Retired Col. James H. Macia Jr., one of the famed Doolittle Raiders, passed away Dec. 20 in Philadelphia. His family informed us of the loss. According to Monday’s San Antonio Express-News obituary, he was 93 and died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Macia, then a lieutenant, was the navigator-bombardier in one of the 16 B-25s that took off from the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, in the daring bombing raid on the Japanese home island. Led by then-Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, the raid was a huge psychological lift to the US, coming less than five months after Pearl Harbor. The crew of Macia’s aircraft bailed out over China after the raid; he made it to safety. (Click here for post-raid photo of Macia posted at Doolittle Raiders, the raiders’ official Web site.) (For more, read Doolittle’s Raid from the April 2009 issue of Air Force Magazine.)
A new Navy missile could fill a long-range air-to-air need for the U.S. Air Force’s fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation fighters. The Navy’s portfolio acquisition executive for munitions posted information on the AIM-424 Long Range Air-to-Air Missile online on Aug. 22, the same day it unveiled the project at the service’s…