Sentimental General

Sentimental General Tough, stocky, sentimental James Harold Doolittle, Sc.D., man of culture and scrappy legend of U.S. aviation, received a present from the White House last week. The present: the star of a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army Air Forces. To Jimmy Doolittle, onetime crack amateur boxer, who turned his back on a fat job in commercial aviation to get a shot at the Jap, this came at an appropriate time: within the week of the bombing of Tokyo.

He deserved it. Aeronautical engineer, speed flyer, nerveless experimenter in anything aeronautical, Doolittle had contributed as much as any, more than most, to the advancement of commercial and military flying. As a professional soldier he was the first to take off, fly and land by instruments. He set distance records, tested wings, engines, anything. He once flew across the Andes, his legs in plaster casts, to demonstrate a U.S. plane.

Doolittle was not merely the ace of aces in sky stunting. He was not only air-minded; he had an air mind. He alone dissented from the Baker Board findings in 1934 when other committee members scoffed at a separate air force.

In 1930 Doolittle quit speed flying in the Army, went to work for Shell Petroleum Corp. In July 1940 he heard the drone of warplanes, pulled on his harness again and went back to the Air Corps. (He had been a major in the Reserve during the decade.) He needled the Allison engine plant for production, got results. He studied manufacturing techniques to boost plane output. Once he took time off to pin newly won wings on the uniform of Jimmy Jr., at a Texas training field.

"In the excitement," said sentimentalist Doolittle later, "I forgot to return my son's salute. I felt like a heel."

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