||| |—|—| | | | 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.
