At first glance, I don't even recognize him. Nine years ago, Hank Potter was a vibrant, jolly soul, full of laughter, fire and stories of being Jimmy Doolittle's navigator on the famous B-25 raid of Tokyo in 1942. Today, he and the 11 other "Doolittle Raiders" who were able to make the event marking the 59th anniversary of the raid are a different group. The youngest of them is now 80, and time has taken its toll. Several need wheelchairs, and none of them are moving very fast. How did this happen? I don't feel as if I've aged in the past nine years-how could they have aged so much?
The fire is actually still there, somewhere inside them. Twelve B-25 bombers had flown to the event to give what might be a final homage to the Army Air Corps crews who took on the high-risk challenge of bombing Japan in the dark, early days of World War II. As the bombers' powerful radial engines simultaneously came to life with a smoky, bone-vibrating sound and rumble, the Raiders leapt to their feet with a yell, fists raised in exultation and tears watering in fierce, young-again eyes. For a moment, they were their 22-year-old selves again, taking on adventure and adversity on the deck of a carrier in the windswept Pacific seas.
But if their hearts still hold the fire, their bodies are slowly failing them. When organizers began planning the anniversary event, there were 22 Raiders fit enough to make the party. By the time the event happened, there were only 12. Time waits for no one-not lovers, not children, not even pilots who wish for one more moment with the sun on their wings. And those who took to the air by the thousands in the last great battle for the world are leaving us-1,100 of them every day, according to recent reports.
Like a child watching a dying parent, I want to ask them to linger; to tell me one more story, give me one more insight into the world they knew and the lessons it taught them before they go. But time presses, their transport is taxiing out, and I cannot stop its movement. Soon they will all be gone, leaving only the planes that they flew to remind us of their story. And one day, those planes may be gone from the skies, as well.
Fifty years from now, when there are perhaps only a few B-25s left in the world, will we still fly them? The World War I planes rarely fly anymore. They're too rare; too rickety. We've repaired and rebuilt the WWII planes several times over already, but I can imagine the day when spare engine parts can no longer be found, fuel itself is too hard to come by, or the hazards of losing the last remaining example become simply too high. Perhaps one day a crowd of people will even gather at Oshkosh to watch the last radial engine puff to life on a stand, like they did for the Wright Flyer engine at AirVenture last year. Indeed, our children and grandchildren may very well look upon WWII as an event as ancient and distant as the Civil War is to us, its planes unrecognizable relics from a time too long ago to seem real.
