8oth Anniversary Doolittle Raid

self | April 18, 2022 | Self

[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 morale 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 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 might do the job. King then sent Low and Duncan to General Hap Arnold who bought the idea. Arnold quickly agreed because he and Jimmy Doolittle had independently made the same assessment.

By mid-January 1942 Doolittle began assembling the planes and crews. As one of the first MIT aeronautical engineering graduates with a PhD, 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 Mid-Continent Airlines made significant modifications to the bombers. 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-gallon 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 in just over a football field length at near stalling speeds of 50-60 miles per hour, overloaded, and practically hanging on their props. 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 accomplished the planned installation of a pair of black-painted broom handles simulating machine guns in each aircraft's tail cone to intimidate attacking fighters.

After training 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 the 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 attacking Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway.

Once the Hornet was at sea, Doolittle told the raiders their mission was to attack Japan. When the ship’s captain passed the word, the Navy crew exploded into cheers. While underway towards Japan, the industrial targets were 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 the U.S.S.R. (strike north against the traditional enemy), or to attack colonial possessions of the U.S, Netherlands, and Britain (strike south for desperately needed natural resources such as oil).

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 seas. Each aircraft received at this last minute up to 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. They carried three 500 pound demolition bombs and one 500 pound incendiary cluster.

In his War Department report Doolittle wrote, “The damage done far exceeded our most optimistic expectations.” However, he considered the raid a failure. He saw the raid as secondary to the bombers safely arriving and providing Chiang Kai-shek and Claire Chennault an offensive capability to the Chinese air force. Every plane had been lost because they were unable to reach safe landing sites. One plane and crew was interred in the Soviet Union, but was allowed to escape in 1943. Fifteen crashed in China resulting in three crewmen deaths. The Chinese who spirited the others to friendly hands paid a terrible price. Hirohito was enraged and authorized a reprisal expedition into Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces. According to Curtis LeMay, the Japanese not only destroyed military bases and infrastructure, but turned villages into cinders and killed 250,000 civilians.

Eight crew members were captured, and all were condemned to death. Premier Hideki Tojo asked Emperor Hirohito to commute all the sentences, but the Emperor allowed three to be executed. One later starved to death in Japanese prison camps.

The raid proved a crucial psychological boost demonstrating Americans could do the impossible even if their battle fleet had been blasted to wreckage, and they were losing an army in the Philippines. The Japanese Imperial Navy suffered a devastating loss of face, because Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had guaranteed the Emperor that the Americans would never attack their home islands. The raid confirmed Yamamoto in his determination to attack Midway, and there begins another story.

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

Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini

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

The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo–One Family’s Untold Story

https://timothyblotz.com/tag/minnesota-doolittle-raid

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/

GENERAL DOOLITTLE's REPORT ON JAPANESE RAID

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/rep/Doolittle/Report.html

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

A VETERAN’S STORY: Interview with The Last Raider

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/veterans-story-interview-raider.html

[minnesota_bound]

I wonder if Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci got the idea for the Chinese virus from Unit 731 ?....

Unit 731’s commanding officers debated the best bacteria to use, settling on plague, anthrax, cholera, typhoid, and paratyphoid, all of which would be spread via spray, fleas, and direct contamination of water sources.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/untold-story-vengeful-japanese-attack-doolittle-raid-180955001/

[Captain Walker]

I’m reading RFK’s book on Anthony Fauci and I can believe that both Gates and Fauci may very well be as morally-depraved as those Japanese were.

[Theophilus]

The hangars at Eglin, used to modufy the B-25s, are stiml in service!

[WhattheDickens?]

Welcome to the kingdom of historical armchair quarterbacks ever ready to denigrate or minimize the courage, integrity, stamina, and creativity of Americans in order to imply they bear responsibility for the murderous actions of others.

That’s precisely the logic leftists use, and which has proven time and time again to be flawed. Not a single attempt to prevent or dissuade an aggrieved group from immoral choices — be they German, Japanese, African American, or Hispanic — has ever succeeded.

The raid showed the Japanese that Americans would not cower in the face of their amoral ferocity. The Japanese were looking for any excuse to murder Chinese (Rape of Nanjing), and your supposition that those 250,000 would not have died may be partially true, but only because the Japanese are more likely than not to have found some other excuse to kill just as many.

Every sword has two edges, and I’m sick of people who call themselves conservatives denigrating a heroic mission because they think they know what might have happened otherwise. You have NO IDEA of what horrors that raid prevented.

[Retain Mike]

That is great.

[Retain Mike]

You are welcome.

[Retain Mike]

You are welcome.

[Retain Mike]

In always read books and write essays to discover what it was like to live into and through history. I have no sympathy for those who comment on what happened 50 to 250 years ago in this country in an effort to burnish their own purity before others.

[Paal Gulli]

Jimmy Doolittle (et Al) is emblematic of an America that (seemingly) no longer exists. One in which the average citizen could be counted on to put his life on the line to preserve the very idea of America.

Even the fact that he managed to overcome the burden of a surname like “Doolittle” to become his own chapter in the history books shows what an un-ordinary man he was.

[Captain Walker]

Every sword has two edges, and I’m sick of people who call themselves conservatives denigrating a heroic mission because they think they know what might have happened otherwise. You have NO IDEA of what horrors that raid prevented.

Is it possible to have such a view on this topic that sees more than one side? (Apparently not.)

I've read "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and I'm well aware of the heroism these men possessed in flying B-25s off a pitching aircraft carrier. As I am sure you know, the discovery of the American fleet by the Japanese fishing boats meant a premature launch; they flew off that ship knowing that they would not be able to reach their planned destinations. (If there is a better demonstration of heroism than what these men displayed that day, I'm all ears; tell me.)

I've only pointed out that the cost in human life (learned after the fact) was incredibly high in light of the benefits that the raid provided (which, by every admission of those involved, was primarily a morale-building operation for the American public).

I don't take anything away from the efforts those men made; each and every one of them was a giant.

But I think it looks something like a SWAT team backslapping each other over a dead hostage-taker as they step gingerly over the bodies of the hostages that the guy himself took out before they brought him down. There may have been no other way for them to go about it and they may have prevented an even larger loss of life, but I do think they would be more subdued in their congratulations.

[PTBAA]

“If we knew that 250,000 Chinese would die as a result of what was largely a morale-building exercise, should we have asked China for that country’s input?”

No.

[jonrick46]

A Navy seaman who was waving the B-25 crews to take off was thrown off balance and lost his arm in the prop. He still gave a salute to the crew taking off from the Hornet.

[jonrick46]

"The Chinese who spirited the others to friendly hands paid a terrible price. Hirohito was enraged and authorized a reprisal expedition into Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces. According to Curtis LeMay, the Japanese not only destroyed military bases and infrastructure, but turned villages into cinders and killed 250,000 civilians."

The Japs were especially savage, lighting off metal barrels with fuel and throwing babies stabbed with their rifle bayonets into the flames.

[jonrick46]

Thank you for your important post. It has more value for me than I can reveal at this time.

[Texas resident]

When I was growing up in Houston in the 60’s/70’s all the dads on the block were WW2 and Korean War veterans. Some had been wounded and some not, but they were all of the same mindset.

[jonrick46]

The success of the Doolittle Raid was a tremendous blow to the moral of the Japanese people. They had a religious trust in the ability of their leaders; who they believed to be gods. This broken trust undermined the support of the Japanese people.

After the war, they were extremely receptive to Christianity that was brought to them by the Billy Graham Crusade.

[linMcHlp]

An unknown history fact about preparations for the Doolittle Raid. A Lt. Fitzgerald was assigned by Jimmy Doolittle, with the task of flying a B-25C below regulations altitude, “on the deck,” from east to west and back, in January 1942. In order to gather information re what might be, or would be, encountered.

Lt. Fitzgerald and I had a mutual friend. Both men had dated sisters. And by chance, in the early 1970s, I met the younger of the two sisters.

Just a couple years before meeting her, I had seen a picture of her, taken just after she graduated from high school. Very cute.

I was walking by a putting green at the Santa Barbara Biltmore Hotel, and I saw her walking around the far side of the putting green. I recognized her immediately - from that distance, based on the old photo.

Later that evening, at the hotel’s seaside ballroom and dining hall, she walked up to me and asked me if I would like to dance with her. I declined because I was nervous; I liked her alot. I liked just being near her.

I still have her picture.

I still have a WRIGHT arrow patch (issued to a friend), one of only 17 issued to Wright Field (Dayton, OH) based U.S.A.A.C. then U.S.A.A.F. test pilots over the period from before and thru World War II —> the WRIGHT arrow patch worn by Jimmy Doolittle - see the photos of him on the deck of the USS Hornet.

[rlmorel]

I did too! I got my first library card when I was eight years old, and the first book I checked out was “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”.

It set off a chain of B-25 models as I went from my pre-pubescence into my teens!

The movie remains one of my favorites to this day. It still tugs at my heart when I see, near the end, the shot of the elderly Chinese woman crying tears for the American pilots under a wartime poster.

And I also love the scene in the movie where he finds out he and his wife are going to have a baby! Love the aerial footage of the plane swinging from side to side in great arcs as the crew sings “Rock-a-bye Baby”!

[rlmorel]

Thank you for doing so. Those were real Americans. Everything about them.

[rlmorel]

Thank you for putting that compilation of links together.