To exact revenge for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Maj. Thomas C. Griffin signed on as a navigator for then Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s daring raid on Japan. Griffin and 80 other volunteers figured it was a suicide mission, he later said, but believed “we needed to hit back.”
As Doolittle’s Raiders began training, they were told only that the mission would be “extremely hazardous,” said The Washington Post. When the 16 B-25 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, they “lacked fuel to reach safe bases after dropping their bombs.” The plan was to escape toward China, a U.S. ally, once they’d dropped their payloads on 15 military and industrial targets, mostly in Tokyo.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Many of Griffin’s comrades were captured by Japanese troops and either shot or imprisoned as POWs, said USA Today, but he parachuted into China and escaped to safety. “By his own count, he cheated death eight times during World War II.” He was shot down over Sicily in 1943 and imprisoned by the Germans until the war’s end.
Griffin’s death leaves four surviving Raiders, who expect to meet next month for the last time and finally open a bottle of 1896 cognac that Doolittle bought before his death, in 1993, for the final survivors to toast their fallen comrades.
-
Nasa’s new dark matter mapUnder the Radar High-resolution images may help scientists understand the ‘gravitational scaffolding into which everything else falls and is built into galaxies’
-
Is the US about to lose its measles elimination status?Today's Big Question Cases are skyrocketing
-
‘No one is exempt from responsibility, and especially not elite sport circuits’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Bob Weir: The Grateful Dead guitarist who kept the hippie flameFeature The fan favorite died at 78
-
Brigitte Bardot: the bombshell who embodied the new FranceFeature The actress retired from cinema at 39, and later become known for animal rights activism and anti-Muslim bigotry
-
Joanna Trollope: novelist who had a No. 1 bestseller with The Rector’s WifeIn the Spotlight Trollope found fame with intelligent novels about the dramas and dilemmas of modern women
-
Frank Gehry: the architect who made buildings flow like waterFeature The revered building master died at the age of 96
-
R&B singer D’AngeloFeature A reclusive visionary who transformed the genre
-
Kiss guitarist Ace FrehleyFeature The rocker who shot fireworks from his guitar
-
Robert Redford: the Hollywood icon who founded the Sundance Film FestivalFeature Redford’s most lasting influence may have been as the man who ‘invigorated American independent cinema’ through Sundance
-
Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacyFeature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
