ALAMEDA — The death of the last survivor of World War II’s famed Doolittle Raid on Tuesday will be marked this month at the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum as part of commemorating the 77th anniversary of the mission.
Alameda native Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led the April 1942 strike, which buoyed American spirits in the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
At the time the Japanese mainland was considered beyond the reach of American forces.
Doolittle’s co-pilot, retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole, died Tuesday in San Antonio, Texas. At 103, Cole was the last survivor among the 80 airmen who took part in the daring daylight mission.
“The last Doolittle Raider, an icon of our times, now enters the pantheon of citizen heroes who persevered at the darkest hours of World War II,” said Bob Fish, a trustee with the Hornet aircraft carrier museum.
As part of honoring Cole’s memory, a wreath will be cast into San Francisco Bay.
The Doolittle mission began when 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers — which were not designed to take off or land on an aircraft carrier — were loaded onto the Hornet in Alameda and the ship set out under the Golden Gate Bridge for the Pacific.
The men planned to land in China after carrying out their bombing runs.
But a Japanese patrol boat sighted the U.S. Naval task force before the Hornet reached the spot picked for the raid to launch, prompting the aircraft to take off early, because Doolittle feared they may have lost the element of surprise.
As a result, the planes ran low on fuel following the bombings and could not reach the Chinese airstrips.
Fifteen reached the Chinese coast, however, where the crews bailed out or crash-landed. One bomber made it to the Soviet Union, where its crew were interned.
Most of the airmen made it to safety after local Chinese residents sheltered them.
The Japanese captured eight raiders and executed three of them. One died in enemy captivity from disease and starvation. Three men were killed bailing out or during crashes.
Doolittle’s raid caused minimal damage. But Japan retaliated by attacking the American base at Midway in June 1942 — a turning point in the Pacific war — after wrongly assuming that was where the bombers were launched from.
President Franklin Roosevelt presented Doolittle with the Medal of Honor for leading the mission.
The April 20 tribute also will feature a talk by Richard Nowatzki, who as a sailor aboard the Hornet watched the bombers launch from the carrier to strike Japan.
Born in Chicago in 1922, Nowatzki was on the flight deck when Doolittle’s aircraft took off for Japan, about 750 miles away.
Nowatzki was also on board when Japanese torpedoes struck the Hornet in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, when it sank with the loss of about 140 men.
The Hornet was listing severely when the order came to abandon ship, Nowatzki told this news organization in May 2012. He slid down a rope off the ship’s fantail and dropped into the ocean wearing a life jacket. He reached a crowded lifeboat and clung to the side until a destroyer picked him and the others up a short time later.
The current USS Hornet, now a floating museum, was being built at the time of the sinking and was initially to be named the USS Kearsarge. The name was changed in honor of the lost vessel.
In January, the R/V Petrel, a Paul Allen Foundation research vessel, located the sunken Hornet near the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. A 10-minute documentary film about the discovery will be shown as part of the upcoming commemoration, which will begin at 1 p.m.
After his talk, Nowatzki will sign copies of his book “Memoirs of a Navy Major.”
The USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum is located at 707 W. Hornet Ave., Alameda.
The commemoration is free to museum members or with the purchase of regular admission. Ticket prices are $20 adult; $15 seniors, military and students; $10 youth; and free for museum members and children age 6 and younger.
Free parking is available across from the pier where the Hornet is docked.
For information, go to www.uss-hornet.org or call 510-521-8448.