When was jimmy doolittle born

In April , Doolittle got a leave of absence to go to South America to do airplane demonstration flights. At a party in Argentina, after a few too many drinks, he demonstrated handstands on a high balcony when the balcony gave way, and he broke both of his ankles. Despite the accident, Doolittle put his Curtiss P-1 through stirring aerial maneuvers the next day, with his casted ankles strapped to the rudders. Doolittle looked at the practical side: He could leave his bulky parachute behind since his feet were strapped in and he could not get out in an emergency.

He crossed the country in 11 hours, 16 minutes and 10 seconds, beating the record set earlier that year by one hour and eight minutes. In , he won the Thompson Trophy race at Cleveland in a Granville Gee Bee R-1 racer, averaging miles per hour reaching a top speed of mph , and established the world landplane speed record of mph.

The "Doolittle Raid" was the first attack on Japan by the U. After his heroic displays of courage over Tokyo, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted Doolittle from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general — skipping the rank of colonel. While in command, Doolittle was promoted to major general, then lieutenant general. At the start of the Korean War in March , Doolittle was appointed as special assistant to the Air Force chief of staff, in which he served as a civilian in scientific matters that led to Air Force ballistic missile and space programs.

Postwar service Doolittle entered his postwar service as an advisor to the Air Force, such intelligence agencies as the Central Intelligence Agency CIA , and presidents. Nor did any standard American carrier plane of the time have the range to fly that distance with a bomb load and continue on to landing fields in China.

Implementation of the plan therefore depended on using the Army Air Corps' new two-engine B bomber. Doolittle was put in charge of the intensive training required in flying such a large plane from the deck of a carrier—there was no possibility of landing on the carrier after completion of the mission—and managed to talk Arnold into letting him lead the attack itself. On April 18, , the 16 planes he commanded flew from the carrier Hornet to bomb assorted targets in Tokyo and a few other Japanese cities and then on to landings in China.

Although none of the planes landed intact in China, all but two of the crews reached safety. While some have considered the Doolittle raid, as it became known, strategically unsound in terms of the negligible damage it could inflict upon Japan, it was soon immortalized in the book and film Thirty Seconds over Tokyo and undeniably raised American morale while causing concern to the Japanese.

Doolittle was given a rare double promotion to brigadier general and then was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony. He was sent to Europe to command Dwight Eisenhower's air units during the planned invasion of North Africa, after which Doolittle was promoted to major general.

In his early commands Doolittle, who often flew missions himself, had been obliged to develop effective air forces, but the Eighth had already been built into a successful unit by its previous commander, Lieutenant General Ira Eaker.

Nevertheless, Doolittle profited from the advent of more and better planes, particularly the P fighter which allowed his forces to achieve air superiority over the heart of Germany itself.

A firm believer in strategic bombing, Doolittle commanded the Eighth Air Force during its greatest successes: the first American bombing of Berlin, the sustained bombing campaigns against Germany's oil industry and various manufacturing and rail facilities, and finally the virtual destruction of the Luftwaffe, the German air force. With the end of the war in Europe Doolittle was ordered to Okinawa to establish with new planes and personnel what would in effect be a new Eighth Air Force, but Japan surrendered before it became operational.

At 49 Doolittle was the youngest lieutenant general in U. Believing that he was not the right man to serve in a postwar air force due for retrenchment, Doolittle returned to reserve status in and resumed work for Shell.

He remained a Shell vice president until , taking occasional leave to do public service both for the Air Force and for various government bodies, among them a special board that President Truman named to report on airport safety and location. He had given up flying in Although much of Doolittle's career was spent in civilian pursuits, he will always be remembered for his pioneering achievements in aviation in the s, for his successful command of the Eighth Air Force, and particularly for his leadership of the Tokyo raid in April Doolittle, recalled Arnold, "was fearless, technically brilliant, a leader who not only could be counted upon to do a task himself if it were humanly possible, but could impart his spirit to others.

Hirohito was emperor of Japan from until his death in He took over at a time of rising democratic sentiment, but his country soon turned toward ultra-nationalism and militarism. James Monroe , the fifth U. James Madison was a founding father of the United States and the fourth American president, serving in office from to An advocate for a strong federal government, the Virginia-born Madison composed the first drafts of the U.

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