Five survivors of Doolittle Tokyo Raiders recall daring sortie (70TH ANNIVERSARY)

Edward Saylor still vividly remembers the Chinese boy who helped save his life. In the days after his plane crashed into the waters just off China’s coast, Mr. Saylor, now 92, and four other Doolittle Tokyo Raiders were desperate and hungry — but they had survived a daring mission that was America’s first military strike against the Imperial Japanese homeland, four months after the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

“The thought hits you, where you’re at, what you’ve got to do. … We don’t speak the language, what do we do now? That’s what was going through our heads,” said Mr. Saylor, one of the five survivors of the raid who will mark its 70th anniversary on April 18. The young boy helped Mr. Saylor’s crew navigate the Chinese countryside and helped scrounge up what little food he could find, just enough to keep the exhausted airmen moving.

After a weeks-long journey of more than 100 miles — all the while avoiding Japanese forces who had set up blockades of the Chinese coastline — the crew eventually was picked up by an American plane.

To this day, Mr. Saylor still feels a deep debt of gratitude to the young stranger, whom he never saw again.

Seven decades later, the five remaining survivors of the raid led by then-Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle recognize their prominent place in history. Nothing like it had ever been done before. Nothing like it had ever been done before. But faced with an enemy that already had proved its ability to strike the U.S. homeland, 80 brave men volunteered for what had all the makings of a suicide mission,,,

Van Johnson's character in the movie (Ted Lawson) looks like it was based on what happened to Edward Saylor.

Ted Lawson was the actual Pilot of Plane #7 ("The Ruptured Duck) and 30 Seconds is a pretty accurate presentation of what happened.

David Thatcher, one of the last five, was his flight engineer/turret gunner. Despite what the WashTimes article says, the other crew of The Ruptured Duck did not suffer "minor injuries" but were seriously wounded. Lawson and Davenport (the Co-Pilot) were attempting a wheels-down landing on a beach when both engines cut out due to fuel-starvation. The plane hit the water with the gear down. Lawson and Davenport were catapulted, still in their seats, through the cockpit glass. In 30-Seconds Lawson describes in detail having to unbuckle himself from the seat - now outside the aircraft and under water. Lawson lost all of his front teeth and tore his leg up (it caught on the hook for the pilot's headset) to the point where it had to be amputated. He also broke his back in the "ejection", something that wasn't learned until much later and he spent the rest of his life (died in the early 1990s) in serious pain.

McClure, the navigator, was kneeling behind Lawson and Davenport in the cockpit. The force of his shoulders hitting the back of their seats helped propel them - with Lawson and Davenport still in them - out through the canopy. Both his shoulders were dislocated in the process.

Clever, the bombardier, was crawling back into the main part of the aircraft through the "tunnel" from the greenhouse nose. He was shot, backside first, out the front of the aircraft.

Thatcher, in the back of the plane, was well-protected.

While the WashTimes article is a nice tribute, it's unfortunately rife with inaccuracies. For instance, Plane #8 didn't crash-land in Russia. It landed intact and operational at an aerodrome outside of Vladivostok (in recent years post-raid pictures of it have emerged from the old Soviet archives), where it was interred and pressed into service with the Red Air Force. It apparently survived until the early 1950s, when it was consumed in a fire (*sob*). Here's a picture of the plane taken outside Vladivostok the day after the Raid:

As an aside: note the heavy exhaust staining caused by the specially-tuned engines of the plane. The Raider aircrafts' engines had been tuned to boost fuel efficiency - apparently had the other planes survives their engines would have been pretty burned out and needed to be swapped out/overhauled following the Raid.

Additionally, contrary to the article the Raiders got an ENORMOUS amount of press attention after the Raid. All were awarded the DFC and Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor. There was a big LIFE magazine spread on the Raid (with pictures of all the Raiders), followed by Lawson's book ... which led to the movie with Spencer Tracey and Van Johnson.

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