GARDNER, Kan. — Retired Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole had one heck of a 100th birthday party. It lasted for days.

Thursday night, he appeared on the Jumbotron at the Kansas City Royals baseball game and was applauded by a standing ovation of some 32,000 fans.

Friday night in the Commemorative Air Force Hangar at New Century Airport at Gardner, Kansas, veterans from myriad wars purchased copies of Cole’s newly released biography, then offered him a toast in personalized shot glasses full of Irish whiskey.

On Saturday, the one-of-a-kind World War II veteran climbed into the passenger’s seat in the cockpit of a PT-19 for a flight across a perfect blue sky.

And on Sunday, he tucked the key to the city of Olathe, Kansas into his suitcase, rolled up an enormous poster of his famed B-25 painted on an image of the front page of the April 18, 1942, Joplin Globe and headed home to Texas with “wonderful, wonderful memories,” he said.

Through it all, he was referred to several times by many admirers as a hero. And through it all, he insisted he is not one.

‘This is it’

Cole is the only American serviceman of the 16 million who served in World War II to have flown in three elite groups: Doolittle’s Raiders, the Himalayan Hump Route pilots and the 1st Air Commandos.

Cole was born Sept. 7, 1915, in Dayton, Ohio, the capital city of aviation. His only desire was to be a pilot, he said. He remembers his first flight clearly.

“It cost me $1,” he said. “It was in a Ford Tri-Motor — nicknamed the Tin Goose — with some World War I aviator who was going from county fair to county fair selling rides.”

He also remembers exactly how he felt once he was airborne for the first time.

“I thought, ‘This is it.’ This is what I want to do.”

He enlisted in the Air Force on Nov. 22, 1940, and had completed his pilot training and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in July 1941.

As co-pilot to Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, Cole was in the first B-25B of 16 to launch from the deck of the USS Hornet in the famous strike against Japan four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. They knew when they launched it would be a one-way flight.

“Not one said, ‘Not me,’” said Dennis Okerstrom, an author who finally persuaded Cole after years of trying to allow him to write a book based on his life. “It’s been said to have been the single most courageous act in military history.”

One-way flight

Their flight plan called for Doolittle’s Raiders to bomb military targets in Japan and then continue westward to China because landing the bombers on the ship when finished would be impossible. Fifteen of the aircraft reached China; the other landed in the Soviet Union. All but three of the crew survived, but all the aircraft were lost. Eight crewmen were captured by the Japanese army in China; three of them were executed.

During a question-and-answer session at his birthday celebration Friday night, Cole still can recall their approach to Tokyo with clarity.

“It was a bright, sunny day like today,” Cole said. “I was impressed with the beauty of the place. It was all nice and green and orderly looking. People were on the beach, swimming, playing baseball.”

“Our target,” Cole said, “was the whole northwestern part of Tokyo, and we were supposed to do as much damage as we could.”

The damage wasn’t significant, but the raid boosted U.S. morale, and set into motion a chain of Japanese military events that were disastrous to that country’s war effort.

Not done

After the mission, Cole wasn’t done flying: He volunteered for the famed Hump route, ferrying much-needed supplies over the Himalayas to China in shoddy aircraft and horrible weather. Historians say it was more dangerous than flying bombing missions over Germany. More than 600 aircraft were lost.

Three months later, Cole volunteered for combat duty with the 1st Air Commando Group, an elite, highly secret unit charged with the first aerial invasion of a country. They were the forerunners of today’s Special Operations Command that includes SEAL Team Six and Delta Force, Okerstrom noted. Flying at night, Cole towed cargo gliders filled with British troops into the jungles of Burma behind enemy lines.

“I was a young second lieutenant looking for flying time,” Cole said of his reason for continuing to volunteer.

He would become a legend — the only serviceman to fly in all three groups. He served in the Air Force until retiring in 1966, earning three Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star Medal, the Air Medal with oak leaf cluster and a Chinese medal for valor.

In April, he accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor awarded by Congress, on behalf of the Doolittle Raiders. Cole, in turn, presented the medal to the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

His was a story that begged to be told, said Okerstrom, himself the son of a World War II pilot.

The book

An English professor at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, and author of other World War II-era books, Okerstrom met Cole at an air show.

“He thinks people ought to be writing about heroes, and he doesn’t consider himself a hero,” Okerstrom said. “I told him he served with a whole lot of guys who didn’t come home and he has to speak for them. That sealed the deal.”

They spent days together at Cole’s Texas home conducting interviews, looking through scrapbooks and reading letters Cole had written home to his family. The result was “Dick Cole’s War,” which Cole and Okerstrom autographed Friday night.

A portion of the proceeds will go to the Doolittle Scholarship Fund and to support the Heart of America Wing of the Commemorative Air Force.

“We decided we should do something that was helpful other than the raid,” Cole said of working with Doolittle to establish the scholarship fund years ago. Cole has traveled the country selling signed lithographs of their airplane for $20. The proceeds go to the scholarship fund.

The art

Kermit Dyer, a Kansas City-based vintage aviation artist, also thought Cole’s story was worthy and wanted to do something special for his 100th birthday: He superimposed an image of the B-25 Doolittle and Cole piloted onto a newspaper from the day of the raid. He chose one published by The Joplin Globe.

“To be around these guys, it brings a tear to your eye,” Dyer said Friday night. “People like Cole, they say they’re not heroes. But he is. He is.”

At the weekend air show, Dyer sold prints signed by Cole, with a portion of the proceeds generating funds for veterans.

Among the many lining up to see Cole was Maj. Donovan Davis, a former B-1 pilot from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, which has a distinct connection with the famed Doolittle Raid: It’s home to three of the units that conducted the raid — the 34th Bomb Squadron, the 37th Bomb Squadron and the 432nd Attack Squadron.

Davis had the privilege of seeing Cole and two other surviving Doolittle Raiders during their final reunion at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in 2013.

“Their story is huge in the Air Force,” said Davis, who 19 months ago named his newborn son after Cole. “We literally talk about it in our squadron every Friday. That’s how ingrained in the modern day it is. These guys were legends, and when new guys join our squadron, we make sure they know about it. Everyone should.” 

Private air force

The Commemorative Air Force was organized more than 50 years ago to honor the men and women who built, maintained and flew airplanes in World War II. The group, which now ranks as one of the largest private air forces in the world, collects, restores, flies and shares with the public vintage historical aircraft. The Heart of America Wing’s air show is held each September.