The Doolittle Raid April 18, 1942

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 could 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 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 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.

Colonel Doolittle considered the raid a failure. Doolittle 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.

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 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

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

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

Jimmy Doolittle's co-pilot, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard “Dick” Cole, was the last living raider and died April 7, 2019 at 103 years. I knew so many men like him as I grew up and throughout my years. I knew an ace who served in the Flying Tigers, a ranger who scaled Point-Du-Hoc, a UDT sailor who cleared surf obstacles before the Okinawa landing, and a man with the 10th Mountain Infantry who received two silver stars and was the only one of eight officers in his company to land in Italy and soldier through the102 days until the Germans surrendered.

Now like Richard Cole all the men I knew have passed as well. I do not plan to forget them and will post this story annually to help others remember.

Thank you for posting this. I got to meet one of the Raiders many years ago in Oshkosh. By the way, it was on this date in ‘96 that I took and passed my private pilot check ride!

Since you post this every year you’ve probably heard me say this but I had the honor to talk with General Doolittle for a whole hour in 1985.

At his house in Carmel, CA, a fellow linguist and myself were honored to chat with him in his home on a variety of topics from the raid to current events at that time under President Reagan.

Definite hero worship on my part. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

And I’ll never forget the picture on his wall of President Reagan awarding Doolittle his fourth star!!

And an incredibly costly one in terms of Chinese lives; some quarter of a million Chinese were killed by the Japanese in retribution for this raid. (This isn't simply looking at history with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight; the planners were well aware that the Japanese would realize the pilots would have to continue on to China, and that the Japanese counterattack against the Chinese would be vicious.)

www.smithsonianmag.com

I saw film showing reporters standing around FDR’s desk, repea5edly asking where the B-25s came from. Finally he looked around at them with a wide grin, and said, “They came from shangri-la.” That place was featured in the movie “Lost Horizon,” released in 1937.

Some of the bravest men to serve our Country. Backlash of the raid was the extermination of 250,000 Chinese by the Japs. Remember that all you folks arguing against the use of Atomic bombs that ended WWII.

Although there is a certain irony in the bombing raid against Japan that resulted in the highest loss of life being the one that took the lives of our allies...

Tim Blotz, a news anchor in the twin cities, has a cool blog post about his grandfather’s role in the preparation that occured in Minneapolis. With some great photos!

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

Bravery,courage and patriotism was a commodity that was not in short supply. When Americans were men and women were women. Hubba hubba.

About 2 decades ago, I attended a gun-show at Dallas Market Hall.- When an announcer said on the public address system that a DOOLITTLE RAIDER was present, the gun-show shopping almost came to a “screeching halt”, as just about everyone wanted to meet him & shake his hand.

The Raiders were “GIANTS walking on the Earth”, imo.

Yours, TMN78247

I went to an event in Fairfield, CA in 2003 as part of the Doolittle Raiders reunion. I’d grown up reading Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo in elementary school and bought it, Mrs. Lawson (the author’s widow), Gen. Doolittle’s son, and the surviving Raiders in attendance autographed it.

"Doolittle Raiders on board USS Hornet - 18 April 1942"

"I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces guarding our country and our way of life.
I am prepared to give my life in their defense."

And an incredibly costly one in terms of Chinese lives; some quarter of a million Chinese were killed by the Japanese in retribution for this raid

Worth remembering in light of the sometimes overwrought anti Chinese sentiment over coronavirus.
Not making any excuses for the Chinese government. Just saying.

Yes, I see your point. The psychological effect on the Japanese people and Imperial Japanese armies and navy after the Tokyo bombing is hard to measure. At the very least it resulted in a more defensive posture for the Japanese forces. It also set up the game changing battle of Midway.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.