$10.00
Description
In the early morning light of April 18, 1942, in heavy rain and strong seas, 16 B-25 bombers launched from an aircraft carrier in the western Pacific and headed for Japan. Their mission: to show that just four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese empire was not invincible, by dropping bombs on Tokyo and four other cities with industrial/military targets. This was the famous Doolittle Raid, and in plane number 15 was engineer and gunner Edward Saylor, a 21 year old Army Air Corps volunteer from a small eastern Montana ranch near Brusett. This is his account of that highly successful mission that set the stage for subsequent significant Japanese naval losses, and of the amazing escape of the Raiders through China and India after ditching their planes one by one as they ran out of fuel trying to reach China. Mr. Thatcher granted this interview for the Montana Military Museum in 2014 when he was 92 years old. David and his wife Dawn have been married for 68 years and live in Missoula, Montana. Mr. Saylor granted this interview for the Montana Military Museum in 2014 when he was 94 years old. He passed away in 2015, leaving only three Raiders surviving at that time, one of whom was another Montanan, David J. Thatcher of Missoula, MT.
