From Yahoo! News, AP. Always sad when I have to report that any World War II veteran died, but this man was a very special one. He was one of the only five remaining Raiders still alive. Now there are just four.
Mr. Griffin died February 26, 2013. According to the news report, he was a B-25 navigator on the "audacious Doolittle Raid on the mainland of Japan." This raid, although doing insignificant damage to Japan and losing every plane, was huge for American morale in those hard days after Pearl Harbor.
He was one of the original 80 volunteers for the April 18, 1942, mission reasoning "We needed to hit back." Sixteen bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. Before that, it was believed that B-25 bombers could not take off from such a ship. They did and mission accomplished.
Running out of fuel, the Griffin's crew were forced to parachute out over occupied China. With the help of locals, they managed to evade Japanese patrols and eventually got back to the United States.
A Hero Among Heroes. --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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