Political Quotes

“today I wish to honor Lieutenant Colonel Richard ``Dick'' Cole, of the United States Air Force, who was the last living link of the Doolittle Raiders and passed away on April 9 at the age of 103. The Doolittle Raiders were comprised of 80 heroic U.S. Army Air Forces airmen who flew 16 modified B-25 Mitchell bombers off the USS Hornet aircraft carrier on the first Allied retaliatory strike on the Japanese Home Islands, just a few months after Pearl Harbor. In an age before midair refueling and GPS, the USS Hornet weighed less than a quarter of today's fortress-like aircraft carriers. With then-Lt. Cole as the copilot to then-Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, the B-25 Mitchell bomber #40-2344, would take off with only 467 feet of takeoff distance. This audacious and unprecedented raid was a one-way mission against enormous odds. What made the mission all the more challenging was a sighting by a Japanese patrol boat that prompted the task force commander, U.S. Navy Adm. William Halsey, to launch the mission more than 650 nautical miles from Japan, 10 hours early and 170 nautical miles farther than originally planned. Flying at wavetop level around 200 feet with their radios turned off, Cole and the Raiders avoided detection for as much of the distance as possible. In groups of two to four aircraft, the bombers targeted dry docks, armories, oil refineries, and aircraft factories in Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe, as well as Tokyo itself.…”