Three Weeks' Training For Thirty Second Attack

Seventy years ago, while my father's outfit was being organized in Mobile to be shipped overseas, a smaller group was preparing at Eglin Field Florida (about a hundred miles to the east) for a different overseas movement.

Under command of LCol Jimmy Doolittle, a small group of US Army aviators was learning how to take off from an aircraft carrier. Twenty-five B-25 medium bombers, each with a crew of five, were put through their paces by a Navy lieutenant. The task: launch fully-loaded B-25's with a 2,000 lb bomb load on a 2,400 mile mission.

Details to be disclosed later.

All of the aviators were volunteers. The training began three months after Pearl Harbor.