Author: Grumpy

Lt. Colonel Richard E. Cole (United States Air Force – Ret.)
He was 103.
Lieutenant (at the time) Cole was Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot on the Tokyo raid. He was the last survivor of Doolittle’s Raiders.

As Mr. Cole remembered it: “The tune ‘Wabash Cannonball’ kept running through my mind. One time I was singing and stomping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked at me in a very questioning manner, like he thought I was going batty.”

…

Doolittle, Lieutenant Cole and the other three crewmen of their plane bailed out in rain and fog soon after their bomber crossed the Chinese coast as darkness arrived. Lieutenant Cole landed in a pine tree atop a mountain and was unhurt except for a black eye. He made a hammock from his parachute and went to sleep. At dawn, he began walking, and late that day he made contact with Chinese guerrillas.
He was soon reunited with Doolittle, who had come down in a rice paddy, and their three fellow crewmen. The five joined up with other stranded airmen who had been rescued. The Chinese took them all on an arduous journey, much of it by riverboat, to an air strip, where they were picked up by a United States military transport plane and flown to Chungking, the headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese.

For the record:

Three of the 80 Doolittle raiders were killed in crash landings or while parachuting. Eight others were captured by the Japanese. Three of them were executed, another died of disease and starvation in captivity, and four survived more than three years of solitary confinement and brutality.

Lt. Cole went on to fly transport planes over the Hump. He also served with the 1st Air Commando Group.
Lt. Cole’s page on doolittleraider.com which contains some great photos. Obit from MySanAntonio.com. I had no idea the gentleman lived in Comfort (about 90 minutes up the road from me). Cool storyfrom the Express News in 2018.
Dick Cole’s War: Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commandosounds like a fascinating book.
Rest in peace, soldier.