Posted on 05/06/2012 8:44:33 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Three of Doolittle’s Raiders who helped boost American morale during the early days of World War II recalled the dangers of their bold bombing attack on the Japanese mainland.
Airman Edward Saylor didn’t expect to come back alive when his B-25 set off on the 1942 mission.
“Some of the group thought they’d make it,” Saylor said Saturday. “But the odds were so bad.”
Saylor and the other 79 Doolittle’s Raiders were forced to take off in rainy, windy conditions significantly further from Japan than planned, straining their fuel capacity. None of the 16 planes’ pilots had ever taken off from an aircraft carrier before.
Saylor and two other raiders, Maj Thomas Griffin and Staff Sgt David Thatcher—all in their 90s now—recalled their daring mission and its leader, Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle, at a commemoration Saturday aboard the USS Hornet in Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco.
Their mission has been credited with boosting American spirits at a critical time, less than five months after the devastating Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and with Japan sweeping through the Pacific. The bombing inflicted only scattered damage, but lifted spirits at home while shaking Japan’s confidence.
But it did not come without a price.
Three raiders were killed while trying to land in China. Eight were captured by the Japanese, of whom three were executed and a fourth died of disease in prison.
The Japanese also killed Chinese villagers suspected of helping many of the airmen escape.
Griffin recalled ditching his plane when it ran out of fuel after the raid and parachuting to the ground in darkness.
“I got out of my airplane by jumping real fast,” he said. “It was a long, strange journey to the land down below.”
Griffin landed in a tree and clung to it until daybreak.
Saturday’s event was held in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the raiders’ April 18, 1942 mission. It also included: Doolittle’s granddaughter, Jonna Doolittle Hoppes; two seamen aboard the carrier the raiders left from, the USS Hornet CV-8, Lt Cmdr Richard Nowatzki and Lt J.G. Oral Moore; and a Chinese official who as a teenager helped rescue the raiders, Lt Col Chu Chen.
The American airmen remembered Doolittle as a great planner who knew his aircraft and fought alongside them.
Hoppes said her grandfather, who was born in Alameda and died in 1993, was very proud of the men on the mission.
“I grew up with 79 uncles in addition to the ones I really had,” she said. “He was just very proud of how they turned out.”
bttt
Thank you for these comments.
You know the story well.
Indeed...I read “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” when I was seven, and it influenced my viewpoint on a lot of things. A year later, my Dad got orders to Japan, and we all went with him. It was interesting.
If you are interested, I finished reading “Neptune’s Infrerno” about the naval battles around the Solomon Islands. A real horrorshow. Best book of its kind I have read in years, on par with Samuel Eliot Morison’s works, even better because it is much more in depth.
LOL...that’s “Neptune’s Inferno”...:)
Actually, they had practiced taking off on a stretch of airfield as long as an aircraft carrier. Of course, the air strip wasn’t pitching....
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