He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet in March 1940 while a student studying aeronautical engineering by day and working nights in the drafting department of Douglas Aircraft Company.

Lieutenant Lawson was accepted as a volunteer for the mission, led by then-Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle to bomb Tokyo and several other cities with 16 carrier-launched B-25 Mitchell bombers from aboard USS Hornet.

According to Lawson in his book, the plane's unusual name evolved from a minor training accident where the aircraft tail scraped the ground on take-off.

Launching the mission 170 miles (275 km) farther out than planned after bombing their targets in Japan, all of the bombers ran out of fuel short of their intended recovery airfields in non-Japanese occupied China.

In four nights and two days in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., the entire story was worked out, although approval to publish the book was not given until after information about the raid was released by the War Department in April 1943.

Through friends in the Los Angeles area, Ted made contact with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Sam Zimbalist, and the film was launched in 1944, starring Van Johnson as Lawson, alongside Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum.

[4] Along with the majority of the surviving Doolittle Raiders, Lawson was eventually repatriated back to the United States, and in his case, for further medical care including a second amputation of his injured leg and reconstruction of his lower face.

His decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and the Chinese Army, Navy, and Air Corps Medal, Class A, 1st Grade.

It was originally named only for Walter R. Lawson (no relation to Ted), an Army Air Corps flyer who earned the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I.