The Extraordinary Life of Jimmy Doolittle

[Music] welcome to Peninsula seniors out and about today we're at the Western Museum of Flight and Torrance for one of their celebrity lectures let's go see what Cindy has for us today now every month we join together to share our reverence for the historical and technological triumphs of the world of Aeros space and every month we seem to be blessed with the willingness of people who possess in their memory the most significant achievements of the human imagination and spirit in the development of these magnificent Technologies today we are especially privileged to have as our special guest someone who has both witnessed and lived through a very significant episode in the technological history and she's had the foresight and vision to record observations and memories and is generously willing to share them with us ladies and gentlemen Janna D little [Applause] hops first of all thank you so very much for inviting me here it is always an honor to speak with groups of of people interested Ed in aviation and especially to the veterans in the year 2000 the historian and author cie glines passed me a copy of the original script to the movie to the movie Pearl Harbor and in that original script the character dittle had been portrayed as not so bright foulmouthed not very honorable person and I'm going to start out with the disclaimer right off the bat because we did get a hold of Disney and Disney worked with us to clean up the portrayal of of doitt but in that process we learned a couple of things the first thing we learned was that once someone passes away they become a part of public domain and there's absolutely no way to protect them you can write or portray them in any way you want but even more disturbing we learned that the kids today that are writing the TV scripts and the movies and the books really don't have a clue about our history and they didn't know who dittle was so I began a a project that was very dear to my heart I wanted to protect my grandparents and I wanted to put their image back out there as the people that I knew not just my grandfather but also my grandmother shortly after the book came out I had the opportunity to visit at different groups and to speak about dittle and who he was and something happened during those meetings I began to meet veterans I began to meet people and hear their stories and what began a long time ago as an effort to protect my family grew into something that I think is much more important and when I speak there's something I want back from you and I'm going to hit that at at the very end but what began as as a an effort to protect my grandparents moved into a desire to collect history so that said who's dittle and why would I care about protecting his memory my grandfather was born in Alam California in 1896 shortly after he was born his father took off for Gnome Alaska and in 1900 my great-grandmother took my grandfather Jimmy up to gnome now this is a picture of my grandfather when he was a little girl and you can imagine having ringlets like that and being a little kind tiny fellow and gnome had its drawbacks and the first thing of three things that really impacted his life was the fact that Jimmy dittle was kind of the target of bullies when he first got up there well it didn't take him very long to learn how to protect himself with his fist in fact he became so good at protecting himself with his fist or fighting that eventually anybody who wanted to join that group of boys in Gnome had to fight quite do little and they rarely beat him a second thing that happened during that time was that Jimmy spent all those long dark days in a gymnasium doing gymnastics tumbling that kind of stuff that carried throughout his life and a third thing that really impacted who Jimmy dittle became was anybody in here a school teacher okay we School teachers we've got this imaginary line we draw right and there's always that kid that comes up and puts both big toes right on the line they never quite cross it but they push it a little bit well Jimmy was that kind of kid he was a little bit honory and one day he drew a picture of the principal and it it wasn't a particularly flattering picture of the principal and he got caught and his punishment was he had to write on the bulletin board 25 times Jimmy dittle is the smallest boy in school and he told me he didn't know if it was the very first time he had to write that or the 25th time but he decided that he was never going to let his height his stature stop him from doing the things he wanted to do in his life well by by 1908 his mom Rosa had had enough of gnome and the and the rustic life up there she also felt that Jimmy was not getting the education that he should get while attending School up in in Alaska so she moved down to uh Los Angeles Frank her husband came down to visit one time but basically he stayed up in in Alaska and Jimmy and Rosa moved back to Los Angeles and he attended Manual Arts High School well during that time at Manual Arts those three things that went on in Gnome continued to go on he was on the tumbling team and the pyramid team and he was a gymnast in high school he also so still fought did that fighting thing only one of his school teachers had seen him in a street ball braw and pulled him aside and said you know Jimmy if you keep your head you could be a really good boxer so during High School Jimmy boxed professionally under the name of Jimmy Pierce and he also yeah he was a little bit of a a character you know he he was a straight sea student and and a little bit honory but something very important happened to him when he was in Gnome he meant to young lady by the name of Josephine Elsie Daniels now Joe she went by the name Joe was a straight A student she was the Secretary of her class she had a photographic memory and she came from a family that had plans for her to marry very well well this do little kid wasn't what they had in mind and when my grandfather proposed to my grandmother in high school my grandmother looked at him and she said Jimmy my mother would never approve and he looked and he said I'm not going to marry your mother her family was very opposed to any kind of Union be between them and so her uncle her Uncle Joe offered to send her to law school now my grandmother was brilliant she she truly was an amazingly bright lady and she could easily have attended law school and then practice law in his firm in Los Angeles but Jimmy didn't want want to marry a lawyer and Joe didn't want to marry a boxer so they made a bargain in high school that I personally think affected the course of history at least a little bit because Joe gave up law and Jimmy quit boxing professionally he boxed under you know under conditions during college but he never boxed again in a professional ring they decided to marry but Jimmy wanted to have enough money to live to you know live that kind of life so he went up back up to Alaska and he was going to pick up enough gold off the beaches so that they could live well well by 1914 there wasn't gold laying around on the beaches in fact even panning gold turned out to be not so profitable and he spent that summer building houses with his father he built two houses with his dad who was a carpenter by trade and he ate a tremendous amount of salmon and decided that this wasn't going to be the kind of of life he wanted to live he knew that he had to get an education and he knew that to do that to do the things he wanted to do which was to travel and to build things that he would have to come back and go to school so he snowed away on a ship and he came back down to Los Angeles and he attended Manual Arts or he attended Los Angeles Community College he spent two years at Community College and then he transferred up to UC Berkeley where he studied mining Engineering in 1917 after his junior year of college the United States became involved in World War I Jimmy resigned from school and enlisted in the Army signal Corps as a flying Cadet he stayed up in San Francisco for his ground school and then on the way back down to San Diego where he was going to do his flight school he stopped and he married my grandmother now they got married they actually eloped because she was forbidden to marry him her father said he would never amount to anything so so they couldn't marry they eloped on Christmas Eve 1917 Jimmy hadn't received his first paycheck so he had no money at all so my grandmother paid for the marriage license and they went to City Hall and they were married by a County Clerk and then on the way out there was this woman who was standing on the the courthouse steps and she's a little afraid around the edges and my grandmother walked up to her and she took 50 cents out of her purse and she pressed it in this woman's hands and my grandfather looked at her and he goes Joe we don't have $20 between us and she said sh Jimmy this will bring us luck well I don't know if that brought them luck but I can guarantee you that was the kind of person that my grandmother was her very nature was to do the right thing or the kind thing and she never stopped to think about it she was probably one of the kindest biggest hearted people I've ever known Jimmy went down to ramfield and Rockwell field in San Diego where he was kept on as a flight instructor now he wasn't very happy about that he wanted to get into the freay over in Europe but they decided to keep him here as an instructor and Jimmy did what he always did he pushed himself to be the very best he could possibly be and perhaps that time spent as a flight instructor was what made him the pilot he was because he flew under conditions that no one else could fly under simply because he spent as much time as possible in the cockpit and he flew whenever he could now it was during that time period that he set the first record and that's the record I'm not really supposed to talk about anybody here been officer of the day well H Jimmy held the record for officer of the day during that time period down at ream and Rockwell you see um I told you he did tumbling right right well he used to like to do that on the wing of an airplane he and John mccullick would take off in a Jenny and go up and and go out of side of the the field and then Granddad would climb out on the wing of the airplane and one day they'd gone out and had a had a pretty good time and John was trying to get him back in the cockpit but Jimmy wasn't getting in the cockpit he decided to sit Between the Wheels of the uh of the airplane when they landed well they were low on fuel and they needed to land and John was not happy Jimmy was happy because he won $5 but what neither of them knew was that particular day at the field there was this filmmaker there this guy by the name of Cecil B demill and he was friends with the villain in the story because there has to be a villain right and the villain was Colonel Burwell the the base commander and so deil was showing Burwell the the clips from the day the rushes from the day and here's this airplane that lands with someone sitting between the wheels and Burwell throws open his office door and he yells ground do little they look at him and they de looks at him he says how do you know it's doitt little you can't see his face Burwell goes nobody else is that stupid well he did offer something to the service though they did recognize something beyond that little honory streak of his and they decided to send him to school the first school that they sent sent him to was mechanics he was in hog heaven because he got to take airplanes apart and put them back together and that was right up his alley after the mechanic school they decided to send him to engineering school which was kind of his dream you see as a pilot he knew what he wanted to make an airplane do and as a budding engineer he began to learn what was physically possible with an air plan he was kind of an odd duck back in those days because you had engineers and let's face it Engineers are a little straight laced right and you had pilots and everybody knows Pilots are a little crazy so he married those two Fields kind of early in in the history of Aviation well based on those two years of education the University of California Berkeley gave him his Bachelor of Science and he was offered a program which we still offer in the air force today called the affet program he was offered two years to make to earn his Masters at MIT well in that first year Jimmy earned his Masters in that second year he earned his Doctorate of science it was the first Doctorate of Science in Aeronautical Engineering ever issued by MIT now my granny you know she didn't have very much to do during those years because cuz she only had an infant and a toddler and we all know that an infant and a toddler doesn't keep you busy right and they lived in a little tiny apartment so granny would Corral these two rambunctious boys all day and then when Granddad came home from school and the boys were down to bed she would type up all of his class notes she typed up his thesis she typed up his his Doctorate and all of those notes that she made and quizzed him on on those notes became the very first textbook that MIT used in a Aeronautical Engineering so he was pretty pretty sure that she earned that education as much as he did now this is the first record that I'm allowed to talk about this is 1922 and he set the First Coast to Coast record in under 24 hours but this isn't the day he did it you see this is the same airplane and the same Beach and when he took off on that day or he did the takeoff run down the the packed sand he hit a pocket of soft sand and he flipped the airplane into the water as he climbed out of the airplane and sort of waited to shore a woman came up to him she said Jimmy are you okay and he said I'm fine but my feelings aren't what he learned that day was never to publicize a record attempt unless he knew exactly what he was doing and that he could accomplish it a week later same Beach which is Pao Beach Florida same airplane patched up a little bit and two mechanics he took off landed in Texas took off again and ended up in in San Diego California in 1925 he won his first air race now any navy Boys in here okay I'm going to try to behave the Schneider cup is an international sea plane race and the country that wins it keeps the trophy in that country Granddad not only beat out the international competition which was pretty cool because up until a few few weeks before that he'd never flown a sea plane he'd never raced a sea plane and he'd never landed a sea plane so he didn't have very long to train but he beat out the international competition and he beat out the three Navy competitors and boy did they give him a lot of grief over that you see during these years between the wars those few aviators that were kept in the service had a really tough job they had to make flying look fun so he had to go around and set records and be in airplane races and you know was pretty tough in 1927 he accomplished what was called the first outside Loop now for those of you who don't know what an outside Loop is it's level flight followed by a steep dive inverted flight and then a steep climb it's a loop in which the Pilot's head is on the outside at all times and what was so dangerous about my granddad said never drink Pisco sours you see there's this community in aviation that bridges any any national boundaries you know people in aviation whether they're Pilots or mechanics or or Navigators they have this common Bond and and all these guys were around standing around the Officer's Club in Santiago Chile and they were drinking Pisco Sour and they were talking about this movie actor named Douglas Fairbanks and you see Douglas Fairbanks was very very popular and very famous for his swashbuckling and Granddad looked at these people and he said any American boy can do that well they wanted proof so Granddad handed his drink to Boyd Sherman and he did a handstand and he walked across the room and he did a few flips you know he impressed him a little bit with his tumbling ability and they cheered him they thought that was pretty cool but then one of them said you know Jimmy that's really nice but Douglas Fairbanks does it on the window sill Granddad said no problem so he climbed out on the window sill and he did a oneand plant he he could stand on one hand and extend his body parallel to the ground so he climbed on the window sill and he planted his hand and he extended his body over the courtyard and the window sill gave way well a good gymnast will land on his feet right and and he landed on his feet two stories down he broke both of his ankles he was taken to the hospital and um if I had to pick one word if I could only pick one word to describe my grandfather that word would be integrity and he was laying there with casts on both of his legs and he was feeling pretty down you know he'd he thought about his co-workers you know there wasn't another pilot in that in his unit that wouldn't have wanted to go down to South America and fly the Curtis Hawk and he was thinking about his commanders and the opportunity he'd been given and the fact that he was letting them down and he thought about the people from Curtis Wright who were counting on him to fly in the exhibition because they had a contract resting on it so he did what I am certain everyone you in this room would do he had Boyd bring a hacksaw over and they cut the cast down and then he rigged up a clip on the bottom of the cast so he could clip his feet to the Rudders and he went out to the Airfield and he took the plane up now a snap roll puts a lot of pressure on those cast so when he was practicing snap rolls he could hear those cast crumble so he went back to the hotel and he soaked the cast off and he went back to the hospital to get new ones and they took one look at him and they said crazy American go home well his um mechanic Boyd found a gentleman a German fellow in Santiago who could build uh artificial limbs so using corset stays which we know are elements of torture they use on women and uh and Plastics or or whatever they built a cast for Granddad that would fit inside his boots he put Clips on his boots and he flew in that competition he did win the contract for Curtis right and then he climbed back in that airplane and without a parachute because he wasn't going to get his feet free he flew over the Andes into Bolivia well the guys in Bolivia who didn't like the guys in Chile thought he was a spy so he left R quickly and came back to the United States when he got back to the United States they discovered that his ankles hadn't healed correctly imagine that in fact his ankles never healed correctly he had trouble with them the rest of his life but he spent about 6 months recovering from those injuries during that 6 months he began to think about the outside Loop and as soon as he could get up in an airplane he began to push that airplane a little further and further every single time until he did an outside Loop Loop he would land he'd check check the the stress on the airplane now he had an advantage because his master's work was in the stress on airplanes but he did the outside Loop for himself he did the outside Loop for some friends and then he just happened to do the outside Loop for the Press that's just one of the airplanes Granddad broke he broke a lot of them in his career starting with the first one that he built in high school but the thing about this particular plane he didn't have to crashed that plane except for the fact that he was fogged out and he was over in new Yark New Jersey he didn't have enough gas to search for an Airfield and the the cloud cover was so thick that as soon as he saw a hole in the cloud cover and he saw some trees he took that airplane down and wrapped it around a tree so that he wouldn't go into somebody's home the biggest problem with Aviation back at this particular time period was the fact that they couldn't fly in any kind of weather there were no instruments so a gentleman by the name of Harry Guggenheim decided to put together something called the full flight laboratory and the goal of the full flight laboratory was to develop instruments so that you could fly in any kind of weather now I asked my grandfather what he felt was his most important contribution and he said hands down the first blind flight you see the day that they did that flight he sat in the cockpit and he had it covered by a canopy and Ben Kingsley sat in that front cockpit with his hands over his head and Granddad took off flew a prescribed course and landed without ever being able to to see the ground well the truth was that wasn't the first time he did it he flew that earlier that morning in very dense fog with fog with no one else in the in the airplane with him and he flew it a number of times before they ever called out googan time and the Press but the night of that first blind flight my grandparents had a party at their home and to me that party was the epitome of who the Doolittles were you see if you had fame or money or notoriety or whatever you left it on the doorstep before you ever crossed into their home when you walked into their home you would meet people people generally associated with Aviation some very wellknown some not so wellknown but a completely Level Playing Field as a kid I was extraordinarily fortunate to meet amazing people a few of them happened to be famous but for the most part there was this Joy this interest this liveliness that belonged to Aviation that permeated their home my grandmother took out a tablecloth that night and and she had everybody sign it and then they embroidered those names in black silk thread that tablecloth became the who's who of Aviation it is in a drawer at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and the curator and I have this discussion every time I go there because it's not on display The Only Name on that tablecloth that wasn't signed at their dining table was Orville Wright although he had eaten with them during the 30s Jimmy became a fairly well-known racing pilot he flew in the bendex race in the um super solution he and Maddie Lloyd had developed This Plane he won the bendex by flying from Burbank to Cleveland he landed to make sure he was in there first climbed back in that airplane and flew on to New York New Jersey setting the second Coast to Coast record this particular record was 11 hours and 11 minutes so he broke the 12-hour barrier they decided that they could make the super solution a lot faster if they gave her retractable landing gear so what they did was they modified this the super solution gave her retractable landing gear and Granddad took her up for the test flight well he could click that landing gear about three clicks up but he couldn't get it back down and he couldn't get it the rest of the way up so he flew around until he was low enough on fuel that she wouldn't EXP explode on impact and he took her in on her belly of course that ripped her up Beyond use and there was no way that he could fly in the Thompson trophy race well there were a couple of guys some brothers in Springfield Massachusetts that built a little airplane called the GB now Granddad had broken his airplane but the Granville Brothers had a habit of breaking Pilots but they contact Ed Jimmy he is as I said was one of the one of the better known Pilots at the time and they offered to let him fly the GB well I always thought that was the cutest plane he flew he went up to Springfield and he climbed in that airplane and he used to have a signature that he'd do over an Airfield well when he got in the GB he didn't do his signature he flew straight to Springfield and he landed and the next day he took her up as high as he could and practice a pylon turn she did a double snap roll on him if he'd been at a normal height for an air race he he wouldn't have made it he said flying the GB was like taking a pencil lead Point down and trying to balance it on your finger he used to call her the little airplane that liked to fly upside down and backwards well he won the Thompson trophy by flying almost in a circle he didn't do the tight pylon turns that the other Pilots were doing but it was his last air race because you see Lloyd Bales a friend of theirs had been killed in a GB the preceding December in a fiery crash that had been caught on film and the Press was so convinced that Jimmy dittle was going to crash and burn that they kept a camera on my grandmother and they kept a camera on my uncle and they kept a camera on my dad because they wanted to record the family's reaction when Jimmy crashed my grandfather was so angry that the Press had followed his family that his comment to the Press was Mrs dittle has made up our minds but the truth is Joe dittle never made up Jimmy's mind her greatest strength was the fact that she could give him this nest in which to fly from and never hold him so tight he couldn't do the things he wanted or needed to do it was his decision to stop Flying his comment was or to stop racing he had done as much for air racing as he thought he could and he felt very strongly that air racing had done as much for Aviation as it could and that was the last closed circuit race he ever flew in he did however continue to set records Coast to Coast passenger airplanes City to city and my grandmother was always his passenger now I have to back up for a second because in 1930 Jimmy left active service he was still a first lieutenant 14 years as a first lieutenant and he went with Shell Oil you see he had a wife two growing boys he was supporting his mother and he was supporting his in-laws who never forgave their daughter for marrying him so shell offered him a better paycheck his job was the same as it was in the air Army airp he had to go around and make flying airplanes look fun but he also stayed in the reserves while flying for Shell he made a number of trips over to Europe on the third trip over in 1939 Jimmy discovered that the climate of Germany had changed dramatically he was very close friends with a gentleman by the name of erns judet now erns was probably one of the best Pilots Germany ever produced and they were very close friends but when he went over in 1939 that friendship was strained by politics he was no longer welcome in the airplane factories and he found a a certain climate in the country that he knew was going to affect the United States unlike Charles Lindberg Jimmy came back to the United States he went straight to the office of half Arnold and he told General Arnold there is no way that the United States can avoid the conflict in Europe he said the children D March through the streets with swastikas in Jack Boots and he said we will be drawn in he offered to resign his his employment with shell and general Arnold said I can't take you until July in July of 1940 my grandfather was back in uniform and his job was to retool the automotive industry into an aviation or a war machine December 7th 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and sank a good portion of our Pacific Fleet less than a week later the president held a meeting in his in the white house with his Chiefs of Staff and he said we need to retaliate against the nation of Japan Jimmy dittle is best known for that retaliatory strike but there are some Mists that surround the dittle raid that I'd like to dispel for a second the first is that it was his idea it's not true a Navy fellow by the name of uh Captain low a Submariner came up with the idea for the raid when he was flying over an Airfield in which there was the outline of an aircraft carrier where they trained the naval pilots and as his shadow passed over the air the this aircraft carrier he wondered if it wasn't possible to take a landbased bomber off an aircraft carrier he made this suggestion it made its way up to Admiral King Admiral King contacted Hap Arnold General Arnold called my grandfather in and said Jimmy can it be done and Granddad came up with the B25 which happened to be the exact same plane that the Navy had come up with the second myth that surrounds the ditt raid is that it was a suicide mission it wasn't a suicide mission they put 16 bombers landbased bombers on an aircraft carrier the plan was to take off bomb Japan land in China and turn those planes over to the Chinese for for defense of the Pacific what changed it was the fact that they were spotted 250 miles closer to the shore or or further off the coast of Japan than they had planned the men were given an option they had extra Crews on board anybody who wanted out could get out not a single man wanted out they took oil cans from the kitchen because Jerry cans were too heavy they filled those 10 cans per per plane with fuel and they threw them in the back of those planes now the planes had been modified for this Mission you see they had been stripped down of all excess weight they even stripped the the tail gun out and the tail gun that you see on the b2s are two black broomsticks so that the enemy would think maybe we still head guns but then they turned around and they put four 500 lb bombs they took a rubber bladder and filled the fuselage of those airplanes with gasoline they took an additional bladder and placed it inside the plane and when those planes took off with all that fuel and those bombs and five men they weighed more than a fully loaded B25 they took off in seas that had 30 foot swells every one of the planes made the coast of Japan most of them hit their their original targets and then 15 of the 16 planes headed for China the Japanese believed that the kamakazi winds would protect them from Attack those kamakazi winds created Tailwinds that pushed our airplanes all the way way to the coast of Japan or all the way to the coast of China One airplane flew to Russia now there's a controversy that surrounds that little airplane because the official story is there was not enough fuel the carburetor was burning too rich and there was no way they could reach China it just so happens that the pilot of that plane ski York and the co-pilot of that plane Bob Emmons spoke Russian and ended up in Air Force or Army aircore intelligence we'll never know if they were sent there or not this poor quality picture is a picture of my grandfather sitting on the wing of his B25 now this airplane is in pieces on the mountain side in China the the picture was taken by his co-pilot or his uh crew chief Paul Leonard and granddad's about as low as he could possibly be at this point you see he knew where his men were and that was it this was his first mission all 80 men this was their first mission and he's thinking he doesn't have a plane left and he has no clue where his men are and Paul said to him he said you know boss they're going to make you a general Granddad looked at him and he said they're going to take my airplane away and Paul said you know boss they're going to give you the Congressional Medal of Honor and Granddad kind of chuckled and shook his head and he Saidi be lucky to get a paid vacation in lenworth and then Paul said to him and Granddad said this was the highest compliment he'd ever received Paul said to him you know boss they're going to give you another airplane and when they do I want to fly with you well three men died as a direct result of of the raid two of them drowned when they ditched off the coast of of China one of them was killed when he bailed out eight men were captured by the Japanese of those eight men three were executed by firing squad and one of them they starved to death in fact if you ever want to read an amazing book about human about American strength under under these conditions CV Gins wrote the book four came home and it tells the story of those eight Raiders who were captured and the four that survived but Paul was right Granddad was promoted to General before he left China and he stayed in China until he found out as much as he could about his men he was also given the Congressional Medal of Honor he felt very strongly that he had not earned that medal and he was very vocal with both General Arnold and General Marshall he said it cheapens the medal to give it to someone like me for a mission like this and they said we outrank you you get it well he told the president when he received the medal I accept this on behalf of all of my men and anyone who knew my grandfather anyone who knows any of the Raiders anyone who knows anyone in the families knows that the medal that sits at the University of Texas in the Dallas archives belongs ons to every single one of those Raiders it's not Jimmy's medal it's his boys Paul also flew with my grandfather he went over to North Africa and Paul was killed protecting their airplane my grandfather used to say that the hardest job he ever had in the Air Corp was to convince General Eisenhower that he wanted do little on his staff you see very very few people knew how Highly Educated Jimmy dittle was in fact today very few people knew that he had a doctorate of Science in Aeronautical Engineering he was just pretty much viewed as a hot dog who would fly under any conditions well when offered to Eisenhower by by Arnold Eisenhower said no I don't want dittle I want acre Frank or Spats in that order and Arnold said you know you can have anybody you want but we think you should take Doolittle and they outranked him so Jimmy became the first Commander he formed and commanded the 12th Air Force in North Africa well he must have done something right because when they decided to go into the Mediterranean Jimmy dittle formed and commanded the 15th Air Force and then one day Eisenhower was looking for him couldn't find him anywhere and finally somebody said well dittles up in a Spitfire so Eisenhower got on his little walkie-talkie thing his little radio thing he said Jimmy I'm going to give you a choice you can land and I'll give you the Eighth Air Force or you can stay up there and I'll bust you back to Lieutenant you can fly Spitfires he landed go figure but he had very very mixed emotions about taking command of the Eighth Air Force because Ira acre was a close friend of his and Ira formed the eth Air Force and Ira developed it into the fighting force that it it became and all of the sudden we were at a point where we were going to release the Eighth Air Force on Germany and Ira got kicked upstairs so personally I was very gratified to attend an eth air force uh reunion in Michigan a few years ago and talked to the boys who flew with my grandfather and and through them I heard stories of how granddad's thumb prints on the Eighth Air Force changed it and made it an even stronger Air Force he also he during that time period he made some decisions which anybody in here fly for him I usually have a pilot who was uh who flew for him and and he changed the number of missions for the bombers it used to be 25 he raised it to 30 and and then to 35 and I always meet the guy that was on 24 or 29 the reason he changed it was he discovered that along about 20 missions those guys were really good and they knew what they were doing more men were coming home more planes were coming home the rookies were coming home because the teams were or the the crews were more skilled the second thing he did that was a little controversial was he went to The Fighter Group and there was a sign on the wall that said the mission of the fighters is to protect the bombers he said get that sign down and put a sign up that says the mission of the fighters is to take out the LOF wafa wherever they find him now ADF Galan the German Ace was visiting the house shortly before my grandfather passed away and he felt very strongly that releasing our Fighters ended the loffa because no longer did they have to stay in close support of the of the bombers they could go out and take out the enemy in the air on the ground wherever and he felt that was a great impact the other change that Granddad made and he actually made it when with the 12th Air Force and it got him a little trouble with the 12th Air Force he didn't believe that the Air Force was a was a tactical tool he thought it was strategic like Billy Mitchell he felt that the Air Force's job was to go and take out the enemy not just to protect um in the 12th Air Force he actually had the 12th Air Force taken away from him and then he was given the Strategic Wing when it came to the 15th Air Force he took it strategic and when it came to the eighth he also took it strategic he was a different kind of Commander my grandfather liked to be with his troops in the early days of commanding The Eighth Air Force it was not at all uncommon for him to show up at Airfield with a with a parachute on his back and Type Tap somebody on the shoulder and offered to fly in their place anybody a pilot anybody but a pilot he would never take a pilot's position he wanted to see what the troops were going through he wanted to see how they performed together now once he was briefed in Ultra he was forbidden to fly with the cruise and his letters to my grandmother you can feel the yearning of of him sitting there waiting for his Heavies to come home he wanted to be on the missions with with his boys he had the ability to laugh at himself because he would wait for those Heavies to come home and he tells his story one time of going out to the Airfield and a B7 had landed and it was shot to pieces and the tail was just shot shot up and he walked up to the tail Gunner and he said were you in there and the tail Gunner looked at him he said you're damn right I was and his buddy you know elbows him he says that's too little and as Granddad turns to walk away he could hear the guy say where the hell he think I was out having a ham sandwich Granddad figured it was a pretty stupid question I received a letter from a gentleman who said you know I knew your grand I met your grandfather in okanawa well when the war ended in Europe Granddad took the eigh a force over to okanawa and they called it Camp mud because all they had was tents and mud and they had this mess hul this big tent and it was officers and enlisted personnel you ate together you then came outside and there was a barrel outside the tent door and a brush and you wash your mes kit and this guy said you know I was washing my mes kit and I turned to hand the brush to the man waiting behind me he said it was your granddad he said Harry was three stars on his shoulder standing in line waiting his turn to wash his own mess kit that was Granddad he was very approachable he was a gentleman and he was someone who led by example during those years my grandmother kept herself rather busy you see my grandmother's boys were all involved in some way or other my grandfather basically left for the do little raid or to train for the doitt raid and didn't come come home until after the signing of the peace treaty with Japan my uncle was a fighter pilot originally stationed in the Pacific and then sent over to the ninth Air Force in England and my father was at West Point well granny wasn't somebody who sat around and felt sorry for herself she was the kind of person who stayed very busy and her Focus was on the women left here while the men were gone you see she visited the factories and she talked to the women who were working in the factories she worked on blood drives she worked on Bond drives she had a a newspaper column that came out every week that focused on the women and how they could support the war effort and to support them she had a Radio Pro program called the Broadway matina again focusing on the women but that last year of the war my grandfather's letters to my grandmother went to Pauling New York and to a Convalescent Hospital now we all knew that my grandmother had had breast cancer we all knew that she'd had a myectomy it wasn't a secret it just wasn't something we discussed the only thing I knew about it was that my grandmother had the surgery when my grandfather was out of the country and he couldn't come back well I can't prove it but I started to begin to wonder if maybe my grandmother's surgery wasn't that last year of the war when my grandfather's letters would say please Joe take care of yourself we're a team you know take care of yourself well my grandmother when she talks about that last year of the war she talks about the kids coming back with shell shock she took classes in counseling and her Focus was on what the boys coming home were going through and I thought how typical that would be of my grandmother to go through some personal tragedy or Challenge and yet focus on other people that was truly my grandmother my grandfather was given a fourth star he was also given the presidential medal of freedom he is the only person to have ever received both the Congressional Medal of Honor and the presidential medal of freedom in 1984 my grandmother suffered a stroke that robbed her of the ability to speak robbed her of the ability to walk my grandmother was the kind of person who lived by this motto that said if I can't give a lift to someone every day of my life then I have no purpose and she did that she wrote between 25 and 50 notes a day to the people she called her shut-ins people who'd lost someone people who were alone or ill in fact one of the doitt Raiders um Davey Jones said when his wife Anita was suffering from breast cancer my grandmother wrote her every single day for six months she never missed a day well when my grandmother suffered her stroke my grandfather who really was on the road a good 3/4 of the time quit traveling he sat by her side if she couldn't go with him he wouldn't go I knew that if I wanted to see my grandfather he'd be sitting right next to my grand mother they holding her hand they lived up in Carmel I lived down here in in um Torrance at the time and I would drive up at least once maybe twice a month to spend time with my granny and my granddad you know he he was aware of the bond between us and so when I would come he would fre frequently take my daughters and and the three of them would disappear so I could have some time alone with with her and there was one day in particular where they were gone a little too long and and my grandfather was 91 at the time so I was a little concerned and so I told my grandmother goodbye and I headed out out around the perimeter of Carmel Valley Manor where they lived and I was looking for the three of them and pretty soon I saw them coming down the hill and uh both of my girls were using canes and my grandfather was walking without any kind of support and as as they approached the girls were very excited and I found out that they had been playing school and that Granddad was the the pupil and the girls were the teachers and that at 91 he hadn't changed from that kid he was back in Gnome when we lost him I asked my daughters I said what do you remember most about Granddad and they said that he was fun and that they that he made them laugh now my grandmother passed away on Christmas Eve on their 71st wedding anniversary my grandfather was at her side and shortly after that my parents built a wing on their home in Pebble Beach and my grandfather had his own quarters but he was connected to my parents by a glass Hall those last years of his life were warm and wonderful years he was in very good health and he was only ill for about 2 weeks from the time he had a stroke until the time he died was only two weeks and my parents kept him at home with nursing Around the Clock I'd like to conclude today with a quote from my grandfather's autobiography in this book he wrote in my nine plus decades I've formed some views about life and living I have concluded that we were all put on this Earth for a purpose that purpose is to make it within our capabilities a better place in which to live we can do this by painting a picture building a bridge writing a poem protecting the environment combating Prejudice and Injustice and in a thousand other ways the criteria is this if a man leaves this Earth a better place than he found it then his life has been worthwhile I don't think there's any question that my grandparents lived worthwhile lives and as I look around this room there isn't any question that the people filling these seats have lived worthwhile lives and now I'm going to tell you why I do what I do if you do not record your history and it doesn't matter if it's in a letter to your grandchildren that tell them what your life was like or you go out to some place like Plains of fame or or here and you do an oral history that is logged with the uh Congressional or the Library of Congress or you write it in a manuscript form that you publish yourself or have published it's our history it's what it cost to be the nation we are and I'm not just talking to you guys because the women did as much to make this country the country that it is today and if we don't have it recorded if you don't take the time to do it it is eventually lost and then we can't say anything to Hollywood or to kids writing books or to people making TV shows because if it's not there for them to research then we can't blame them for not knowing it what started out as a crusade to protect the do little name I think is much more important it's a crusade to let our children and grandchildren know what it cost for this nation to be the the nation it is today thank [Applause] [Music] you I'm so grateful to be here today because I went to the douu reunion and Monteray when your grandfather was 90 years old and I had all of the Dual little Raiders sign this most of them are there and I understand there are very few of them are left around at this time that's true there are only nine that are surviving and only really three of them that can do much in the way of traveling uh I see you got most of them some of them we just lost in the last couple years the signatures you have it's a beautiful beautiful print another picture I brought that I'd like to share with you uh as your grandfather and Adolf Goan it's interesting because Adolf visited my grandfather shortly before he passed away and it was his comment that some of the decisions that Granddad made ended the LOF Offa I noticed there's a quote on the back in 1984 General Adolf Gan was asked which Allied Air Force Commander do you believe helped defeat Germany during the war Gand lowered his glass thought for a second and said that would be James dittle he caused me many headaches during the war but I do like him very much today from so worthy an opponent there can be no higher praise one of the questions I'm frequently Asked is about the doitt Raiders and the toast that they share at every one of the reunions the City of Tucson in 1950 I believe presented the Raiders with 80 silver goblets with the Raiders names right side up and upside down now every year the Raiders drink a toast to the those who have gone before and to each other and every year those goblets are turned upside down there's a bottle of cavasier from 1896 that sits in the middle of all those goblets that bottle will be shared by the last two two surviving Raiders and unfortunately with the losses that we've had recently I'm hoping that it's a lot further away than I'm afraid it is thank [Applause] you thank you for for watching Peninsula seniors out and about here at the Western Museum of Flight and Torrance I'm Betty Wheaton I'll see you next [Music] time [Music]

Channel: PeninsulaSrsVideos

Views: 44,093

Keywords: WWII, veteran, Doolittle Raid (Event), Betty Wheaton, Medal Of Honor (Award Category), Aviation, Peninsula Seniors, Western Museum Of Flight (Building), Air Racing, World War II (Event), bomber, Fighter Aircraft (Aircraft Type), Adolf Galland, Nazi Germany (Country), Pearl Harbor, Presidential Medal Of Freedom (Award Category), B-17, B-24, B-25

Id: 6tkr3UaIkDk

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Mon May 26 2014