web posted October 9, 2007
EDGEFIELD – Nolan Herndon, 88, who was a member of the famed Doolittle Raiders that bombed Japan in 1942, died Sunday of pneumonia, Edgefield Mercantile Funeral Home director David Burnett told The Associated Press on Monday.

Herndon, a Texas native, enlisted on July 27, 1940, after attending two years of college, according to the Web site http://www.doolittleraider.com  Two years later he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He also graduated from navigator training and completed bombardier training.

Herndon participated in one of the most daring air raids in American history when 16 B-25 bombers took off from an aircraft carrier and bombed Tokyo on April 18, 1942.

The secret air raid, planned by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, was the subject of the book and movie "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and the book "Four Came Home."

After the raid, Herndon was held for about a year in Russia and returned to the United States in May 1943, where he held several assignments until the end of World War II, according to the Web site.

Herndon retired from active duty Nov. 4, 1945.

Funeral services were scheduled for Wednesday at Edgefield United Methodist Church, Burnett reportedly said.

The official obituary from the Mercantile Funeral Home stated: Mr. Nolan Anderson Herndon, Sr., 88, of Edgefield, husband of Julia Crouch Herndon, died Sunday, October 7, 2007 in Columbia.

Funeral services will be held Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 2 p.m. at Edgefield United Methodist Church with burial in Travis Park Cemetery in Saluda. Mr. Herndon was born in Greenville, Texas and is a member of the Edgefield United Methodist Church.

He is retired from the Wholesale Grocery Business. He was Veteran of WW II Army Air Corps and he was a member of the Doolittle's Raiders. Survivors include his wife; two sons, Nolan A. (Sue) Herndon, Jr., West Columbia, James M. (Debbie) Herndon, Pawley's Island; 5 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. The family will receive friends from 1 to 2 p.m. before the service at the Church Fellowship Hall. Edgefield Mercantile Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

http://www.edgefielddaily.com/edgefield101007.html

Tuesday, October 16, 2007 (SF Chronicle) Nolan Herndon - Doolittle Bombardier had rare slant on raid Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times

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 meatpacker. 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."