“And so is Jimmie Doolittle. There’s some say that Jimmie is the greatest flyer of them all, but he says he isn’t. I don’t know whether we should take his word for it or not. He may be prejudiced. Anyway, he’s one of the best liked flyers in the country. James Doolittle is a little fellow. That is, he’s short. Just 5 feet 2, but every inch a scrapper, and every inch nerve.
“Anybody who talks about Doolittle likes to tell the story of the time he went down to Chile for the Curtiss Company to demonstrate a new type of flying plane to the government. The Chilean government was pretty particular. It wanted only the best, so it decided to have five countries compete in a mock fight, England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, and the plane that won the battle would be the one bought for the Chilean army.
“Well, Curtiss asked the Army Air Service if they could borrow the Army’s crack test pilot, Jimmie, and the Army lent him. Doolittle went down there all set to win. But there was a party for the aviators before the battle, and the aviators, all being young, and good fellows, got very jolly, and decided that each of them would have to put on a stunt to entertain the others. Now Doolittle decided that his best bet was acrobatics, so he balanced on the window ledge, to show his best handstands and other tricks that he’d learned in college. A brace or something on the window gave way, and down went James into the street, landed on both feet, and broke both ankles. Just before the big show! Well, they took him to the hospital and put both ankles in a plaster cast.
“The show went on, and the hero wasn’t there. But was he resting peacefully at the hospital? He was not. With the help of a friend, he cut off the plaster cast, had himself hoisted into an ambulance, and taken to the field. When he got there, they strapped his feet to the rudder bar, and he was all set to go into his act. Only the German plane was in the air. Doolittle zoomed up, and there followed one of the prettiest dog fights that anyone there had ever seen. Doolittle maneuvered and bedeviled that German plane until it turned tail and retired. James circled around once or twice to show that he was cock of the walk, and then came down to get the Chilean contract for the Curtiss people. That’s the way James Doolittle does things.
“How did he get so scrappy? Well, he was a born fighter. And then, he grew up in a gold camp in the Klondike, and if there was any place harder than a gold camp in Alaska in those days, it would be hard to find. Jimmie was born in Alameda. California, in 1896. His father was a carpenter and miner, and left for the Klondike in ’97, the year before the big rush to Dawson in ’98. Well, two years later he sent for his wife and the boy James.
“Jimmie’s first scrap was with an Eskimo child. He drew blood, and was so frightened that he cried as loudly as the Eskimo warrior. But he never stopped fighting after that first fight. Maybe it was because he was so small that he had to fight. Anyway, he usually was fighting boys bigger than himself, and he got so good that he’d whip them to a frazzle every time. It gets to be a habit, you know, and any way, he was born scrappy. Ask anyone.
“The Doolittles left the Klondike, and moved back to California with their obstreperous son, and I imagine the Klondike parents breathed a little easier. In California Jimmie went to school, and on the side became Amateur Bantamweight Champion of the Pacific Coast.
“When he’d been graduated from High School Jimmie went on to the University of California, same college that Hawks had attended. He went on fighting, still in the bantamweight class. But one day down in the gymnasium, the boxing coach put him in the ring with a middleweight for some practice. Jimmie knocked him out. And he knocked out the second middleweight, and the third middleweight. So the coach, seeing that he had struck gold, entered Jimmie in the match with Stanford, but in the middleweight class. The crowd roared when they saw the little bantam getting into the ring with a pretty husky middle. The middleweight thought that it was a joke on him, and was careful not to hit hard. But he needn’t have been so kind. Jimmy Doolittle retaliated by knocking him stiff and cold in a few minutes.
“Jimmie didn’t graduate. In 1917 he married Jo, and settled down to serious things, such as going out to Nevada and becoming a gold miner, and later a mining engineer. I might say a word about Jim and Jo. They’re known as the inseparables. They’re always together. They’ve got two kids, who are thirteen and eleven years old, and who can fly in their daddy’s footsteps. The family leads a gypsy life, flying from one army field to another, but they have a great time.
“Well, I’m getting ahead of my story. Let’s get back to the War. Because the war broke out then, you know, and Jimmie joined the air service. His first lesson, they turned him over to an instructor by the name of Todd. They were still on the ground, when they heard a crash, then another crash. Two planes had collided in the air. First one dropped, then the other, close to Jimmie’s plane. One of the pilots was killed; the other pilot and his passenger were badly hurt. Doolittle helped them out, and went back for his first lesson.