The wingspan of the B25 bombers just about covered the width of the flight deck.
Posted on 04/18/2016 6:54:01 PM PDT by Retain Mike
One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Only improbable, audacious ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska. Captain Francis Low, a submariner, first broached to Admiral Ernest King the idea of flying Army Air Corps medium bombers from an aircraft carrier. King thought Low’s “foolish idea” might be have merit and ordered him to contact Captain Donald Duncan, King’s air operations officer. Duncan reviewed the specifications of all Army Air Corps bombers and decided the B-25B could do the job. King then sent Low and Duncan to General Hap Arnold who bought the idea and directed Colonel Jimmy Doolittle to make the raid happen.
By mid-January 1942 Doolittle began assembling the planes and crews. As one of the first MIT aeronautical engineering graduates, he agreed with Duncan’s assessment in choosing the B-25B, and he knew exactly how to turn a possibly into a reality. Few Army personnel underwent training or had experience for operations involving ocean navigation. Therefore, crews were chosen from the 17th Bombardment Group flying anti-submarine patrols from the newly build airfield at Pendleton Oregon.
Unaware of this pending mission, the 24 crews flew to Minneapolis where the bombers received extensive modifications. Installing auxiliary fuel tanks increased capacity over 70%. Range eventually increased from about 1,000 to 2,500 miles by also utilizing flying configurations and practices designed to conserve fuel. Increased fuel weight then required removing a 230 pound liaison radio. The lower twin 50cal. remote control turret was later removed at Eglin Field Valparaiso Florida saving 600 pounds. An armored 60 gal fuel tank was then inserted. Cameras were installed to record bombing results.
While in Minneapolis Captain David M. Jones told the officers their destination was not Columbia, South Carolina for anti-submarine patrol. They were asked to volunteer for a dangerous, important, and interesting mission for which no information could be given. Nearly everyone volunteered even though most were new to their trade. Of the 16 pilots Doolittle actually took on the raid, only five had won their wings before 1941 and all but one was less than a year out of flight school.
Jimmy Doolittle, now a Lieutenant Colonel, met all 140 of them in Eglin’s operation’s office. He said, “If you men have any idea that this isn’t the most dangerous thing you’ve ever been on, don’t start this training period…..This whole thing must be kept secret. I don’t want you to tell your wives…..Don’t even talk among yourselves about this thing. Now does anyone want to drop out?” Nobody dropped out.
The crews began training with Lieutenant Henry L. Miller, USN (who later became an “Honorary Tokyo Raider”) on Elgin Field 48 days before the raid. The crews used a remote runway flagged to mark available carrier deck length. In three weeks the crews learned to take off at near stalling speeds of 50-60 miles per hour, overloaded, and in just over a football field length. At Pendleton pilots had used a mile long runway to build up speed to 80-90 miles per hour.
As the mission armament officer, Captain Charles Ross Greening improvised substitutes after removal of the top secret Norden bombsight and the lower gun turret. At Elgin he and Tech Sergeant Edward Bain designed a substitute bomb sight with two pieces of aluminum. The “Mark Twain” device could be rapidly fabricated in the base metal shop and provided superior accuracy for this low-altitude bombing assignment. On board the Hornet Greening installed a pair of black-painted broom handles in each aircraft's tail cone to intimidate attacking enemies.
Twenty two bomber crews hedgehopped across country to San Francisco. The sixteen crews who reported no problems had their planes lifted aboard ship. Those who reported problems, however minor, were devastated when Doolittle excluded them from the mission.
The Hornet left the U.S. and joined the Enterprise at sea April 13, 1942. Admiral Chester Nimitz, in charge of the Pacific Fleet had now risked two of his four aircraft carriers in this venture along with 14 escorts and 10,000 total crew members. The task force steamed towards Japanese home islands just four and one half months after the Pearl Harbor disaster. From radio traffic analysis, the Japanese knew the carriers that had eluded their six carrier strike force on December 7 were underway somewhere in the Western Pacific. Unbeknownst to the Americans, along with other special measures, the Japanese patrolling picket boats were 650 miles, not 300 miles, offshore to provide the intelligence needed for an overwhelming counterattack.
The Army crews shared quarters with the navy squadrons. Edgar McElroy, pilot of #13 aircraft remembers bunking with two members of Torpedo Bomber Squadron Eight. He later learned that they along with all but one member of the squadron died at the Battle of Midway.
On April 18 the U.S. task force encountered this new picket line 170 miles before their planned launch. The pilots rushed to their planes as the ship plowed into the wind and 30 foot swells. Each aircraft received at this last minute 11 extra 5gal gas cans. A Navy officer twirled a flag, listened for the right tone from the revving engines, and felt for the precise moment to release them on the pitching deck. The pilots, who had never flown from a carrier, saw the ship’s bow reaching into a grey sky, and then plunging into a dark angry ocean sending salt spray across the deck. When released, they quivered down a bucking flight deck keeping the left wheel on a white line to just miss the superstructure by six feet. Every plane and 80 crewmen lifted safely from a rising deck into the stormy sky; even Ted Lawson who discovered he had launched with flaps up and initially fell towards the ocean.
The bombers proceeded independently to Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya and Kobe. While underway the industrial targets had been briefed by Lt Stephen Jurika who was naval attaché in Tokyo 1939-1941. He imparted information from not only his own travels, but from a Soviet counterpart who had spent several years researching possible bombing targets. The Soviet Union was long aware of Japan’s plans to attack both China and U.S.S.R. (strike north), or to attack colonial possessions of the U.S, Netherlands and Britain (strike south).
Colonel Doolittle considered the raid a failure. Doolittle saw the raid as secondary to the bombers safely arriving and providing Chennault’s air force an offensive capability. Every plane had been lost. One plane and crew was interred in the Soviet Union. Fifteen crashed in China resulting in three crewmen deaths.
Eight crew members were captured all of whom were condemned to death. Tojo asked Hirohito to commute all the sentences, but the Emperor allowed three to be executed. One later starved to death in Japanese prison camps.
However, the raid proved a crucial moral victory demonstrating Americans could do the impossible even if their battle fleet was blasted to wreckage, and they were losing an army in the Philippines. The Imperial Navy suffered a devastating loss of face, because Admiral Yamamoto had guaranteed the Emperor that the Americans would never attack their home islands.
I Could Never Be So Lucky Again by James H. Doolittle with Carroll V. Glines
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Ted Lawson
Hirohito: Behind the Myth by Edward Behr
Charles Ross Greening, Colonel United States Air Force http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/crgreening.htm
Greening, Colonel Charles Ross (1914-1957), HistoryLink.org Essay 10320 http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10320
Captain David M. Jones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Jones
The Navy Targets Tokyo http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2015-04/navy-targets-tokyo
Letters from the Precipice of War (Steven Jurika) http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2014-01/letters-precipice-war
Sorge: A Chronology (Excerpts 1942) http://richardsorge.com/excerpts/1942/index.html
The Official Website of The Doolittle Tokyo Raiders http://doolittleraider.com/
Doolittle Raiders 70th Anniversary: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&qpvt=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&FORM=IGRE http://doolittlereunion.com/
North American B-25 Mitchell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Mitchell
Pendleton Field http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=C9A94F93-E10A-57A0-B694B0AFFE69184C
A final toast for the Doolittle Raiders http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/opinion/greene-doolittle-raiders
80 Brave Men the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Roster http://www.doolittleraider.com/80_brave_men.htm
Jonna Doolittle Hoppes "Jimmy Doolittle Raid" presentation at Historic Flight Foundation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgt8PMoRGG8
Doolittle Raiders: The Last Reunion (VIDEO) http://salem-news.com/articles/may302013/doolittle-raiders-rn.php
Doolittle Raider forum, etc. http://www.doolittleraider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=128&t=579 http://www.dontow.com/2012/03/the-doolittle-raid-mission-impossible-and-its-impact-on-the-u-s-and-china/ http://www.historynet.com/countdown-to-the-doolittle-raid.htm
Men like these should never be forgotten. The reference and links contain much more information.
But the environmental damage from the raid was not taken into effect...
Nice read. Just substitute morale for the instances you use moral.
The wingspan of the B25 bombers just about covered the width of the flight deck.
Read “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” about 30 times as a kid.
Met 4 of the Raiders at a DC reception about 15 years ago. Three were in wheel chairs. Not a dry in the house.
Arguably one of the most audacious missions - land/sea/air - in all of WW2. Amazing training and even more so, courage of the crews.
When you see footage taken from the starboard side of the carrier launching these, it is truly incredible how large the planes are compared to the ship. WWII carriers were much smaller than those of today, and even though these were small bombers they were still so much bigger than anything taking off carriers at the time. Back then catapults weren’t yet used; the ship had to face into the wind to help them get aloft.
To this day I’m surprised that Japan didn’t immediately seek a peaceful resolution after this attack (not necessarily surrender, but a ceasefire of sorts); while the physical damage was minimal, they were shocked that Tokyo itself could be reached like that.
I agree, though it is a shame that there was no real plan for the post-Tokyo part of the raid. Many planes simply ran out of fuel and the crews had to bail out (some in hostile territory).
For audacity it definitely ranks up there with the German airborne assault on Crete and the Japanese attack on Singapore; both took high losses for incredible gains. In Singapore the Japanese were so depleted/outnumered and their supply lines so stretched they thought the British expected them to surrender (with good reason), and were shocked that the British themselves were surrendering.
Yup. Amazing stuff. And those early carriers had an inline flight deck unlike today where the flight deck is angled. Must have been a real panic to try and clear a deck of aircraft so you could recover inbound aircraft.
He misspells Eglin a couple of times but inexplicably gets it right a couple of times too.
In November 1942, Jimmy Doolittle was in charge of the Operation Torch Air Forces when the United States entered the European War in Operation Torch. Operation Torch was headed by George S. Patton in charge of the American Troops who invaded North Africa at Casablanca on the Atlantic side. American and British Forces invaded Algeria and Oran on the Mediterranean Coast.
Unfortunately the Japs took revenge on the Chinese who helped the American fliers by murdering a couple hundred thousand
A gorgeous sight!
A few years ago got the opportunity to buy a ride on a B-25. What a thrill! The look of the plane, feel, smell and the sound. Wish I could do it every day.
It was easy to imagine those boys taking off and not a one of em scared, knowing they were off to the biggest adventure in a lifetime.
According to their website, there are now four surviving raiders. The most recent to pass on was Major Thomas Griffin, the navigator on Crew 9. He survived the mission over Japan and went on to join a bomber unit in North Africa. He was shot down on a subsequent mission and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp.
Major Griffin rejoined his comrades on February 26th of this year.
I have many similar memories of men who worked for my parents before and after the war. One was my childhood hero who jumped into St. Mere Eglise on D Day with the 82nd Airborne.
Another jumped into a foxhole in the Pacific when under Japanese air attack and landed on another soldier.....his brother....whom he had not seen in two years. Another survived the Bataan Death March.....
The stories are unforgettable.........
Thanks
I believe you’ll find that Eisenhower was in charge of Operation Torch, with Patton and Fredendall commanding the western and center task forces respectively.
Well I was stationed at Sewart AFB, not Stewart, Or Seward.
After the creation of ZIP codes in 1965, my mail didn’t get sent to New York, or Alaska as often.
Absolutely.
I remember watching a documentary that addressed something about which I had been curious for some time; I wondered what became of the Japanese planes returning to their fleet after the battle of Midway. I couldn’t understand where all those planes for a group of carriers could land; in this documentary, footage (probably from the surviving Japanese surface ships) shows them ditching nearby (probably in hopes of at least rescuing the aircrews for future battles).
I won’t forget.
Thank you.
HLB
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