We worked also with the Bureau of Standards on the development of aids to navigation, to assist in finding the airport and making the blind landing. We worked with the Radio Frequencies Laboratories radio company at Boontown, New Jersey, and worked with a very fine group of people led by Dr. Hull at Boontown, New Jersey, in the development of radio equipment for the flight. The Sperry people, of course, built the directional gyroscope and the artificial horizon. I worked very closely with Elmer Sperry, and his father put Elmer on the job to develop those instruments.

An unabridged transcript of the 1960 oral-history interview with James H. Doolittle from which this excerpt was taken.

On a day late in 1939, fall of 1939, I took off, flew a set course and landed, being up about 15 minutes, without having seen the ground. I was covered with a canopy. In the front seat I carried Second Lieutenant, now Brigadier General, Kelsey, who was a safety pilot, to make sure that I didn't run into anybody else while up there, but he didn't touch the controls. This was the first time that a flight had been made--takeoff, flight and landing--completely on instruments. I think that flight, and the assisting in the development of the instrumentation necessary to do the flight, was my greatest contribution to aviation.

I had worked on it over a year. I started in 1938, got the airplanes, the equipment, assisted in the development of the equipment. I made dozens and dozens, literally hundreds of practice flights before making this final flight.

Incidentally, one of the experiments being conducted by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for Safety in Aviation was a fog-dispersal apparatus, and at Mitchell Field they had set up this fog-dispersal apparatus. It was a tremendous blowtorch that was supposed to heat the air up and disperse the fog, similar to Fido that was developed in England, and we had it on the field here. As far as I know, that's the first time that was tried.

p that had a quarry in Cleveland; he used to break the rock in his quarry by heating it up, and he noticed that, whenever there was a fog and he turned on this tremendous heat to heat up the rock in his quarry and break it off by differential expansion the fog would dissipate. So he wanted to try this as fog dispersal.

This morning, for the first time, there was a zero-zero fog. You couldn't see from here to the wall. So we went out to see this thing work, and it didn't work very well, because there was a slight breeze and the breeze would blow away the cleared place as soon as it was cleared. In order to have that sort of thing work you have to have a dead calm, so the dispersed place stays there instead of blowing away.

I told Harry Guggenheim, who'd come out to see this, "This is a wonderful time to test this airplane. Let's test it."

Harry said, "All right, go ahead, but take Ben Kelsey with you in the front seat." I wanted very badly to go alone in order to prove that there was nothing funny about it. So we took off in a dense fog and flew around in the fog, but by the time we came back, 13 minutes later, the fog had risen enough so that we could have made a comfortable landing under the fog without any instruments, had we been able to see out; we could have landed by looking out without the instruments. But the takeoff of that flight was actually made in dense fog, which isn't generally known, and we flew around in the fog for some time before we came in to land. When we came in to land, the fog had risen slightly.

Q: Who conceived of that George Washington route for the airmail?

Doolittle: I believe it was either the George Washington Society or a relative or descendant of George Washington who flew with me on the flight and was a member of the society. We endeavored to fly over practically the entire route covered by George Washington in his life in one day; I think we flew 17 hours that day. I was then with Shell. That was after 1930. In 1930, I resigned from the Air Corps and joined the Shell Oil Company, and that flight was made afterwards.

I had various chores. When I first went with Shell, my primary chore was to develop and sell aviation products. A secondary chore was to bring favorable publicity to Shell, and this flight was made with a Shell airplane, Shell pilot, Shell products--so Shell was very interested in sponsoring any such flight both because it was a good thing to do and because it brought them favorable publicity. Everything went very smoothly.

There was only one other flight that got some publicity. I made the first flight tying together the three capitals of Canada, the United States and Mexico. This was 1932. I took off from Ottawa, flew to Washington, then on down to Mexico City. This was a fairly interesting flight for two reasons: In the first place, when I got to Washington the weather was very bad and I had trouble landing there. The second trouble was that in those days, with a high compression engine such as I had, you could not buy gasoline anyplace, and so I carried a little can of tetra-ethyl lead in back of my seat.

In flying over the mountains, coming into Mexico City, I had to go up about 18,000 feet, and I began to feel real goofy. I began to feel so goofy that I couldn't understand it, because at this altitude the altitude shouldn't have bothered me. But I began to feel that I was passing out, so I began to consider whether I should get out of the airplane. There was no place to land. I was right over the most jagged mountains of that range, coming in from Tampico to Mexico City. But I thought, If I pass out I'll surely crash, so as soon as I can't answer a simple question, I'll jump.

So I would say to myself, "What year did Columbus discover America?" "1492." "What year was I born?" and so forth. "How much is 13 times 13?" As soon as I couldn't answer a question, I was going to jump. However, I did get over the mountains, get down lower and get in to Mexico City before I passed out. I landed there very sick and regurgitated almost as soon as I got out of the airplane. I didn't know until the next morning what was the matter. This little can of tetra-ethyl lead had burst, and the tetra-ethyl lead, which is extremely toxic, had gone all through the airplane. I was sick for several days. Had I not been in such excellent physical shape, I would have had serious trouble.

Q: Did you have times when you had to make a decision whether to jump or try to save the plane, and so on?

Doolittle: Yes, any aviator's career is full of those things--testing new aircraft, flying across country in bad weather. You are continually faced with problems. The chap that lives a long time is the chap who does not fly beyond his limitations. One man may have limitations of one type, another chap would be able to do what that chap couldn't, simply because he knows more about that airplane, about the terrain, about the weather. Consequently, one man can fly in weather with a certain type of airplane and another can't. I think all of us in aviation have always tried to fly within our limitations, but in finding out what our limitations were we have frequently pushed them closely enough so that we've had close calls.

As soon as the war was over, I returned to the Shell Oil Company and became a vice president and director, and was with the Shell Oil Company until the end of 1959, a year and a half ago. At that time, I came with the Space Technology Laboratories as chairman of the board. Space Technology Laboratories is the technical management organization that does systems engineering and technical direction for the Air Force in connection with their ballistic-missile and space programs. Space Technology Laboratories also does some research and some development and some testing. They do not mass-produce, but they do fabricate some payloads for satellites, some electronic equipment of one type or another.

I believe we will have airplanes for a long time to come. I believe that the missile is not an immediate replacement for the airplane but is, rather, complementary to it. The two work together.

I have dealt with policy, with plans and with people, so I have had nothing to do with the operations and with the technical development that has taken place here. Space Technology Laboratories is manned by a uniquely competent group of young people. There are some excellent scientists and excellent engineers, and some people who are outstanding in that they not only have great scientific and technical abilities but they know a great deal about people, about dealing with people and about management.