The FReeper Foxhole Revisits The Doolittle Raid (4/18/1942) - April 15, 2005

cv6.org ^

[snippy_about_it]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.


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The FReeper Foxhole Revisits

The Doolittle Raid
April 18, 1942

In the wake of shock and anger following Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt pressed his military planners for a strike against Tokyo. Intended as revenge for Pearl Harbor, and an act of defiance in the face of a triumphant Japanese military, such a raid presented acute problems in execution. No working Allied air base was close enough to Japan. A carrier would have to approach within three hundred miles of the home islands for its planes to reach. Sending surface ships so close to Japan at that time would practically assure their destruction, if not from Japan's own surface forces, then from her ground-based planes or submarine forces.

Still Roosevelt insisted - demanded - that a way be found.

The first piece of the puzzle fell into place in the second week of January 1942. Captain Francis Lowe, attached to the Admiral Ernest King's staff in Washington, paid a visit to Norfolk, Virginia, to inspect the new carrier USS Hornet CV-8. There, on a nearby airfield, was painted the outline of a carrier, inspiring Lowe to pursue the possibility of launching ground-based bombers - large planes, with far greater range than carrier-based bombers - from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

By January 16, Lowe's air operations officer, Captain Donald Duncan, had developed a proposal: North American B-25 medium bombers, with capacity for a ton of bombs and capable of flying 2000 miles with additional fuel tanks, could take off in the short distance of a carrier deck, attack Japanese cities, and continue on to land on friendly airfields in mainland China.

Under a heavy veil of secrecy, Duncan and Captain Marc Mitscher, Hornet's commanding officer, tested the concept off the Virginia coast in early February, discovering the B-25s could be airborne in as little as 500 feet of deck space. The plan now began to develop into action.

On April 8, 1942, the same day that the Americans and Filipinos defending Bataan Peninsula surrendered, Enterprise steamed slowly out of Pearl Harbor. With her escorts - the cruisers Salt Lake City and Northampton, four destroyers and a tanker - she turned northwest and set course for a point in the north Pacific, well north of Midway, and squarely on the International Date Line.



Six days earlier, Enterprise's sister ship Hornet had sailed from San Francisco, also accompanied by a cruiser and destroyer screen. Ploughing westwards, Hornet carried a somewhat unusual cargo. Arrayed across her aft flight deck, in two parallel rows, sat 16 Mitchell B-25 bombers: Army Air Force medium bombers. By all appearances, the bombers were too large to possibly take off from a carrier deck.

Certainly, this is what the men in Enterprise's task force thought when Hornet and her escorts hove into view early April 12. Rumors spread about the force's mission: some thought the bombers were being delivered to a base in the Aleutians, while others speculated they were destined for a Russian airfield on the Kamchatka peninsula. When the Task Force Commander, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, announced "This force is bound for Tokyo" Enterprise rang with a roar of enthusiasm and disbelief.

The plan was more daring than most could imagine. After refueling on April 17, Hornet, Enterprise - the force's Flagship - and four cruisers would leave the destroyers and tankers behind, to make a high speed dash west, towards the Japanese home islands. The next afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle and his crew would take off alone, arrive over Tokyo at dusk, and drop incendiary bombs, setting fires to guide the remaining bombers to their targets. Three hours behind Doolittle, the remaining fifteen B-25s would be launched, just 500 miles from Tokyo. Navigating in darkness over open ocean, they'd be guided in by Doolittle's blazing incendiaries, and bomb selected military and industrial targets in Tokyo, as well as Osaka, Nagoya and Kobe.



Though the bombers could take off from a carrier deck, they couldn't land on a carrier. Instead of returning to Hornet, they'd escape to the southwest, flying over the Yellow Sea, then some 600 miles into China, to land at the friendly airfield at Chuchow (Zhuzhou). If all went well, the bombers would have a reserve of perhaps 20 minutes of fuel. Success depended on the carriers being able to approach within 500 miles of Japan undetected, and survival on the airmens' ability to evade the formidable air defenses expected near the target areas.

Things went according to plan until early April 18. Shortly after 0300, Enterprise's radar made two surface contacts, just ten miles from the task force. As the force went to general quarters, Halsey turned his ships north to evade the contacts, resuming the course west an hour later. Then, a little past 0600, LT Osborne B. Wiseman of Bombing Six flew low over Enterprise's deck, his radioman dropping a weighted message: a Japanese picket ship had been spotted 42 miles ahead, and Wiseman suspected his own plane had been sighted.

Halsey, however, forged ahead, the carriers and cruisers slamming through heavy seas at 23 knots. Still nearly two hundred miles short of the planned launching point, Halsey strove to give the Army pilots every possible advantage by carrying them as close to Tokyo as he dared.



Ninety minutes later, however, the gig was up. At 0738, Hornet lookouts spotted the masts of another Japanese picket. At the same time, radio operators intercepted broadcasts from the picket reporting the task force's presence. Halsey ordered the cruiser Nashville to dispose of the picket, and launched Doolittle's bombers into the air:

TO COL. DOOLITTLE AND HIS GALLANT COMMAND
GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU - HALSEY

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FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links

[GailA]

Good morning ALL. It promises to be beautiful here today. About mid 70s.

[fortheDeclaration]

It seems with Midway, the Japanese got a little careless, tipping their hand with communications on what their target was, not knowing we had cracked their code.

[fortheDeclaration]

Amen to your post!

[The Mayor]

Amen is right!

[Mudboy Slim]

Good mornin' Snippy...you too Sam...Good morning, folks...as I was falling asleep last night, I came up with the solution to our ILLEGAL Immigration...we're gonna call it, "MUD's Solution fer ILLEGAL Immigration!!"

I believe that--sometime this summer or fall--Dubyuh will sign legislation that makes our southern border--and hey, let's not fergit our Northern border--all but impregnable. At the same time, said legislation will require all undocumented workers to register with their local Social Security office within three months to be assigned their FAUX Social Security number (i.e. "IMM666-99-3333") and provide contact information to the authorities. Using this information our newly-empowered BIG GUV'MENT Immigration office, we will begin the process of deporting those who are in our Nation illegally...of course, those who are gainfully-employed may petition fer a 6-month work pass provided they have a legitimate employer willing to go on the hook for them. There's more to this plan, but I've got work to do, please offer input at yer leisure...MUD

[Wneighbor]

Stopping by to say good morning before I head south for the weekend.

I like going south, it feels like I'm going downhill. :-)

[Wneighbor]

Sounds like the beginnin's of a good plan Mud. I'm on board.

[Samwise]

I like going south, it feels like I'm going downhill.

I guess that's why Mom and Dad call Kentucky "down home."

Have a safe trip. Keep in touch.

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone.

[Wneighbor]

Thanks lady!

You have a good weekend - ya hear? :)

[Samwise]

I get to restain the deck. Lucky me!

[Darksheare]

Morning!

[Wneighbor]

oh dear.... that would NOT be on my list of things-to-do.

however, the more pictures and stuff i take off the wall here the more i think i will have to paint before this house sells. ~ick~

[Professional Engineer]

Good morning ladies. It's Friday!

[Samwise]

[19th LA Inf]

At the great Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg, TX, there is a room with a Hornet deck mockup featuring an actual B-25 aircraft. I'm sure it is a later series type modified to look like a B model, with authentic color, insignia and tail number though. The rest of the planes are in a painted wall mural behind it. There is an audio of the unforgettable sound of a Wrignt engine cranking, over and over and over. Unfortunately it never "starts". I'm afraid the ship would have been rolled over the side after about the third failed start attempt on 4-18-42!

[Valin]

On This Day In History


Birthdates which occurred on April 15:
1452 Leonardo da Vinci Italy, painter/sculptor/scientist/visionary
1469 Nanak 1st guru of Sikhs
1684 Catherine I empress of Russia (1725-27)
1707 Leonhard Euler Bassle Sweden, mathematician (Euler's Constant)
1800 Sir James Clark Ross explorer (British Antarctic)
1820 Evander McNair Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1902
1821 Emerson Brown Joseph (Confederacy), died in 1894
1822 Napolean Jackson Tecumseh Dana Major General (Union volunteers)
1829 Mary Harris Thompson 1st American woman surgeon
1837 Horace Porter Brevet Brigadier General (Union Army), died in 1921
1843 Henry James New York NY, US/British writer/critic (Turn of the Screw, Bostonians)
1850 John Munroe Longyear US, capitalist/bank president
1889 Thomas Hart Benton Neosho MO, painter/muralist (Lonesome Road)
1891 Alvin P[leasant Delaney] Carter Maces Springs VA, vocalist (Carter Family)
1894 Elizabeth Mae "Bessie" Smith Empress of Blues (over 200 songs)
1901 Joe Davis English snooker/billiards-world champion (1927-46)
1912 Kim II Sung "President" of North Korea (1945-94)
1917 Hans Conried Baltimore MD, actor (Bullwinkle Show, Make Room for Daddy)
1921 Georgi Timofeyevich Beregovoi USSR, cosmonaut (Soyuz 3)
1924 Neville Marriner Lincoln England, conductor (Minnesota Orchestra 1978)

1929 Adrian Cadbury candy manufacturer (Cadbury, Schweppes)

1932 Nikolai Stepanovich Porvatkin Russian cosmonaut
1933 Elizabeth Montgomery Los Angeles CA, actress (Samantha/Serena-Bewitched)
1933 Roy Clark Meherrin VA, country singer (Hee Haw)
1939 Claudia Cardinale Tunis, actress (Blindfold, 8½, Pink Panther)
1940 Phil Lesh Berkeley CA, bassist (Grateful Dead-Truckin')
1942 Kim Il Jong son of Kim Il Sung, North Korean "President"/sawed-off little twerp/world class fruitloop
1947 DeDe Lind Los Angeles CA, playmate (August 1967)
1947 Linda Bloodworth-Thomason TV producer (Designing Women, Murphy Brown)/FOB
1951 Marsha S Ivins Baltimore MD, astronaut (STS 32, 46, 62, 81)
1951 John L Phillips Fort Belvoir VA, PhD/astronaut
1956 Gregory J Harbaugh Cleveland OH, astronaut (STS 39, 54, 71, 82)
1957 Evelyn Ashford Shreveport LA, 100 meter runner (Olympics-4 gold-1976, 84)
1960 Marvin Clyde Goodwin New Orleans LA, murderer (FBI Most Wanted List)
1965 Soichi Noguchi Yokohama Japan, astronaut

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Deaths which occurred on April 15:
1415 Manuel Chrysoloras Byzantine leader/diplomat (Erotèmata), dies
1472 Leon B Alberti Italian humanist/architect (Philodoxis), dies at 68
1605 Boris Godunov tsar of Russia (1598-1605), dies
1765 Michail von Lomonosov Russian scholar/poet, dies at 53

1865 President Abraham Lincoln dies, at 7:22 am, morning after being shot by John Wilkes Booth

1888 Matthew Arnold English poet, dies at 65
1925 John Singer Sargent US portrait painter, dies at 69
1949 Wallace Beery US actor (The Champ), dies at 64
1975 John B McKay US test pilot (X-15), dies
1980 Jean-Paul Sartre existentialist philosopher/writer (Nobel 1964), dies in Paris at 74
1980 Raymond Bailey actor (Mr Drysdale-Beverly Hillbillies), dies at 75
1982 5 Muslim extremist murderers of Egyptian President Sadat executed
1986 Sergei Nikolayevich Anokhin cosmonaut, dies at 76
1989 Hu Yaobang General Secretary of Chinese Commnist Party, dies
1990 Greta Garbo actress (Anna Karenina, Camille), dies at 84
1993 George Ives, composer dies at 111
1993 Leslie Charteris British mystery writer (Saint), dies at 85
1998 It's reported that Pol Pot (73) died of a heart attack in Anlong Veng, northern Cambodia.
2001 Joey Ramone, punk rock icon, died of cancer in NYC at age 49
2002 Damon Knight (79), science fiction writer and editor, died ( “To Serve Man”)

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GWOT Casualties

Iraq
15-Apr-2004 1 | US: 1 | UK: 0 | Other: 0
US Staff Sergeant Jimmy J. Arroyave Ramadi (northeast of) Non-hostile - vehicle accident


Afghanistan
04/15/02 Galewski, Justin J. Staff Sgt. 28 Army Afghanistan Olathe Kan.
04/15/02 Maugans, Jamie O. Sgt. 27 Army Afghanistan Wichita Kan.


http://icasualties.org/oif/
Data research by Pat Kneisler
Designed and maintained by Michael White

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On this day...
0069 Battle at Bedriacum, North-Italy
1205 Battle at Adrianople Visigoths defeats Emperor Boudouin of Constantinople
1250 Pope Innoncent III refuses Jews of Cordova Spain to build a synagogue
1450 French defeat English at Battle of Formigny in 100 Years' War
1493 Columbus meets with King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella
1632 Swedish & Saxon army beat Earl Tilly
1715 Uprising of Yamasse-Indians in South Carolina
1729 Johann S Bachs "Matthäus Passion" premieres in Leipzig

1738 Bottle opener invented

1755 Dr. Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language
1776 Duchess of Kingston found guilty of bigamy
1800 James Ross discovers North Magnetic pole
1817 1st American school for the deaf opens (Hartford CT)
1850 City of San Francisco incorporated
1858 Battle of Azimghur, Mexicans defeat Spanish loyalists
1861 Federal army (75,000 volunteers) mobilized by President Abraham Lincoln
1864 General Steeles' Union troops occupies Camden AR
1874 New York legislature passes compulsory education law
1877 1st telephone installed Boston-Somerville MA
1878 Harley Procter introduces Ivory Soap
1892 General Electric Company forms & is incorporated in New York
1896 1st Olympic games close at Athens, Greece
1900 International Exposition opens in Paris France
1901 1st British motorized burial
1902 Pope Leo XIII encyclical "On the Church in the US"

1912 Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM in North Atlantic as the band plays on

1922 Frederick Banting, John MacLeod & Charles Best discover insulin
1923 1st sound on film public performance shown at Rialto Theater (NYC)
1927 Babe Ruth hits 1st of 60 homeruns of season (off A's Howard Ehmke)
1927 Switzerland & USSR agree to diplomatic relations
1931 The 1st walk across America backwards began
1940 British troops land at Narvik Norway
1941 1st helicopter flight of 1 hour duration, Stratford CT
1942 George VI awards the George Cross to the people of Malta
1945 FDR buried on grounds of Hyde Park home
1945 British & Canadian troops liberate Nazi camp of Bergen-Belsen
1945 Battle for Berlin begins
1945 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Communium interpretes dolorum
1945 US troops occupy concentration camp Colditz
1948 1st Jewish-Arab military battle, Arabs defeated (Shock!)
1949 Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Redemptoris nostri
1952 1st B-52 prototype test flight

1955 Apr 15, Ray Kroc acquired the McDonald’s chain of fast food restaurants. He was a food service equipment salesman who owned the national marketing rights to the milk-shake mixers used at the chain. He purchased the chain from Richard (d.1998 at 89) and Maurice McDonald (d.1971) who started the operation in California in 1948. Kroc built his first restaurant in Illinois and later established his world headquarters and a company museum there.

1957 Saturday mail delivery restored after Congress givs Post Office $41 million
1959 Fidel Castro begins US goodwill tour
1959 US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles resigns
1960 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizes at Shaw University
1961 "Music Man" closes at Majestic Theater NYC after 1375 performances
1964 Chesapeake Bay Bridge opens (Bridge-Tunnel measures 17.6 miles (28.4 km) and is considered the world's largest bridge-tunnel complex)
1964 Ian Smith becomes premier of Rhodesia
1969 North Korea shoots at US airplane above Japanese sea
1970 Libyan leader Qadhafi launches "Green Revolution"
1972 Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Carole King & Quincy Jones perform at a benefit for George McGovern for President
1974 Military coup in Niger, President Diori Hamani deposed
1975 1st appearance of the San Diego Chicken
1981 Janet Cooke says her Pulitzer award 8-year-old heroin addict story is a lie, Washington Post relinquishes Pulitzer Prize on fabricated story
1983 Tokyo Disneyland opens
1984 Extremist Sikhs plunder 40 stations in Punjab India
1986 US air raids Libya, responding to La Belle disco, Berlin bombing
1988 Meteorite explode above Indonesia
1989 95 crushed to death at Sheffield Soccer Stadium in England


1989 Students in Beijing pro-democracy protests (Tiananmen Square)


1990 "In Living Color" premieres on FOX-TV
1991 Europe foreign ministers lift most remaining sanctions against South Africa
1992 Billionaire Leona Helmsley is sent to jail for tax evasion
1992 Jay Leno's final appearance as permanent guest host of Tonight Show
1992 William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy & DeForest Kelley inducted into National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame
1994 Indians lose 1st game at Jacobs Field, Kansas City wins 2-1
1994 Robert F Kennedy Jr (21 days after his divorce) weds Mary Richardson
1996 Tokyo and Washington agreed on a gradual return of U.S. military bases on Okinawa to Japan.
1997 The Justice Department inspector general reported that FBI crime lab agents produced flawed scientific work or inaccurate testimony in major cases such as the Oklahoma City bombing.
1997 In Saudi Arabia, fire destroyed a tent city outside Mecca, killing at least 343 Muslim pilgrims.
1997 Baseball honors Jackie Robinson by retiring #42 for all teams
1999 Astronomers announced they had discovered evidence of a solar system in the constellation Andromeda. It was the only known solar system other than our own.
2000 Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles became the 24th player to reach three-thousand hits
2001 U.N. investigators arrested Bosnian Serb army officer Dragan Obrenovic in connection with the Serbian Army's slaughter of as many as 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
2001 In China police opened fire on villagers who opposed high local taxes and fees in Yuntang. 2 were killed and at least 18 wounded.
2003 28th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom selected Iraqi leaders met with retired US Lt. Gen. Jay Garner to shape a new government with 13 goals, the 1st being "Iraq must be democratic." Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States has no plans to go to war with Syria. Marines come under fire while seizing an airstrip on the outskirts of Tikrit.
US troops in Baghdad arrested Abul Abbas, head of the Palestinian terrorist group that attacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985.
US forces cut off oil flow from Iraq to Syria

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Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Thai new year, Songkran
Africa : African Freedom Day
Massachusetts, Maine : Patriots Day-Boston Marathon run (1775) (Monday)
US : National Garden Week Week (Day 6)
US : Hostility Day
US : Rubber Eraser Day
Zoo and Aquarium Month.

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Religious Observances
Ancient Rome : Fordicidia a d xvij Kal Maias
Buddhist : New Year (Bangladesh)

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Religious History
1746 Colonial missionary to the American Indians David Brainerd wrote in his journal: 'Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose. Oh, that God would make me more fruitful and spiritual.'
1817 In Hartford, CT, American clergyman Thomas H. Gallaudet, 30, and deaf Frenchman Laurent Clerc opened the first American school for the deaf, called the American Asylum.
1872 In deciding the legal case "Watson v. Jones," the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a member of a religious organization may not appeal to secular courts against a decision made by a church tribunal within the area of its competence.
1892 Birth of Corrie ten Boom, Dutch devotional author whose family was arrested by the Gestapo during WWII for hiding Jewish refugees in their home. (Corrie's experience with the Nazis was depicted in the 1971 film, "The Hiding Place.")
1958 British apologist C. S. Lewis wrote in "Letters to an American Lady": 'I had been a Christian for many years before I really believed in the forgiveness of sins, or more strictly, before my theoretical belief became a reality to me.'

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

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Thought for the day :
"I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime."

[Mudboy Slim]

"I'm on board."

Good deal, my FRiend...now there's two of us...MUD

[snippy_about_it]

Great photo AJC, thanks for sharing with us.

[snippy_about_it]

"Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"

Great movie!