James Harold Doolittle

Led carrier-launched bombers in a bold raid on Japan in 1942

James Harold "Jimmy" Doolittle was born on 14 December 1896 in Alameda, California, and grew up partly in Nome, Alaska. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, before entering Army flying training in 1917. He married Josephine Daniels in 1917; both sons became Air Force officers. Commissioned on 11 March 1918, he served as a flying and gunnery instructor in the United States during the First World War, then undertook Mexican border patrol and experimental flying.

Doolittle united test flying with aeronautical engineering. In 1922 he completed his Berkeley degree and crossed the United States within twenty-four hours, stopping once for fuel. His research measured aircraft stresses during flight; he earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1925. His doctoral work challenged reliance on instinct to judge aircraft attitude. He won the Schneider, Bendix and Thompson racing trophies. On 24 September 1929, screened from any outside view, he took off, navigated and landed using a directional gyro, artificial horizon, sensitive altimeter and radio navigation. This demonstration helped make reliable flying in poor visibility possible. Leaving the Regular Army in 1930, he retained a reserve commission and joined Shell Oil, championing investment in high-octane aviation fuel for more powerful aircraft engines. He returned to active duty in 1940.

As a lieutenant colonel, he prepared the April 1942 raid on Japan, supervising B-25 modifications for greater range and crews' short-takeoff training at Eglin Field. On 18 April, Japanese detection forced his sixteen bombers to launch early from USS Hornet. After bombing targets in Japan, Doolittle parachuted into China and escaped with Chinese assistance. The raid caused limited physical damage but raised American morale; Japanese forces subsequently inflicted brutal reprisals on Chinese communities that sheltered the raiders. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his Medal of Honor on 19 May, after his promotion to brigadier general.

Doolittle then commanded the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa, the Northwest African Strategic Air Force and, from November 1943, the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean. Taking over the Eighth Air Force in England in January 1944, he gave fighters greater freedom to seek out and destroy German aircraft. Alongside the bombing offensive, this helped establish Allied air superiority before the Normandy invasion. Promoted to lieutenant general on 13 March, he directed the Eighth's campaign against Germany and remained its commander during its transfer to the Pacific in 1945.

Returning to inactive reserve status in 1946, he resumed work at Shell as a vice president and later director. He advocated an independent Air Force and became the Air Force Association's first president. He chaired an Army board seeking fairer officer-enlisted relations. His reserve commission subsequently transferred to the new service. From 1951 he advised its chief of staff on science, and in 1956–58 chaired the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA's predecessor. After short Reserve active-duty tours in 1955–57, he retired on 28 February 1959. He continued aerospace work as chairman of Space Technology Laboratories and served MIT's governing corporation and visiting committees.

He received the Air Force Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service in 1969 and the FAA's Extraordinary Service Award in 1970. In 1985, presidential appointment and Senate confirmation advanced him to general on the Air Force retired list. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1989. Josephine died in 1988 after seventy-one years of marriage. Doolittle died at his son's home in Pebble Beach, California, on 27 September 1993, aged ninety-six, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Official Medal of Honor citation

For conspicuous leadership above the call of duty, involving personal valor and intrepidity at an extreme hazard to life. With the apparent certainty of being forced to land in enemy territory or to perish at sea, Gen. Doolittle personally led a squadron of Army bombers, manned by volunteer crews, in a highly destructive raid on the Japanese mainland.