CINCINNATI

Did you ever hear of Doolittle's Raiders?   I wrote about them on 9/25/2017.  (You can search for it by entering 'doolittle' in the search block or by finding that date in the archive.)

There were sixteen B-25 bombers in that raid, each with a crew of five making a total of 80 airmen involved.  Three men died during the attack.  Eight men were captured by the Japanese.  Four of those captured survived the war, three were executed and the other died from disease.  

The last of the 'Raiders" died last year at the age of 103.  One of the last four survivors of the raid was Thomas C. Griffin.  He moved to Cincinnati after the war and lived here for over sixty years.  He resided in Green township where he and his wife raised two sons and operated an accounting business.   Tom died in 2013 at the age of 96.  

Tom was a navigator on a bomber that dropped it's bombs on Tokyo and then made it to the mainland of China where he bailed out and avoided capture.  When rescued, he went back to flying and was shot down over North Africa.  Griffin was taken captive and held almost 2 years in a German prison camp until the war ended.

Major Tomas C. Griffin is a man of whom Cincinnati is rightly proud.  

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMY . . . of whom I am rightly proud.