The "Greatest Generation" knew how to keep a secret, something ours has not learned.
 

THEIR GENERATION KNEW HOW TO KEEP A SECRET, ----NOT TODAY-

Nolan Herndon - Doolittle bombardier had rare slant on raid Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times Tuesday, October 16, 2007 Nolan A. "Sue" Herndon, a member of the Doolittle Raiders who was held captive in the then Soviet Union after participating in the bombing run on Japan that gave Americans a morale boost four months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 88.

Mr. Herndon, who was a navigator-bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Forces,died Oct. 7 of pneumonia at Dorn-VA Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., his family said.

Historians have called the April 18, 1942, attack a key event in World War II that pushed the Japanese to make strategic errors and lifted U.S. spirits when there had been little to cheer about during the early days of the conflict. Mr. Herndon's plane was the only one of 16 B-25 bombers to stray from then-Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle's orders to fly to China after striking Tokyo and other cities.

Officially, the U.S. War Department blamed a shortage of fuel for the plane landing on a Soviet airstrip outside Vladivostok. But late in life Mr. Herndon, by then the sole surviving member of his plane's crew, began sharing another theory: His plane had been on a classified mission to catalog airfields that might be used for attacks on Japan and to test the Soviet Union's resolve as an ally by seeing if the plane would be allowed to refuel and continue to China. "We needed information about Russia to see what they would do,"

Mr. Herndon said in a 2001 story in the State, the daily morning newspaper in Columbia,S.C. "The whole thing was kept secret." When the plane touched down, the Soviet Union - which had yet to go to war with Japan - held the five-man crew captive for more than 13 months. They escaped after paying an Afghan smuggler $250 to take them to a British Embassy in what is now Iran. "I think I was hooked into something I didn't know about. I would have gone anyway. But it's always been a burr in my side," Mr. Herndon, who served as the flight's navigator and bombardier, told the State in 2002.

A number of unusual occurrences made Mr. Herndon conclude that his B-25 had a unique extra assignment. They included the last-minute addition of a 16th plane - his - to the raid; the pilot and co-pilot later taking high-level positions in military intelligence, and the plane's carburetors being altered to burn more fuel than the other planes, providing a convenient cover story for the Soviet landing, Mr. Herndon said in the 2002 story.

Upon leaving the aircraft, pilots Edward York and Robert Emmens both spoke fluent Russian, a curiosity "that always bothered" Mr. Herndon, said Tom Casey, manager of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders organization. The pilots, who died years ago, never spoke about the issue, said Carroll V. Glines, the Raiders' historian who has written three books on the subject and co-wrote Doolittle's autobiography. "All I know is, Nolan was there, and I wasn't, but I could never find any clues to confirm that it happened that way," Glines said last week. Calling it "a mystery,"

Casey said military officials never would confirm or deny Mr. Herndon's story. None of the Raiders, who had launched their B-25s from the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet, reached the airfields in China where they were supposed to land. The other 15 planes crash-landed in China or their crews bailed out. All but three of the 80 airmen survived the raid; three were captured and executed by the Japanese and one starved to death in a prison camp.

Nolan Anderson Herndon was born Dec. 12, 1918, in Greenville, Texas, and had five siblings. His father was a meat packer. He spent two years at Texas A&M University before joining the military in 1940. After the war, Mr. Herndon raised cattle in Edgefield, S.C., and became a wholesale grocer. Mr. Herndon married Julia Crouch, a cousin of fellow Doolittle Raider Horace Crouch, and kept in touch with other Raiders through annual reunions.

Only 12 Raiders survive, and several are in their 90s. Still, reunions are scheduled through 2009, driven in part by an order given by their one-time commander in the Pacific. Doolittle, who died in 1993, said the group should continue to meet until only two men remain. The final two will uncork a bottle of cognac from 1896,the year of Doolittle's birth, and make one last toast before disbanding.

When his comrades raise their glasses in April at the 66th reunion in Dallas, Mr. Herndon will be included in their standard salute: "Gentlemen, to our good friends who have gone West."

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The Greatest Generation.

Amen to that.

Amen!

I'm truly sick of hearing this America-bashing. Suggesting that today's flight crews cannot keep secrets is neither true nor patriotic nor helpful in the fight against terrorism or anything else. But I guess it must be fun, judging by the regularity of these kinds of disparaging remarks. Pretty disappointing, though.

Supe,

Back then if the New York Times had printed classified information in the paper, the public would have refused to buy an issue and they might have gotten the idea.

These days we have people who feel that they know more than anyone else and if they find out something that is classified they feel free to publish it or put it on the internet.

Fun? Nope but hopefully someday these releases of classified material by "do gooders" will end.

IMO, leaking CIA agents names is treason. In Washington, it's SOP.

+1

I agree, the media should be more circumspect with what they publish.

Its hard to "leak" something that has already been let out in the open. The female agent that you are referring to had already told loads of people what she did for a living, so her "cover" was already gone.

Otherwise I totally agree...

I feel like I'm the Pelicanhead with the most favorable impression of America. And I'm a liberal. Wassup with that? No, I don't have any positive impression of our current "president." None. In my view, that guy is a massive national and international embarrassment. But you guys have NEVER, EVER, heard me badmouth America. Never.

Greatest generation? I don't really think so. Luckiest generation? Maybe. Generation that had the most fun? Yup. America would be having a BLAST if we were actually fighting a war against a country. Do I think we're in the toilet as a nation and as a people, compared to 1940? Absolutely not. My impression of America is that it is at least as prepared for a WW2-style challenge as that other generation. That war was very clearly the right one to wage. This Iraq thing is, very clearly......NOT. THAT, gentlemen, is the difference. Not our patriotism. Not our fidelity or devotion.

You guys, impression of America is substantially more negative and critical than mine. By a long shot.

I believe that those in our military are some of the few patriots that remain in our nation. Otherwise, bashing America seems to be the trendy thing to do.

Cool story though, imbedded in one of the bravest and most important air strikes of WW2.

The Chicago Tribune reported accurately that America had the Atomic bomb well before it was used. I don't remeber the exact date, but a quick Google check should convince doubters. The leak was never prosecuted. That would have been done by a member of the greatest generation.

The entire Manhatan Project leaked like a sieve. Stalin knew about the successful test almost as soon as the American delegation did. He was fully informed through his spy network before he was briefed by the US.

The only way someone can logically state that the WWII generation knew how to keep its secrets and the current generation doesn't is to have access to all secrets from both eras and compare what leaked and what didn't. Since none of us here have that information, it is ridiculous to make such claims.

It is further illogical to use this article as an example of "keeping secrets". The article is about a now-deceased Doolittle Raider who spent his later years trying to reveal what he thought was a classified operation that he was a part of.

People on this board regularly claim that US intelligence has thwarted terrorist plots that would have cost US lives, but that such inelligence successes are not reported. If such successes do exist, the fact that no one has ever heard of them is powerful evidence that this generation keeps secrets well. It certainly couldn't mean that there were no successes to reveal, right? Since the story of such success would be the biggest news of our generation but has been supressed, Ipso facto, this generation keeps its secrets as well as any other generation.

I'm still sitting on gov/mil secrets from 30-something years ago. I wouldn't violate the trust placed in me by our government. So, IMO the blanket condemnation of our generation is specious. Well, excluding the pols in Washington who see political/policy benefit in having loose lips. :rolleyes:

I thought it was well known that Doolittle's Raiders ran out of fuel after being forced to launch from further away than had been planned - seems like it was due to being observed by the Japanese.

uhmm yeah, supe, I think you missed the LARGE TITLE READING "GENERATION..." not "flight crews" (as you have distorted) had a culture of doing what is smart.

yep, the culture we have now is to dog those who want the US to win decisively. FOr example; see your post.

It kind of irks me when the republicans "justify" the "leaking" of Valerie Plame's identity. To say "Well, yah know, this and that was already out" doesn't make it right. Lots of people have the access code to my gated community. Does that make it "right, or OK" to freely give it out to people who have no legitimate business here, or for a 3rd party who doesn't live here to give it out willy nilly to his buddies? I think not.

And the Democrats aren't any better, they'll throw someone under the bus at the drop of a hat for a moment of political expediency just as fast.

Joe, a couple points:

1) Seems to me that the departed Mr. Herndon (RIP) DID actually disclose his mission, I don't understand how this is to be considered keeping a secret.

2) As anyone familiar with the UCMJ will explain, the "outing" of an agent or sensitive information does not mean that anyone involved is free to talk about it. You can end up in a Federal prison just as easily for "ratification" of someone's effort to disclose information as you can for disclosing it in the first place. Never means never.

3) None of the above excuses the behavior of the New York Times and others who are so intent on damaging the Bush Administration that they will damage our National Security to do so.

+1

Yet they seem to be getting a 'pass' anyway.

Like Judith Miller?

You're making assumptions.

First, Disclosure: I am not American, and I have a brother in the RAAF (Royal Australian Airforce).

I feel quite justified in referring to those who fought in WWII as "the Greatest Generation". This was a generation of men and women who struggled through the Great Depression only to find themselves plunged into a world wide conflagration that few (initially at least) anticipated being involved in. These were not men who regarded the military as a career or necessarily were inclined to military life but never the less were prepared to not only abandon their lives, but also to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their country and civilization. This in no way disparages those in the military today--I have absolute respect and admiration for them. It does disparage that portion of today's generation prepared to abdicate their responsibility to their country and to Western civilization to others braver than they. It disparages those who criticize or ridicule the members of the Armed Forces because of their own political views.

Our generation, MY generation, cannot compare to "The Greatest Generation" not because of those who are in the military today, but because of those who aren't.

I cannot say enough for "The Greatest Generation". My hat's off to each and every one of them every time. 1000 are passing each day. The stories are fading fast. My wifes father is 84 and still remembers a few things. Her uncle was pushing a dud bomb out the bay of a B-25 and fell along with it into the English Channel, never came back. They didn't want all of this, but it was brought down upon them and they took the challange.

I'm raising my wine glass in a toast to them right now. Bless all those WWII heroes.

Every generation always thinks the one (or two) following it are the ones leading the country on the path to ruin and turns into a nation of old grouches lamenting that "the country is going to hell in a handbasket".

Very cool story, although it seems that at its core, it's just more of this same old grouchy disdain for anything that's not "your"way. Your way works for you. That's fine. Other ways might work for others.

It's hard for me to accept that at times too - probably human nature, but just sayin'.

One of the most naive comments I've heard in a long time. Had to be spoken by a young guy, or someone who doesn't read much. This generation couldn't carry water for those guys.