James H Doolittle

What appear to be remains of planes that took part in the first successful air raid on Japan in World War II have been found in China, the leader of an expedition that searched for the planes said Friday. The remains include part of the B-25B bomber flown by the leader of the raid, Col. James H. Doolittle, said Bryan Moon, an artist and history buff from Frontenac.

Sen. Barry M. Goldwater (R-Ariz.) was awarded the Aero Club of Southern California's eighth annual Howard Hughes Memorial Award last week at a banquet in the Spruce Goose Dome in Long Beach. Presentation of the award to Goldwater for his "outstanding contribution to aviation and space flights" was made by William R. Lummis, 57, chairman of the board of Summa Corp. and Howard Hughes' first cousin.

If all the world's a stage, then Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis enters the "third act" of her life this year an affluent and "confident" player with $200 million at her bidding, a longtime acquaintance writes in the August issue of Vanity Fair. Edward Klein interviewed 60 friends of the former First Lady, who turns 60 on July 28, and paints her as a "woman who has managed to develop into an ever-more appealing, self-confident personality"--who's also ever-so rich.

John Wayne's yacht really made waves in the harbor at San Pedro during the surprise party Dr. Chadwick Smith hosted to celebrate Corinna Smith's big birthday. While 150 guests cruised for dinner and dancing, after boarding at the Wild Goose Dock: Berth 84, she blew out 50 candles on a spice cake containing a $20 gold piece. The next morning, family and close friends gathered at brunch to present jewelry created exclusively for her.

Nolan A. "Sue" Herndon, a member of the Doolittle Raiders who was held captive in the Soviet Union after participating in the audacious bombing run on Japan that gave Americans a much-needed morale boost only four months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 88. Herndon, who was a navigator-bombardier in the Army Air Forces, died Oct. 7 of pneumonia at the William Jennings Bryan Dorn-VA Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., his family said.

"No, I'm not a hero. I just did the best I possibly could. And I was lucky to get through it ..." --J. Royden Stork for "A Veteran's Story" on Military.com Web site * What he got through was Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle's daring raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942, the first successful American retaliatory strike after Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II. J.

Fate had tossed them together, 350 "rejects" for whom there was no space in 1909 in the city's only other high schools--Polytechnic and Los Angeles. After a makeshift year in an abandoned Olive Street grammar school, they had moved to a permanent home, built among the bean fields on the southern outskirts of the city. It was called Manual Arts High School. Those pioneers had lofty goals, and more than a slight flair for the dramatic.

From the city core to the distant suburbs, the hulking concrete-and-steel structure of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is an immense jewel box of shared recollections -- touchdowns, home runs, presidential speeches and two Olympics. It's the place where Jesse Owens came to run, Jack Dempsey to fight, Sonja Henie to skate, Nelson Mandela and JFK to speak, Sandy Koufax to pitch, Pope John Paul II to preach and the Rolling Stones to rock.

For some of us pieds noirs who lived in Algiers, Nov. 8, 1942, was that strange and wondrous night when we were awakened by the sound of air raid sirens and for some time took up the routine (new to us) of deciding whether to go down to the shelter--or not.

Robert E. Bush, whose heroic actions as an 18-year-old Navy medical corpsman in the Battle of Okinawa saved the life of a badly wounded Marine officer, cost Bush his right eye and made him the youngest sailor to receive the Medal of Honor during World War II, has died. He was 79. Bush, a successful Olympia, Wash., businessman whose war story was chronicled in Tom Brokaw's bestselling book "The Greatest Generation," died Tuesday of kidney cancer in an assisted-living facility in Tumwater, Wash.