This Military Service Page was created/owned by
SSgt Robert Bruce McClelland, Jr.
to remember
Cole, Richard Eugene, Lt Col USAF(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town Dayton, Ohio
Last Address San Antonio, Texas
Date of Passing Apr 08, 2019
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Take Off Order
1 Tail # 40- 2344 Target: Tokyo
Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle's bomber was the first over Japan and the first to drop its bomb load. The four incendiaries fell at 12:30 p.m. (Tokyo time) to incinerate a large factory. Doolittle then flew west to reach the coast of China after dark. By 9:30 fuel was low and unable to find an airfield in the heavy fog, Doolittle ordered his crew to bail out among the mountains of China. He then followed them into the night, his B-25 crashing on a nearby mountainside. The only injury sustained by any of the crew was a sprained ankle. Local Chinese escorted the Americans to Chuchow from where they eventually returned home safely.
English: Doolittle Tokyo Raiders, Crew No. 1 Crew No. 1 (Plane #40-2344, target Tokyo): 34th Bombardment Squadron, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle, pilot; Lt. Richard E. Cole, copilot; Lt. Henry A. Potter, navigator; SSgt. Fred A. Braemer, bombardier; SSgt. Paul J. Leonard, flight engineer/gunner. (U.S. Air Force photo)
1940-1947, AAF MOS 1081, United States Army Air Corps (USAAC)
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The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the military aviation arm of the United States of America between 1926 and 1941. The statutory administrative forerunner of the United States Air Force, it was renamed from the earlier United States Army Air Service on 2 July 1926 and part of the larger United States Army. The Air Corps was the immediate predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), established on 20 June 1941. Although discontinued as an administrative echelon during World War II, the Air Corps (AC) remained as one of the combat arms of the Army until 1947, when it was legally abolished by legislation establishing the Department of the Air Force.
The Air Corps was renamed by the United States Congress largely as a compromise between the advocates of a separate air arm and those of the traditionalist Army high command who viewed the aviation arm as an auxiliary branch to support the ground forces. Although its members worked to promote the concept of air power and an autonomous air force between the years between the world wars, its primary purpose by Army policy remained support of ground forces rather than independent operations.
On 1 March 1935, still struggling with the issue of a separate air arm, the Army activated the General Headquarters Air Force for centralized control of aviation combat units within the continental United States, separate from but coordinate with the Air Corps. The separation of the Air Corps from control of its combat units caused problems of unity of command that became more acute as the Air Corps enlarged in preparation for World War II. This was resolved by the creation of the Army Air Forces (AAF), making both organizations subordinate to the new higher echelon.
The Air Corps ceased to have an administrative structure after 9 March 1942, but as "the permanent statutory organization of the air arm, and the principal component of the Army Air Forces," the overwhelming majority of personnel assigned to the AAF were members of the Air Corps.
