The Doolittle Raiders, the Silver Goblets, and the Last Toast in Dayton

A bottle of cognac waited 71 years to be opened. When it finally was, on November 9, 2013, only four of the eighty men who had made the promise were still alive to taste it. This is the story of the Doolittle Raiders, the silver goblets, and the last toast.

What Was the Doolittle Raid?

Four months after Pearl Harbor, the United States was losing on both fronts. Wake Island had fallen. The Philippines were falling. The country needed something to push back against the darkness.

General Henry Arnold and Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle devised the answer: fly North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers off an aircraft carrier and strike the Japanese home islands. The B-25 had never taken off from a ship. Its weight and wingspan made the idea look impossible on paper.

Doolittle had the numbers checked by every engineer he could find. The math said it could work if everything went exactly right. He was 45 years old, already a legend - holder of a doctorate in aeronautics from MIT and the man who had completed the first entirely instrument-guided blind flight in 1929. He did not have to lead the mission. He volunteered.

Who Were the Doolittle Raiders?

The 80 crews were hand-picked volunteers told only that the mission was dangerous, important, and required skill. They trained at Eglin Field, Florida, coaxing fully loaded B-25s airborne in fewer than 500 feet of runway - less than most of them had ever attempted in the type. They practiced until the takeoff roll became instinct.

Sixteen B-25s were lashed to the flight deck of USS Hornet, which sailed west from San Francisco knowing there was no plan to recover the aircraft. Every crew understood they would have to reach the coast of China or ditch in the ocean.

The Launch: 700 Miles Off the Plan

On the morning of April 18, 1942, the Hornet was spotted by a Japanese patrol boat while still 700 miles further from Tokyo than the mission required. That extra distance eliminated any margin for reaching China with fuel to spare.

Doolittle launched anyway.

The sea was running heavy, the flight deck pitching in deep Pacific swells. His co-pilot was Richard Cole, a 26-year-old master sergeant from San Antonio, Texas. They advanced the throttles and used every inch of that pitching deck. The lead Mitchell cleared the bow. The fifteen planes behind it followed, one by one.

They flew low - under 1,000 feet for most of the crossing, some crews skimming the water. When they reached Japan, people on the ground looked up with confusion before the bombs fell. No one had prepared Japan for the possibility that this was coming.

What Happened After the Raid?

The flight out was brutal. Fuel gauges dropped toward empty with China still ahead in the dark. Three Raiders were killed before the mission ended. Eight were captured by the Japanese. Three of those eight were executed, in direct violation of the laws of war.

Others crash-landed on the Chinese coast or bailed out over the mountains in the dark, aided by Chinese civilians and Nationalist soldiers who risked everything to shelter them. The Japanese Army’s retaliation against those communities was devastating. The men who survived carried that knowledge for the rest of their lives.

Seventy-one of the eighty Raiders came home.

What Are the Silver Goblets?

At an early postwar reunion, the survivors were presented with eighty silver goblets - one for each man who had flown, living and dead, each engraved with a name. The goblets were kept in a specially made oak and glass case, stored at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs between reunions.

The ceremony they established was simple and unchanging: all eighty goblets were put on display, upright for the living, turned face down for the dead.

They also set aside a bottle of very old cognac. It would not be opened until the last reunion. At that final gathering, however many men remained, they would open it together and drink to the ones who were gone.

The Reunions: Decades of Showing Up

The Raiders gathered every year. Through the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s. The face-down goblets accumulated. Second careers, businesses, farms in Iowa, ranches in Texas, sheet metal shops in Ohio - but every year, whoever could make it, came.

By the early 2000s, fewer than twenty survivors were still attending. By 2010, fewer than ten. Some came in wheelchairs. A few could no longer make the trip at all. But those who could, did.

By 2013, four were left.

Richard Cole, 98 - Doolittle’s co-pilot on the lead aircraft off the Hornet deck, who went on to serve through Korea and Vietnam before retiring as a lieutenant colonel
Edward Saylor, 93 - flight engineer and crew chief who understood every mechanical detail of his aircraft
David Thatcher, 91 - a gunner who showed extraordinary courage in the raid’s immediate aftermath when his crew went down and others needed help
Robert Hite, 93 - one of the eight captured, who endured three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner and came home to build a full life

The Last Toast: November 9, 2013

On November 9, 2013, those four men gathered at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Seventy-six of the eighty goblets were turned face down in the case. The museum had become the permanent home of the collection. It was not going back to Colorado Springs. Everyone in that room understood this was the end.

A museum official brought out the cognac. The four men were helped to their feet. Glasses were poured. They raised them.

They drank to the fallen - to the three men executed by the Japanese, to the ones who had come home and died in the decades since, to all seventy-six of them. Among those honored was Jimmy Doolittle himself, who had died in 1993. His goblet had been face down for twenty years.

Richard Cole, asked what he thought about in that moment, said he thought about the mission. He always thought about the mission.

Where Are the Silver Goblets Now?

The goblets remain on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. All eighty names are visible under the glass. The case is open for anyone who wants to come and read them.

Richard Cole returned to Texas after the 2013 reunion and continued accepting honors and giving interviews with patience and good grace for nearly six more years. He died on April 9, 2019, at age 103, having outlived every fellow Raider.

When word reached Dayton, someone went to the museum and turned the last silver goblet face down.

All eighty are down now.

Why This Story Matters for Aviators

The Doolittle Raid’s strategic impact was limited in material terms. The damage to Tokyo was real but not decisive. What the mission accomplished was harder to quantify: it demonstrated that the Pacific War could be fought offensively, and it forced Japan to divert air defense resources from front-line operations. The psychological effect on the American home front was immediate and significant.

But the story of the silver goblets is about something else - the culture of accountability and remembrance that runs through serious aviation. These were men who made a promise to each other and kept it across 71 years, across wars and careers and the ordinary erosions of age. They showed up. Every year, whoever could make it, came.

For pilots, that ethos is not confined to the history books. It lives in every squadron reunion, every memorial flight, every name on every wall of a flying club that has ever lost a member. The goblets made it visible.

Key Takeaways

On April 18, 1942, 80 volunteers flew 16 B-25 Mitchells off USS Hornet to bomb Tokyo - the first offensive strike of the Pacific War, launched 700 miles further from the target than planned.
3 Raiders were killed, 8 were captured, and 3 of those 8 were executed by the Japanese in violation of the laws of war; 71 came home.
After the war, survivors established a reunion ceremony using 80 engraved silver goblets, with the cups of the dead kept face down - a tradition that continued for seven decades.
A bottle of very old cognac was set aside to be opened only at the final gathering; it was opened on November 9, 2013, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, with four survivors present.
Richard Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot on the lead aircraft, was the last surviving Raider; he died on April 9, 2019, at age 103.
The complete goblet case is on permanent public display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, with all eighty goblets turned face down.

Sources: National Museum of the United States Air Force; James M. Scott, Target Tokyo.