Doolittle Raiders' last toast [View all]

[El Supremo]

Richard Cole, one of four surviving members of the 1942 raid on Tokyo led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, opens an 1896 bottle of cognac the raiders had been saving for their final toast, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013, at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

DAYTON, Ohio — The last of the Doolittle Raiders, in their 90s, offered a final toast Saturday to their fallen comrades, and pondered the place in history of their April 18, 1942, attack on Japan.

“May they rest in peace,” Lt. Col. Richard Cole, 98, said before the three Raiders present sipped an 1896 cognac from specially engraved silver goblets. The cognac was passed down for the occasion from their late commander, Lt. Gen. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, who was born in 1896.

In a ceremony Saturday evening at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio, hundreds of people, including Raiders widows and children, descendants of Chinese villagers who helped them, and Pearl Harbor survivors, watched as a historian read the names of all 80 of the original airmen and the three Raiders each called out, “Here.”

In the afternoon, a wreath was placed at the Doolittle Raider monument outside the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton. Museum officials estimated 5,000 people turned out for Veterans Day weekend events honoring the mission.

http://www.columbian.com/news/2013/nov/09/doolittle-raiders-final-toast-vancouver-bombardier/