![]() His detachment of the 90th Aero Squadron was based at Eagle Pass, patrolling the Mexican border. At Kelly Field, he served with the 104th Aero Squadron and with the 90th Aero Squadron of the 1st Surveillance Group. ![]() Army on March 11, 1918.ĭuring World War I, Doolittle stayed in the United States as a flight instructor and performed his war service at Camp John Dick Aviation Concentration Center ("Camp Dick"), Texas Wright Field, Ohio Gerstner Field, Louisiana Rockwell Field, California Kelly Field, Texas, and Eagle Pass, Texas.ĭoolittle served at Rockwell as a flight leader and gunnery instructor. Doolittle received his Reserve Military Aviator rating and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Signal Officers Reserve Corps of the U.S. Military career Doolittle on his Curtiss R3C-2 Racer, the plane in which he won the Schneider Trophy in 1925ĭoolittle took a leave of absence in October 1917 to enlist in the Signal Corps Reserve as a flying cadet he received ground training at the School of Military Aeronautics (an Army school) on the campus of the University of California, and flight-trained at Rockwell Field, California. He was a member of Theta Kappa Nu fraternity, which later merged into Lambda Chi Alpha during the later stages of the Great Depression. He entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied at the College of Mines. He attended Los Angeles City College after graduating from Manual Arts High School, together with later film director Frank Capra, in Los Angeles. When his school attended the 1910 Los Angeles International Air Meet at Dominguez Field, Doolittle saw his first airplane. By 1910, Jimmy Doolittle was attending school in Los Angeles. His parents were Frank Henry Doolittle and Rosa (Rose) Cerenah Doolittle ( née Shephard). He spent his youth in Nome, Alaska, where he earned a reputation as a boxer. He died in 1993 at the age of 96, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.ĭoolittle was born December 14, 1896, in Alameda, California. In 2003, he topped Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine's list of the greatest pilots of all time, and ten years later, Flying magazine ranked Doolittle sixth on its list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation. He was eventually promoted to general in 1985, presented to him by President Ronald Reagan 43 years after the Doolittle Raid. Doolittle was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1967, eight years after retirement and only five years after the Hall was founded. He retired from the Air Force in 1959 but remained active in many technical fields. It was a major morale booster for the United States and Doolittle was celebrated as a hero, making him one of the most important national figures of the war.ĭoolittle was promoted to lieutenant general and commanded the Twelfth Air Force over North Africa, the Fifteenth Air Force over the Mediterranean, and the Eighth Air Force over Europe. ![]() ![]() The raid used 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers with reduced armament to decrease weight and increase range, each with a crew of five and no escort fighter aircraft. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for personal valor and leadership as commander of the Doolittle Raid, a bold long-range retaliatory air raid on some of the Japanese main islands on April 18, 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1927, he performed the first outside loop, thought at the time to be a fatal aerobatic maneuver, and two years later, in 1929, pioneered the use of "blind flying", where a pilot relies on flight instruments alone, which later won him the Harmon Trophy and made all-weather airline operations practical.ĭoolittle was a flying instructor during World War I and a reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps, but was recalled to active duty during World War II. That year, he made the first cross-country flight in a Airco DH.4, and in 1925, was awarded a doctorate in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first such doctorate degree issued in the United States. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1922. He made early coast-to-coast flights, record-breaking speed flights, won many flying races, and helped develop and flight-test instrument flying. James Harold Doolittle (Decem– September 27, 1993) was an American military general and aviation pioneer who received the Medal of Honor for his daring raid on Japan during World War II, known as the Doolittle Raid in his honor. Air race pilot, test pilot, Shell Oil Company VP and director, chairman of Space Technology Laboratories and NACA
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