How the Mighty Are Fallen

David M. "Davey" Jones died earlier this week right here in Tucson. He was one of the Doolittle Raiders that helped bomb Tokyo in a surprise reprisal a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I first heard of the Doolittle Raid in the fifth grade, when I read a copy of the book, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, by Captain Ted W. Lawson. The book was also made into a movie of the same name in 1944. I remember it vividly, because in the story, the author was shot down, had some broken bones and was in excruciating pain. I had to look up excruciating as a vocabulary word, since I didn't know what it meant.

Davey Jones, a Lieutenant at the time of the raid, retired a two star general in 1942.

Jones was also shot down over North Africa later in the war, and spent two and a half years in a Stalag, leading the digging of a tunnel, which was the inspiration for the movie, The Great Escape.

Here is the local article about his passing.