Posted on 04/18/2020 10:16:57 AM PDT by 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 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.
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
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
RIP heroes, God bless you all.
There used to be a B-25 in a small park in Valparaiso. I think they eventually moved it to the Armaments Museum at Eglin.
That is what I was going to say. The Midway operation by the Jap's may have never happened if the Doolittle raid didn't happen.
Pretty sick isn't it? Compare the 1942 USN to today's Navy. We have over a $4 Billion carrier that is wasting away in port. Enemies remember weakness. It is widely said that the new carriers are unsinkable. Well,we have one that is "sunk".
When my Mother got home from her defense plant job at midnight, there was so much celebration still going on in the neighborhood that she initially thought it meant the war was over... My Dad was just about to graduate from Parris Island and she thought she could breath a sigh of relief...
Of course, unknown to us, two months later he was on board a ship headed across the South Pacific...
No kidding. As though we have never fought through the flu before. There were more flu deaths in WWI than combat deaths.
Can you imagine? They got off that carrier without a catapult! And loaded to the gills!
Looking at the film of the takeoff, it appeared one plane almost just lifted straight up.
I guess the speed of the ship plus the wind probably combined to almost takeoff speed by themself.
may post this on my facebook page?
What a great American Hero. He did more for the war effort than anyone.. RIP Jimmy!!
The hangers used to modify the B-25s are stll used at Elglin AFB!
The naming of the ship was a radical departure from the general practice of the time, which was to name aircraft carriers after battles or previous US Navy ships. After the Doolittle Raid, launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet, President Roosevelt answered a reporter’s question by saying that the raid had been launched from “Shangri-La”, the fictional faraway land of the James Hilton novel Lost Horizon.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shangri-La
Commissioned: 15 September 1944
The Doolittle raid on Japan was of no military significance. It was of great significance relative to the fact we could bomb Japan. It was psychological against the Japanese and a great boost to moral in the United States.
A few short years later we burned all their great cities to the ground with our fire bombing raids. B29s unleashed hell and fire on their nation. My uncle was one of those that delivered death from the sky. He was the navigator and oddly the most important man on the aircraft. If he did not do his job right they would not get home. We had total supremacy in the air, thank you Boeing and all the others that made our aircraft and weapons of war.
Lastly the Enola Gay and Boxcar burned Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the ground in nuclear fire. It worked. They surrendered. Oddly this was the best thing to happen to Japan. If we had of invaded the home Islands our causalities would have been horrendous. Theirs would have been many times worse. I assure you as our troops saw their brothers fall in combat they would have extracted revenge in the extreme and it would have been civilians also. Their officers would not even care. That was real war.
That is fine with me. I am nobody, so please post with the bibliography. It give credibility to the story and the links and books are great for anyone interested in the history.
Oh My God. That is so wonderful.
That is a great link. I added it to my bibliography and added a couple details to my essay. Thank you.
Had the honor of meeting Dick Cole and I have his book signed by him...complete with pic.
Thanks I was going to post everything you wrote!!!
Wonderful.
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.