Jimmy Did It

The world found out last week who led the daring, destructive noonday air raid on Japan last month. To the White House, to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor, went pugnacious Brigadier General James Harold Doolittle, 45, speed flyer, engineer, scholar and man of action.

Standing at attention while Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall intoned the formal citation, lean-faced, balding Jimmy Doolittle bent forward while President Roosevelt pinned the gold, blue-ribboned medal above his left shirt pocket. Not even a columnist, chortled the President, had known the identity of the raid's leader.

Said the New York Daily News: "He should be named Doomuch."

With Both Feet. On the day of Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Doolittle, then a major, told friends at Los Angeles Municipal Airport: "I'm going to get in this thing with both feet. I'm going to Tokyo with a load of bombs." Doolittle, who once demonstrated a commercial plane with his two broken ankles in plaster casts, is no braggart. Now, having made good, he told Washington newsmen about his deed of derring-doolittle in formal Army lingo:

"The success of the raid exceeded our most optimistic expectations." South of Tokyo he left in flames a cruiser or battleship under construction at the Navy yard. At Nagoya he showered incendiary bombs on the Mitsubishi airplane factory and an oil-tank farm. "It appeared to us that practically every bomb reached the target for which it was intended. . . . About 25 or 30 miles to sea the rear gunners reported seeing columns of smoke rising thousands of feet in the air."

The twin-motored 6-25s were flown just over the housetops. It would have been no trick to hit Hirohito's palace, but Doolittle had given specific instructions: don't bomb it. "I think several of us dropped bombs within sight of it." The Doolittle plane was attacked by nine Jap fighters, but he rapidly outdistanced them all. Not an American plane was lost (the Japs claimed nine) and the 79 volunteers, along with Doolittle, were all nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross. Still undisclosed was the American planes's base. Unhumorously reporting a heavy Roosevelt jest, the Berlin radio solemnly announced: "Doolittle carried out the attack from the air base at Shangri-La, which was not otherwise described by Roosevelt."

Quiet Birdman. Stocky, nerveless Jimmy Doolittle set at least a dozen speed records, owns almost all the important aviation trophies. But he is far more than a speed and a stunt flyer. Doolittle has been a ceaseless air experimenter: in 1929 he made the first complete blind flight. A second lieutenant in World War I, he chafed at being kept at San Diego as an instructor. He was an early member of the Quiet Birdmen, the group of flyers who set themselves apart from the kiwi, an almost, extinct flightless bird, and from the "modock," legendary aviation term for a "bird that flies backwards to keep the dust out of its eyes."

California-born, Doolittle spent his boyhood in Alaska, where his father was prospecting for gold. At school in rough-&-tumble Nome, young Jimmy was the smallest in his class, but his fists earned him the schoolboy title of "Pride of Nome." Back at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School, he became good friends with an aspiring baritone named Lawrence Tibbett, has kept up a solid interest in music ever since.

At his side when he got his country's highest decoration was his wife Josephine, mother of his two sons. Tall Jo Doolittle has prematurely white hair, partly from waiting at home for Jimmy to return from flights, partly from keeping up with Jimmy's buoyancy. Once, when a friend telephoned that Jimmy had bailed out at 200 feet from a speeding plane at St. Louis' old Curtiss-Steinberg Airport, she wearily said thanks, hung up the phone with no questions. She flew with him when he set a transcontinental speed record for transport planes in 1935, pronounced it the worst flight she ever had. One strain on her has been watching the regular friendly prize fights between the Jimmy Doolittles, father & son. Son Jimmy, promised a pony whenever he could floor his Papa, never quite hit Papa on the button: James Sr. was once an amateur bantamweight champion.

Last month, when the Japs reported that the bombing had been done by American B-25s, Jo Doolittle had a pretty good idea that Jimmy was in on it. But she found out for sure when she saw his grinning face in the President's office.

Second Lieutenant James H. Doolittle Jr., training at Dayton in the Air Corps, saw the headlines, told reporters: "I'm pretty cocky about my old man." Said second son John, 19, now headed for West Point: "Yippee!"

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