Richard E. Cole

Richard Eugene Cole (September 7, 1915 – April 9, 2019) was a United States Air Force colonel. During World War II, he was one of the airmen who took part in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, Japan, on April 18, 1942. He served as the co-pilot to Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle in the lead airplane of the raid by sixteen B-25 bombers, which for the first time took off from an aircraft carrier on a bombing mission. Cole remained in China after the raid until June 1943, and served again in the China Burma India Theater from October 1943 until June 1944. He later served as operations advisor to the Venezuelan Air Force from 1959 to 1962. He retired from the Air Force in 1966 and became the last living Doolittle Raider in 2016.