a.m. Tuesday, March 24. For information, log onto www.airforcemuseum.com/doolittle.
A Congressional Gold Medal honoring the famed Doolittle Raiders will be flown to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force next month aboard a World War II-era bomber on the anniversary of the airmen’s bombing run over Japan on April 18, 1942.
Two of the three surviving Raiders — Dayton native and retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole and former Staff Sgt. David J. Thatcher — and dozens of family members of deceased members of the Army Air Force airmen will fill the museum on the historic anniversary, according to Tom Casey, long-time business manager for the non-profit Doolittle Raiders Association.
Cole will accept the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony and present it to the museum, Casey said.
“The Raiders had decided a long time ago when this award was finally presented it would immediately be turned over to the national museum,” Casey said.”We’re going to have as many people there (at the museum) as we’ve ever had.”
U.S. House and Senate leaders will award the medal — the nation’s highest civilian medal — in an April 15 ceremony in Washington, D.C., to honor the 80 men who flew B-25 Mitchell bombers off the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in a daring air raid on Tokyo and four other Japanese cities.
The Air Force museum will permanently display the medal. Three surviving Raiders and family members of the other 77 airmen will receive a bronze replica of the medals, Casey said.
The Congressional Gold Medal will be flown on a short ceremonial flight aboard a B-25 that morning from Dayton International Airport to Wright-Patterson, according to museum spokesman Rob Bardua.
In November 2013, three of the then four surviving Raiders made a final toast at the museum in an event that brought Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, the service branch's top general, to Wright-Patterson and captured worldwide media attention.
Since then, retired Lt. Col. Edward J. Saylor, who sipped cognac in the final toast with his compatriots, died in January at his home near Seattle. He was 94. A silver goblet with Saylor’s name inscribed on its side will be turned upside down in a private ceremony to signify his death, Casey said. Each of 80 goblets has a name of one of the Doolittle Raiders embellished on it. All of the goblets are displayed at the museum. Three will remain upright, representing each of the survivors.
“The museum is our home for the Doolittle Raiders,” said Casey, an honorary Raider from Sarasota, Florida. “That is our permanent home.”
Cole, 99, lives in Comfort, Texas, and Thatcher, 93, lives in Missoula, Montana. Survivor Robert L. Hite, 95, a retired lieutenant colonel, resides in Nashville, Tennessee.
Under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle, the Army pilots flew their medium bombers off the short flight deck of a Navy carrier more than 600 miles from Japan. After the 16 planes dropped bombs, one B-25 landed safely in the Soviet Union while the rest crashed-landed in the sea or crashed in China because they ran out of fuel.
“They’re very modest guys,” Casey said. “Jimmy Doolittle himself personally has really set the mold for each one of these guys. It was such a love affair between Doolittle and these 79 guys.
“Doolittle had another way of doing things,” he said. “He told them all right in the beginning not one of you will go out and sell this story for money. You were paid a job for the United States government and that’s it.”
Doolittle died in 1993. Cole was a co-pilot with Doolittle during the raid in bomber No. 1.
Days prior to the Raider event at the museum, the House and Senate will honor the Raiders on Capitol Hill.
Among those attending will be House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp.; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
It was unclear whether any of the survivors will attend the ceremony in Washington.
Although the raid did relatively little damage, it electrified Americans still battered after the bombing of Pearl Harbor nearly five months earlier. It forced the Japanese to keep more troops at home to defend the home island and helped shift the course of the war in the Pacific.
“This country got off its knees and started a whole new spirit and that was to win the war,” Casey said.
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