General James Doolittle is an American legend who helped pioneer aviation and he was also a decorated World War II hero.
This weekend at the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa people were invited out to see sculptor Benjamin Victor work on a statue that will immortalize Doolittle. It’s one of four pieces Victor needs to finish by June for the D-Day celebration in Normandy, France.
“It’s tight, it’s going to be a really tight timeline,” said Victor. “But, they are so important, they have such amazing stories and they all represent a different aspect of the 8th Air Force, so it is so important.”
One of the people in attendance was Jimmy Doolittle’s granddaughter Jonna. We talked to her about her famous grandfather who led the Doolittle Raid marking the first aerial attack on the Japanese mainland when 16 B-25 bombers took off from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific on April 18, 1942.
“One thing about my grandpa is most people thought he was this crazy risk taker,” said Jonna Doolittle Hoppes. “The truth was he was the master of the calculated risk, almost everything he did he thought it through, he planned it and he was very smart.”