Colonel William “Bill” Bower last of the Doolittle Raider pilots has died

Colonel William “Bill” Bower was the last surviving pilot of the famed “Doolittle Raiders” in World War II, whose air attack on Japan in April 1942, just four months after Pearl Harbor, lifted American morale in the early days of the war.

He volunteered for the first U.S. attack on Japan, which was led by Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle on April 18, 1942. Bower piloted one of the 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers launched from the U.S.S. Hornet to attack Tokyo, the Japanese capital, and other Japanese cities.

Bower flew his B-25, with a crew of five, to Yokohama, where they bombed the docks of Japan’s second largest city. They eventually parachuted over China; the nighttime jump was his first from an airplane.

In a wartime diary, Bower wrote on the morning of the raid that he wasn’t nervous. “This was it, adventure, my chance to be a first-timer, but most important perhaps our success would do much to bring this mess to a quicker end.”

Colonel Bower died Monday January 11, 2011 at his home in Boulder, Colo. He was 93 years old.

You can read more on the Doolittle Raid here.