WHAT I’M READING – An Autobiography of General James A. “Jimmy” Doolittle

I am in extreme danger of becoming an expert on the Doolittle Tokyo Raid. Everything about it fascinates me, and I read and study every scrap of information I can get on it. So I picked up the book expecting a huge amount of information on the subject.

What surprised me is that Doolittle spares only a few chapters to what has to be the single event history will remember him most for. I guess he figures other people have written more exhaustive books on the subject and there was very little point in rehashing things that had already been said.

Oh, he does provide some personal details. Like by the time he started making his way back to the states, he didn’t have a proper uniform (he was in rags). Or that his wife Joe didn’t even know he’d made it home, or why she was being rushed across the country to Washington, D.C. so quickly she didn’t even have time to use the restroom. Or that she showed up to see her husband get awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor without even having time to freshen up. (Imagine her embarrassment standing in the Oval Office, meeting the President of the United States, and not even having had the chance to wash two days travel off her face).

What is fascinating about the book is it shows a new technology growing up. Doolittle was in aviation from almost the very beginning, and a lot of what he did has contributed greatly to air safety and the industry today. He pioneered the use of flying by instruments and was instrumental in figuring out airport and airline safety. He’s one the many who helped shape the standards of today and he gave credit where credit was due.

It also talked a lot about his childhood and early manhood. He gives us a good look at a young boy growing up in the wilds of Alaska who learned to use his fists to make a living. We also get a view of a father who was that mostly in the biological sense, and the heartbreak of losing a son to suicide.

One thing I hadn’t expected was a man keenly concerned about our world. He was concerned not only for the safety of our country but the global environment as a whole. I guess it would be safe to say he was an extremely conservative environmentalist. He ends the book by telling his wife (long since dead), that he couldn’t have done any of it without her.

I ended up walking away seeing the heart of a man who history paints as a daredevil and hero. Jimmy Doolittle stopped being a man in the history books and became someone who lived and breathed, laughed and cried.

I would like to have met him.