As you probably know, there were several additional crews who did not get to participate in the Doolittle Raid - even though they'd trained just as hard and volunteered for a very dangerous mission. Bert Hartzell was one of these men and he passed away last week.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/mercur ... =131565646
A lot of the guys who had volunteered for the Raid were carried on board the Hornet just in case. From my research at least one of the Raiders who flew the mission was originally from a "replacement" crew (many of the replacements were just as qualified but some were disqualified because they'd simply "squawked" something on their aircraft), but most just didn't get to go.
After the Doolittle Raid launched, the Army guys were stranded on the Hornet and then landed in Hawaii. There, a number of them were stuck for several weeks as they waited for things to get cleared up and orders to be given since they were on a secret mission. This was an extremely frustrating experience for some of them as they were trained to fight and sometimes ended up doing odd jobs for a time because their arrival was unexpected at their destination.
Ryan
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Aerial Photographer with
Red Wing Aerial Photography currently based at KRBD and tailwheel CFI.
Websites:
Texas Tailwheel Flight Training,
DoolittleRaid.com and
Lbirds.com.
The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD. - Prov. 21:31
- Train, Practice, Trust.
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