Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Best wishes to all vets.
Of what am I talking. All had fake wooden guns. Most vets in their nineties, and fourteen remaining of original 160 men. Mission casualties of enemy--50 dead, 400 wounded. However 250,000 civilian casualty deaths with a possibility of 250,000 additional unaccounted for. One Medal of Honor, Two Silver Stars, every one else decorated as well.
Happy Memorial Day, keep our military in mind.
No takers
For Veteran�s day I asked a trivia question with the answer about the Doolittle Raid against Japan five months after Pearl Harbor in April 1942. This type of action, of course, was thought impossible by the Japanese. But their reaction was in today�s world predictable. Once it was found that the planes could not return to the carriers and instead had flown into the blackness that was China, the Japanese launched a man hunt there that resulted in 250,000 known dead in China, and the �possibility� of a minimum, 250,000 additional unaccounted for as whole villages along roads and coast were cleansed as abetting the Japanese enemy. For the U.S., three crew died in crashes after the raid, 8 were POW�s and 4 were dead before released, and five were interned in Russia, their plane confiscated, stripped to the last rivet, and held (the men escaped through Iran in 1943). Doolittle was assisted big time in his escape by John Birch (John Birch Society) who himself was shot and killed by the Chinese Communists later.
The mission damage was minimal and the mission almost exclusively a morale builder for the U.S. who launched the 16 B-25 bombers.
(WOOD PART) In order to cut some weight and provide a measure of �security� the tails of the B-25�s were fitted with dual broomstick cannon to �scare� any Japanese pilots who might follow them. None did.
Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor, and promoted two grades to General. Two Silver stars were awarded. To Lt. Tom White, a flight surgeon, and Corporal Dave Thatcher, an engineer, for helping several wounded crew evade the Japanese during their escape. All other flying men earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, if wounded, and Chinese decorations.
I placed the number at 160 men because I found ten men per plane--but I�ve since learned that there was crew of eighty total (five men flew). The remainder was plane crew that remained on the two carriers.