After bombing targets in Tokyo, [The pilot of #7, Lieutenant Ted] Lawson headed the plane towards China. Running low on fuel, Lawson tried to land the plane on a beach in darkness and heavy rain, but instead crashed in the surf after hitting a wave causing the plane to flip over. The crash seriously injured all the members of the crew except for Thatcher, who was briefly knocked out in the crash but suffered only a bump to his head.<\/p>\n
After regaining consciousness and making it to shore, Thatcher saved the lives of his crew by gathering them on the beach, administering first aid and making contact with some friendly Chinese guerillas who had come upon the crew. He convinced the guerillas to take the crew to safety in inland China. Over the next few days, the crew repeatedly barely escaped capture by Japanese patrols searching for the Raiders. For his bravery in saving the lives of his crew, Thatcher was awarded the Silver Star. His other decorations included the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Chinese Army, Navy and Air Corps Medal, Class A, 1st Grade. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
After they were rescued, Thatcher went on to fly 26 more missions over Africa and Europe until the war ended. He was discharged in 1945<\/p>\n
According to the Facebook announcement, Thatcher married to the love of his life for 70 years, Margaret Dawn Goddard Thatcher, and worked for the Post Office until his retirement in 1980.<\/p>\n
A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. on Monday, June 27 at Garden City Funeral Home in Missoula. A full military ceremony with honors will follow at 11:45 a.m. at Sunset Memorial Gardens where Thatcher will be buried. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be given to the Doolittle Raiders Foundation for scholarships or the River Valley Church, 308 W. Pine St., Missoula, MT 59803.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Doolittle Tokyo Raiders announced the passing of Staff Sergeant David J. Thatcher, 94, who was … Staff Sergeant David J. Thatcher passes<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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