{"id":4259,"date":"2019-04-09T17:31:21","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T22:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4259"},"modified":"2019-04-09T17:31:27","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T22:31:27","slug":"richard-cole-last-wwii-doolittle-raider-dies-at-103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4259","title":{"rendered":"Richard Cole, Last WWII Doolittle Raider, Dies at 103"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole, the last of World War II\u2019s Doolittle Raiders, passed away early Monday morning in San Antonio with his daughter, Cindy, and son, Rich, at his side, according to reports from family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole was 103 years old. Arrangements are being made for a memorial service at Randolph Air Force Base, and Cole will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. He had been scheduled to be honored in Sarasota on April 7 but was unable to attend the ceremony after being hospitalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Doolittle Raiders were group of 80 Army Air Force aviators who participated in a daring aerial raid on Japan during World War II, bombing seven cities just months after the Japanese had laid waste to American naval power at Hawaii\u2019s Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole, though, was humble about his role in the historic raid, which was planned and led by Army Air Force Lt. Col. James \u201cJimmy\u201d Doolittle of the United States Army Air Forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that the Raiders should be remembered any more than the millions of other people who took part in World War II,\u201d he said during a recent interview at the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force Base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Doolittle Raiders are woven tightly into the historical fabric of this area. For a little more than two weeks in March 1942, they trained at what was then Eglin Field for their improbable mission: launching stripped-down B-25 bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and flying hundreds of miles across the Pacific Ocean to bomb Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than a month after leaving Eglin Field, on April 18, 1942, the Doolittle Raiders \u2014 all volunteers and none of whom had flown a combat mission \u2014 boarded 16 B-25 bombers on the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet in the Pacific to start their mission. Cole was in the copilot\u2019s seat of the lead B-25, which was piloted by Doolittle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole also was among the airmen who had to bail out of the the B-25s after the raid. Asked recently about his sharpest memory of the raid, after more than 76 years, Cole had a quick response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe thing I remember most is my parachute opening,\u201d he smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole was in the area last month, attending a ceremony at Hurlburt Field, headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command, for a 75th anniversary commemoration of Operation Thursday, another piece of World War II history in which he was involved. Cole was among the aviators involved in the 1944 operation in the China-Burma-India war theater in which early American air pioneers worked alongside British special operations soldiers known as Chindits to extract British soldiers from the forests of Burma. The operation marked the birth of Air Commandos as part of U.S. military aviation forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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B-25 bombers aboard the aircraft carrier
USS Hornet, departing San Francisco bound for Tokyo, Japan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole, the last of World War II\u2019s Doolittle Raiders, passed away early Monday morning in San Antonio with his daughter, Cindy, and son, Rich, at his side, according to reports from family and friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4130,565,539,4123,2911,4124,4118,1002,69,4126,624,4133,4122,446,4112,4119,4137,4132,4127,4120,4115,1001,396,428,361,2438,805,808,4114,843,412,1557,1016,4116,3858,940,4125,4117,4128,2806,4135,2132,4113,4134,632,1564,2755],"class_list":["post-4259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation-news","tag-4130","tag-565","tag-air","tag-arlington","tag-army","tag-aviator","tag-away","tag-base","tag-bomber","tag-bombing","tag-british","tag-burma","tag-cemetery","tag-china","tag-cole","tag-colonel","tag-commandos","tag-copilot","tag-december","tag-died","tag-doolittle","tag-force","tag-harbor","tag-hawaii","tag-hornet","tag-ii","tag-india","tag-japan","tag-last","tag-national","tag-news","tag-operations","tag-pacific","tag-passed","tag-pearl","tag-pilot","tag-raid","tag-raider","tag-randolph","tag-richard","tag-soldiers","tag-special","tag-surviving","tag-theater","tag-us","tag-war","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4262,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4259\/revisions\/4262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}