Aviation pioneers were drawn to Northeast Florida's hard, wide beaches, and Pablo Beach, as Jacksonville Beach was known until 1925, served as a takeoff or terminal point for several early coast-to-coast flights. The first of these, in 1912, took 115 days to reach Pablo Beach from Pasadena, California. On September 4, 1922, Army Lieutenant James H. ("Jimmy") Doolittle took off from the sands of Pablo Beach in a DeHavilland DH-4 biplane and landed in San Diego less than 24 hours later after one fuel stop at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas. This established a new speed record and helped demonstrate the practicality of transcontinental flight. Four months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Doolittle led the first bombing raid against Tokyo and other targets in the Japanese home islands, a daring stroke launched from the aircraft carrier "Hornet" that gave a psychological lift to the nation's war effort. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor and later became a Lieutenant General.
