Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: mbailey on April 18, 2017, 05:48:14 AM
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Tuesday will mark the 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid, a daring bombing attack upon five Japanese cities that occurred 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 Dec. 7, 1941.
Today only one member of the Doolittle Raiders remains, 101-year-old Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole, Doolittle's co-pilot. On Tuesday 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.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/apr/16/the-last-silver-goblet-20170416
We live on the shoulders of these great men and greatest generation
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<S> to your Father and toL/C Cole.
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May they rest in peace and honored glory. Fair skies and tailwinds forever.
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Cole will turn over the silver goblet of my late father, S. Sgt. David J. Thatcher...
:O Woah! Your dad was David Thatcher? Wow. I remember reading "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" in Second Grade--and about a dozen times thereafter. (Robert Walker portrayed him in the movie and I was struck by his sympathetic performance even as a kid.) The crew of the "Ruptured Duck" were lucky to have him. I don't think they would have faired well without him.
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:O Woah! Your dad was David Thatcher? Wow. I remember reading "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" in Second Grade--and about a dozen times thereafter. (Robert Walker portrayed him in the movie and I was struck by his sympathetic performance even as a kid.) The crew of the "Ruptured Duck" were lucky to have him. I don't think they would have faired well without him.
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Oh no, sorry Vraciu, didn't mean to mislead anyone (I see how it would though) ....My dad wasn't David Thatcher, I just snipped the first few paragraphs from the article as I found it very profound. I always knew about the ceremony they perform and thought back then how sad it would be to hear that the last goblet had been over turned...after reading it I wanted to share that portion and then posted the link. One could only be so lucky to be related to such a man as Mr.Thatcher.
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Oh no, sorry Vraciu, didn't mean to mislead anyone (I see how it would though) ....My dad wasn't David Thatcher, I just snipped the first few paragraphs from the article as I found it very profound. I always knew about the ceremony they perform every year and thought back then how sad it would be to hear that the last goblet had been over turned...after reading it I wanted to share that portion and then posted the link. One could only be so lucky to be related to such a man as Mr.Thatcher.
Ooops. I guess I shoulda' caught that. No worries--and I concur. <S>