The Last Silver Goblet
By Jeff Thatcher
Tuesday, April 18 will mark the 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid, a daring bombing
attack upon five Japanese cities that occurred on April 18, 1942. Eighty volunteer airmen
flying 16 B-25 bombers, led by legendary aviator Lt. Col James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle,
took off from the deck of the carrier USS Hornet early that morning and struck back at
Japan in retaliation for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy
on December 7, 1941.
Today only one member of the Doolittle Raid remains, 101-year-old Lt. Col. Richard E.
Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot. On the morning of April 18 at the National Museum of the
U.S. Air Force (NMUSAF) in Dayton, Ohio, in a private ceremony that has become
famous in the annals of
modern aviation, Cole
will turn over the silver
goblet of my late father,
S. Sgt. David J. Thatcher,
the second-to-last
surviving member of the
Doolittle Raid, who
passed away on June 22,
2016 at the age of 94, and
make one final toast to all
the Raiders who have
preceded him before
drinking for the last time
from his standing silver
goblet.
The passage of time has taken its toll on the Raiders who, like so many other members of
the Greatest Generation, stepped up during a period of world crisis to save democracy
and the United States. Of the 61 Raiders who survived the Raid and World War II,
accidents, disease, age and finally death have carried all but one into the afterlife. But the
memory of their daring action lives on.
Of the 80 Raiders who bombed Japan, three were killed after exiting their aircraft on the
night of the Raid; eight were captured by the Japanese – three of those were executed on
October 15, 1942, one starved to death and four were held captive for 40 months; 10 were
killed in action in Europe, North Africa and Indo-China; and two were killed in plane
crashes in 1942 in the U.S.
In the four months after Pearl Harbor, the world was crumbling. The war in Europe had
been raging for two years. A significant portion of the U.S. Pacific Fleet sat at the bottom
of Pearl Harbor and the Japanese seemed unstoppable, seizing victory after victory in the
Far East. In the U.S., morale was sinking and Americans were grasping for any good
news.
Tasked with striking back at Japan for the attack on Pearl Harbor by President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, Doolittle selected a band of gritty volunteers to accomplish the mission.
America desperately needed a victory and Doolittle and his Raiders would deliver in
stunning fashion, inflicting a blow upon Japan and shattering their belief in invincibility –
which had been nurtured by no other successful invasion or attack of their homeland in
the preceding 2,600 years.
The Raiders, along with supporting military personnel aboard the carrier USS
Hornet, were part of an eight-ship task force that departed San Francisco Bay April
2, 1942. On April 13, well out into the Pacific Ocean, the task force merged with
the eight-ship USS Enterprise Task Force, which had departed from Hawaii, to
become the first joint full-scale operation between the Army Air Force and the U.S.
Navy. Streaming toward Japan on a northern route to avoid detection, the 16-ship
combined task force, consisting of 10,000 personnel, was discovered early April 18
by a Japanese patrol boat – well ahead of the planned departure by the 80 Raiders
in their 16 B-25, twin-engine bombers.
The discovery forced the Raiders to take off 12 hours earlier and 150 nautical miles
further from Japan than planned. The weather conditions were miserable with rain,
20-knot gusting winds and huge waves crashing over the bow of the carrier. Yet,
despite knowing they were likely embarking upon a suicide mission, the group of
80 volunteer flyers never wavered.
One after another, each B-25 lumbered down the deck of the carrier and took off.
Following each other single file and flying by dead reckoning just above the wave
tops to avoid detection, they reached Japan at mid-day and fanned out to drop four
500-pound bombs each on military and industrial targets in Tokyo, Yokohama,
Kobe, Osaka and Nagoya.
Although some of the B-25s encountered light antiaircraft fire and a few enemy
fighters, none were shot down or severely damaged. Fifteen of the 16 planes then
proceeded southwest along the southern coast of Japan and across the East China
Sea toward eastern China, where recovery bases supposedly awaited them. The
remaining B-25 ran extremely low on fuel and headed for Russia, which was
closer.
The Raiders faced several unforeseen challenges during their flight to China: night
was approaching, the planes were running low on fuel and the weather was rapidly
deteriorating. Realizing they would not be able to reach their intended destinations,
their options were to bail out over eastern China or crash land along the Chinese
coast – areas occupied by the Japanese. When the dust settled, 15 planes had been
destroyed in crashes. The crew that flew to Russia landed near Vladivostok, their
B-25 confiscated and the crew interned until escaping in May 1943.
Chinese locals and foreign missionaries who encountered the Raiders after they
unexpectedly showed up, assisted the Raiders and selflessly guided most of them to
safety. The Chinese paid dearly for their help. An estimated 250,000 Chinese were
subsequently slaughtered by the Japanese.
Compared to the devastating B-29 fire bombing attacks against Japan later in the war, the
Doolittle Raid did little material damage. Nevertheless, when news of the raid was
released, American morale soared. The raid also had a strategic impact on the war. The
Japanese military recalled many units back to the home islands for defense, where they
remained while battles raged throughout the Pacific.
The Doolittle Raid also provoked Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the
raid on Pearl Harbor, to attempt a hastily organized strike against Midway Island,
resulting in the loss of four carriers, a cruiser, 292 aircraft and 2,500 casualties from
which the Imperial Japanese Navy never recovered.
In December 1946 Doolittle and his Raiders gathered to celebrate his birthday,
inaugurating what later became annual reunions around April 18 in locations throughout
the U.S. During their annual reunion in 1959 the city of Tucson, Arizona, presented the
Raiders with a set of sterling silver goblets, each bearing the name of one of the 80 men
who flew on the mission. The silver goblets were housed in a special glass-enclosed case.
Following the April 1961 reunion in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Doolittle turned them
over to the Air Force Academy, which is located there, for safekeeping and display
between reunions.
In 1973 Cole built a portable display case for the goblets so they could more easily be
transported to the reunions. In 2005 the surviving Raiders voted to move the goblets from
the Air Force Academy to the NMUSAF where they are now permanently displayed
alongside an exhibit featuring a restored B-25 bomber representing Doolittle’s plane.
When transported, the 80 gleaming silver goblets were placed in Cole’s blue velvet-lined
case, consisting of four separate panels. Twenty goblets stand in each panel’s
compartment, placed five high and four across. Left to right they represent the crews – 1
to 16 – based upon their takeoff position in the Raid. Each column from top to bottom
consists of the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier and gunner. Each goblet has the
Raider's name engraved twice – so it can be read right side up or upside down.
At each reunion, two uniformed Air Force cadets accompanied the goblets, placed them
in a private room atop a table and stood guard over them. On the morning of April 18, the
surviving Raiders would meet privately in front of the goblets to conduct their solemn
ceremony. After calling the roll and toasting the Raiders who had died since their last
reunion with cognac poured into the goblets by the white-gloved cadets, they would turn
the deceased Raiders’ goblets upside down.
Like the goblets harkening back to the times of the Vikings, Roman legions and King
Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, the Raider goblets symbolize the attributes of the
80 men who participated in the mission – duty, honor and courage. Those attributes are
personified by the words inscribed on the official Doolittle Raider crest: “Toujours au
Danger” – “Always into Danger.”
In discussing his position last June as the last man standing among the 80 Doolittle
Raiders after my father had passed away, Cole said: “Mathematically, it shouldn't have
worked out this way. I was quite a bit older, six years older, than David. Figuring the way
gamblers figure, he would have been the last man.”
Instead Dick Cole is the last man standing. And when he raises his silver goblet for
the final time to toast his 79 departed comrades on the morning of April 18, the
longstanding tradition of the Raiders’ private ceremony, which cemented the bond
between the courageous volunteers, both enlisted men and officers, into a welltrained group who placed their collective duty as Americans above their individual
lives, will end.
(Jeff Thatcher is the son of the late Doolittle Raider David J. Thatcher and
president of the Children of the Doolittle Raiders, Inc. a non-profit group dedicated
to keeping the legacy of the Doolittle Raiders alive.)