New Evidence Surfaces
In August 1995, George Chandler received a most interesting letter from author C.V. Glines who had moved from Washington to the University of Texas at Dallas to be curator of the Jimmy Doolittle papers that had been left to the Doolittle Library at the University.
Letter from C. V. Glines
C.V. Glines, in examining the Doolittle files, found a copy of a letter that Lanphier had sent to General John P. Condon dated December 15, 1984. The key part of the letter to Condon that Glines called to Chandler’s attention is the sentence that Tom writes about the Yamamoto shoot down, “Rex now opines that he shared in the destruction of Yamamoto’s bomber by implying, I gather, that he hit it while it was elsewhere in the air before I shot it into the treetops. The bomber I shot the wing off of was intact from nose to the tip of its tail, when I first fired at it, far inland from where Barber had to be at the time, chasing a bomber over the sea”.(emphasis added)
This letter is the “smoking gun” that, in Lanphier’s own words, proves that he did not attack the Yamamoto airplane that had already been damaged and set afire by Rex Barber as set forth in the Victory Credit Board of Review commissioned by Dr. Kohn.
Letter from Thomas Lanphier, Jr.
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