James
Doolittle
Born in Alameda CA, Dec 14, 1896. Died Sep 27, 1993.
James "Jimmie" Doolittle is today most famous for his
audacious B-25 bombing raid on Tokyo in the opening months
of America's entry into World War II, an attack featured in
the 2001 movie Pearl Harbour. But Doolittle's aviation
legacy is much greater than this military attack. Doolittle
was a true renaissance man of aviation, a daredevil aviator
and racing pilot, an aviation executive, a military
commander, a scientist, and a presidential advisor. He was
also an inspirational figure to many young people in the
early days of aviation.
James Harold
Doolittle was born in Alameda, California, on December 14,
1896. His father was a carpenter and set off to Alaska in
search of gold. Doolittle's mother brought Jimmie with her
to join his father in Nome, Alaska, when he was
three-and-a-half years old. When he was 11, he moved with
his mother to Los Angeles, California, where he developed an
interest in flying. He became a professional boxer and
entered the University of California's School of Mines in
1915. In 1917 he enlisted in the Army Signal Enlisted
Reserve Corps to train as a pilot and was soon promoted to
lieutenant. Doolittle served in the United States Army Air
Corps from 1917 until 1930, when he became a major in the
Army Air Corps Reserve, where he served for the next ten
years.
After he
learned to fly, Doolittle served as an instructor pilot and
began engaging in acrobatics. He started thinking of
breaking aviation records. In 1922 he made the first
cross-continental crossing in less than 24 hours, taking 21
hours and 19 minutes to fly in his De Havilland DH-4 plane
from Pablo Beach, Florida, to San Diego, California, with
only one refuelling stop.
In 1923
Doolittle enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) to obtain a master's degree and then a
Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering. When he received his
degrees in June of 1925, fewer than 100 people in the world
held comparable advanced degrees. In his doctoral
dissertation, "Wind Velocity Gradient and Its Effect on
Flying Characteristics," he combined laboratory data with
test flight data to determine that a pilot needed visual
aids or instruments to know the direction and speed of the
wind and the direction in which the plane was flying. His
dissertation countered the theory that many contemporary
pilots held that they could "know" this information
instinctually.
Over the next
several years Doolittle continued his flying exploits. In
1927 he was the first person to execute an outside loop,
where the cockpit (and pilot) remain on the outside of the
loop (previously thought to be a fatal manoeuvre because of
the stresses encountered). Carried out in a Curtiss fighter
at Wright Field in Ohio, Doolittle executed the dive from
10,000 feet (3,048 meters), reached 280 miles per hour (451
kilometres per hour), bottomed out upside down, then climbed
and completed the loop.
Flying a Curtiss P-1B Hawk biplane, Jimmy Doolittle performs
the first outside loop in 1927.
Doolittle was the first person to win all major aviation
racing trophies. He won the Schneider Trophy in 1925 for
flying a Curtiss Navy racer seaplane equipped with pontoons
the fastest it had ever been flown, averaging 232 miles per
hour (373 kilometers per hour). In 1931, after leaving the
military and going to work for Shell Oil Corporation, he won
the Bendix Trophy, flying from Burbank, California, to
Cleveland, Ohio, and establishing a new record with his
Laird "Super Solution." He crossed the country in 11 hours,
16 minutes, and 10 seconds, beating the record set earlier
that year by 1 hour and 8 minutes.
In 1932 he won
the Thompson Trophy race at Cleveland in a Granville Gee Bee
R-1 racer, averaging 252 miles per hour (406 miles per hour)
and established the world landplane speed record. In the
early 1930s, he also conducted tests for the Army.
His academic
credentials, combined with his aviation exploits and
military experience, enabled him to serve as a go-between
for scientists and aviators and military officers. He also
participated in numerous aviation design contests for
youngsters and inspired many of them to pursue careers in
aviation engineering. During this period, he worked with the
Guggenheim Flight Laboratory in developing instruments for
flight in poor weather. On September 24, 1929, he was the
first person to take off, fly and land an airplane entirely
by instruments. Also while at Shell, he urged the company to
greatly increase its ability to manufacture high-octane
aviation gas, which proved to be extremely important for
high performance airplane engines.
In 1940,
Doolittle returned to active duty as a major in the Army Air
Corps. He was quickly promoted to lieutenant colonel. Soon
after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941,
Doolittle hatched a bold and dangerous plan to launch Army
Air Corps B-25 twin-engine bombers from an aircraft carrier
to bomb Japan.
General Jimmy Doolittle in 1944. The series of Doolittle
raids on Tokyo in 1942 was a public vindication of his
belief that long
range bombing was going to be a decisive factor in the war.
On April 18, 1942, the aircraft carrier USS Hornet sailed
toward the Japanese coast. Doolittle's plan was to move to
within 450 miles (724 kilometres) of the coast, but a
radio-equipped Japanese fishing boat discovered the task
force, forcing Doolittle and his men to launch earlier than
planned. Shortly after noon, Tokyo time, Doolittle arrived
over Tokyo and dropped his bombs. The other planes followed
at staggered intervals and also dropped their bombs. Then
they all headed individually for China, but because they had
been forced to launch early, they were low on fuel when they
finally reached the mainland and were unable to find their
designated airfields. One plane landed in Vladivostok,
Russia, where its crew was arrested and held prisoner for 13
months. Four other planes crash-landed. The crews of the
other eleven planes all parachuted out. Of the 80 men on the
16 planes, three had died, four were badly injured, and
eight were captured by the Japanese, who later executed
three of them and starved a fourth to death. Roosevelt
promoted Doolittle from lieutenant colonel to brigadier
general, skipping the rank of colonel, and presented him
with the United States' highest military award, the
Congressional Medal of Honour. He also received the Silver
Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Doolittle was
soon promoted to major general and then lieutenant general.
He was the commanding general of the Twelfth Air Force in
North Africa, the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy, and then the
Eighth Air Force in England and then again on Okinawa.
After the war,
Doolittle returned to civilian life and became a vice
president at Shell Oil, where he served from 1946 until
1958. He left to become director of the Space Technology
Laboratories and then a director of TRW Inc. Doolittle also
served as a director at Shell Oil until 1967.
Although
Doolittle's Tokyo raid and his pre-war aviation exploits are
well known, what is less widely known is his post-war
service as an advisor to the Air Force, intelligence
agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and
presidents. From 1955 until 1958 he served as Chairman of
the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), advising the
U.S. Air Force on future aviation and space technologies.
From 1955 until 1965 he was a member of the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, evaluating intelligence
operations. In 1958 he was offered the position of first
administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), which he declined. His scientific
knowledge, combined with his military record, meant that he
could bring together fellow scientists and military leaders
to develop new aviation technology, and he had unique
insights because of his work in both these communities.
At one point in
the 1960s, while visiting a top-secret CIA facility,
photo-interpreters showed Doolittle a spy satellite image
taken over the Soviet Union that had been stumping them for
quite a while. Doolittle took one look at the picture of the
large, odd-looking seaplane and identified it as a
"wing-in-ground effect" vehicle, a type of airplane that
stayed close to the surface, riding on the cushion of air
that built up between its wing and the ground. Doolittle's
extensive aviation experience and scientific training had
allowed him to recognize the unusual aircraft.
An avid
sportsman, fisherman, and hiker, he went on frequent hiking
trips with his fellow scientists. In 1985, although long
retired from active duty, he was promoted to four-star
general.
In June 1985, retired Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle
became General James H. Doolittle when President Reagan and
Senator Goldwater pinned on the same four-star insignia that
General George Patton had given him on the occasion of
Patton receiving his fourth star more than 40 years earlier.
Doolittle died in 1992. After his death, Howard W. Johnson,
former chairman of the MIT Corporation, remembered: "Once
when he was asked to sum up his philosophy, he said it was
simply a matter of trying to leave the earth a better place
than he found it. He certainly did that, and he did it with
grace and good humour." |