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Contact Info
Home Town Kalamazoo, Michigan
Last Address Naples, Florida
Date of Passing Jun 09, 2007
Location of Interment Naples Memorial Gardens Cemetery - North Naples, Florida
Wall/Plot Coordinates Veterans Field of Honor
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
He was the co-pilot in crew #14 on the Doolittle Raid. After the raid he flew combat missions in India, North Africa, and Europe. After the war he stayed in the USAAF and USAF until he retired Jul 31, 1968.
His DFC (1st of 2) citation: Awarded for actions during World War II
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 2, 1926, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross to First Lieutenant (Air Corps) Jack A. Sims (ASN: 0-421340), United States Army Air Forces, for extraordinary achievement as Co-Pilot of a B-25 Bomber of the 1st Special Aviation Project (Doolittle Raider Force), while participating in a highly destructive raid on the Japanese mainland on 18 April 1942. Lieutenant Sims with 79 other officers and enlisted men volunteered for this mission knowing full well that the chances of survival were extremely remote, and executed his part in it with great skill and daring. This achievement reflects high credit on himself and the military service.
WWII - European Theater of Operations/Egypt-Libya Campaign (1942-43)
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
February / 1943
Description (Egypt-Libya Campaign 11 June 1942 to 12 February 1943) When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the British had been fighting German and Italian armies in the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya for over a year. In countering an Italian offensive in 1940, the British had at first enjoyed great success. In 1941, however, when German forces entered the theater in support of their Italian ally, the British suffered severe reversals, eventually losing nearly all their hard-won gains in North Africa.
Even though the United States had not yet entered the war as an active combatant, by the time General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the German Army’s Afrika Korps, began his offensive against the British Eighth Army in Libya in March 1941, the American and British air chiefs were already discussing American support for the British Eighth Army. Rommel’s rapid and unexpected success in the Libyan desert forced British and American staff officers
in London to accelerate their planning. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers also agreed that the British might need American support in the Middle East. Overall theater responsibility would continue to be British, but the President recognized that a British collapse in Egypt would have far-reaching implications and approved contingency measures to prepare for American support to the theater at a future date.