In 1959 the city of Tucson, Arizona, gave the Doolittle Raiders eighty silver goblets, one for every man who had flown on the raid against Japan in April 1942. Each goblet was engraved with a name β twice, the second time upside down, so that it could be read whichever way the goblet stood.
The reunions
The Raiders had met every year since 1946, on or around Jimmy Doolittle's birthday. After 1959 the goblets came with them. At each reunion the names were read, the living drank a toast, and the goblets of the men who had died since the last meeting were turned upside down.
There was also a bottle: a cognac from 1896, the year Doolittle was born, which he had received on his sixtieth birthday. It was to be opened by the last two surviving Raiders for a final toast.
The final toast
By 2013 four Raiders were left, all in their nineties. They decided not to wait. On 9 November 2013, at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, the roll of all sixteen crews was read. Three men answered βhereβ: Dick Cole, who had been Doolittle's co-pilot, Edward Saylor and David Thatcher. The fourth, Robert Hite, watched from home.
Cole, the oldest at 98, broke the seal on the bottle and gave the toast: to those they had lost on the mission, and to those who had died since.
One goblet left
Dick Cole outlived them all. He died in April 2019, aged 103, the last of the eighty. The goblets are on permanent display at the museum in Dayton, every one of them now turned over.
The model
COBI's B-25 Mitchell βTokyo Raidβ, set 5779, is a 1:48 model of the bomber in the markings of the raid, built from 729 blocks, with one figure. At the same scale it stands with COBI's B-17 (5750) and B-24 (5739).
It is available to pre-order. The expected shipping month is shown on the product page, and you can cancel any time before it ships.
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