William John Dieter

William ‘Billy Jack’ Dieter (October 5, 1912 – April 18, 1942) was a sergeant in the United States Army Air Corps.

Dieter was born on October 5, 1912, in Vail, Iowa, to Jesse T. Dieter and Mary McCalpin Dieter.

After living in Vail, the family moved to South Dakota, Potosi, Missouri, and eventually, Tulelake, California.

Dieter attended only one year of high school.

Dieter then enlisted in the Field Artillery on October 29, 1936, at Vancouver Barracks in Washington.

Dieter served a three year term, then left the Army.

After finding it difficult to find work, Dieter enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps on December 12, 1940.

Dieter was a bombardier on the Green Hornet, the sixth plane to take off from a US carrier as part of the Doolittle Raid, a bold long-range retaliatory air raid on the Japanese main islands, on April 18, 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attack was a major morale booster for the United States.

Dieter was one of only three airmen to die in the raid itself, when his B-25 Mitchell, 'Green Hornet', crashed on the coast of China, having run out of fuel.

Dieter was trained as a bombardier, and served as a Douglas B-18 Bolo and North American B-25 Mitchell bombardier with the 95th Bomb Squadron of the 17th Bomb Group at McChord Field in Washington, and then at Pendleton Field in Oregon, until he was selected for the mission to be led by James Doolittle in February 1942.

In early 1942, then lieutenant colonel James Doolittle volunteered for and received General H.H. Arnold's approval to lead the top secret attack of 16 B-25 medium bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), with targets in Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, Osaka and Nagoya.

After training at Eglin Field and Wagner Field in northwest Florida, Dieter and the other volunteer flight crew members proceeded to McClellan Field, California for aircraft modifications at the Sacramento Air Depot, followed by a short final flight to Naval Air Station Alameda, California for embarkation aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.

On April 18, 16 North American B-25 Mitchell crews took off from the Hornet, reached Japan, and bombed their targets.

Dieter was the bombardier in the sixth plane, the 'Green Hornet', piloted by 1st Lt. Dean E. Hallmark and 2nd Lt. Robert J. Meder

While one crew chose to land in Russia due to their bomber's unusually high fuel consumption, the other fifteen planes then headed for their recovery airfields in China.

Most of the other crewmen who participated in the one-way mission bailed out over China when their B-25s ran out of fuel; however, the Green Hornet crashed near the coast of China.

Dieter and fellow crew member S/Sgt.

Donald E. Fitzmaurice, drowned in trying to swim to shore (possibly due to internal injuries suffered in the crash), while the other three crew members of the 'Green Hornet' were captured shortly afterwards by the Japanese.

More significantly, Japanese commanders considered the raid deeply embarrassing, and their attempt to close the perceived gap in their Pacific defense perimeter led directly to the decisive American victory at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.

When asked from where the Tokyo raid was launched, President Roosevelt coyly said its base was Shangri-La, a fictional paradise from the popular novel Lost Horizon.

In the same vein, the U.S. Navy named one of its Essex-class fleet carriers the USS Shangri-La (CV-38).

Dieter’s military and civilian decorations include the following:

Dieter also received the following awards and honors:

The following is an excerpt from a letter written in August, 1945, by Earl L. Deiter, S.J., (Capt) Chaplain, U.S. Army.

Note that all spelling, capitalization, and punctuation is "as is" in the original.

As noted in the letter, Dieter was originally interred at Shipu, China by Chinese civilians near the site of the crash.

His body was returned to the States for reburial after interment at Schofield Barracks, Mausoleum #2 in Oahu, Hawaii.

In 1949, his body was relocated permanently to Golden Gate National Cemetery.

The Doolittle Raid is viewed by historians as a major morale-building victory for the United States.

Although the damage done to Japanese war industry was minor, the raid showed the Japanese that their homeland was vulnerable to air attack, and forced them to withdraw several front-line fighter units from Pacific war zones for homeland defense.