page_title: Jimmy Doolittle
section_title: Reserve status
hierarchical_section_title: Jimmy Doolittle / Military career / Reserve status
caption_attribution_description: English: Eddie August Schneider (1911-1940) and Donald Ryan Mockler in the Times Union of Brooklyn, New York on 29 May 1932
context_page_description: James Harold Doolittle was an American military general and aviation pioneer. He made early coast-to-coast flights, won many flying races, and helped develop instrument flying.
  Doolittle studied as an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1922 and earning a doctorate in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1925. He was a flying instructor during World War I and a Reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps, but he was recalled to active duty during World War II. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for personal valor and leadership as commander of the Doolittle Raid, a bold long-range retaliatory air raid on some of 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 and Doolittle was celebrated as a hero.
  Doolittle was promoted to lieutenant general and commanded the Twelfth Air Force over North America, the Fifteenth Air Force over the Mediterranean, and the Eighth Air Force over Europe.
context_section_description: In January 1930, he advised the Army on the construction of Floyd Bennett Field in New York City. Doolittle resigned his regular commission on February 15, 1930, and was commissioned a Major in the Air Reserve Corps a month later, being named manager of the Aviation Department of Shell Oil Company, in which capacity he conducted numerous aviation tests. While in the Reserve, he also returned to temporary active duty with the Army frequently to conduct tests.
  Doolittle helped influence Shell Oil Company to produce the first quantities of 100 octane aviation gasoline. High octane fuel was crucial to the high-performance planes that were developed in the late 1930s.
  In 1931, Doolittle won the first Bendix Trophy race from Burbank, California, to Cleveland, in a Laird Super Solution biplane.
  In 1932, Doolittle set the world's high speed record for land planes at 296 miles per hour in the Shell Speed Dash. Later, he took the Thompson Trophy race at Cleveland in the notorious Gee Bee R-1 racer with a speed averaging 252 miles per hour. After having won the three big air racing trophies of the time, the Schneider, Bendix, and Thompson, he officially retired from air racing stating, "I have yet to hear anyone engaged in this work dying of old age."
  In April 1934, Doolittle was selected to be a member of the Baker Board. Chaired by former Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, the board was convened during the Air Mail scandal to study Air Corps organization. In 1940, he became president of the Institute of Aeronautical Science.
  The development of 100-octane aviation gasoline on an economic scale was due in part to Doolittle, who had become Aviation Manager of Shell Oil Company. Around 1935 he convinced Shell to invest in refining capacity to produce 100-octane fuel on a scale that nobody needed since no aircraft existed that required a fuel that nobody made. Some fellow employees would call his effort "Doolittle's million-dollar blunder" but time would prove him correct. Before this the Army had considered 100-octane tests using pure octane but at $25 a gallon it did not happen. By 1936 tests at Wright Field using a cheaper alternative to pure octane proved the value of the fuel and both Shell and Standard Oil of New Jersey would win the contract to supply test quantities for the Army. By 1938 the price was down to 17.5 cents a gallon, only 2.5 cents more than 87 octane fuel. By the end of WW II the price would be down to 16 cents a gallon and the U.S. armed forces would be consuming 20 million gallons a day.
  Doolittle returned to active duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps on July 1, 1940 with the rank of Major. He was assigned as the assistant district supervisor of the Central Air Corps Procurement District at Indianapolis and Detroit, where he worked with large auto manufacturers on the conversion of their plants for production of planes. The following August, he went to England as a member of a special mission and brought back information about other countries' air forces and military build-ups.
caption: 1932, flying for the Hoover League
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