8oth Anniversary Doolittle Raid

This is a long post, but is for the aviation enthusiasts who may enjoy reading it. It may seem off-topic, but it ends with the story about Doolittle flying army planes down in South America between the wars.

One of may favorite books is "The Aviators" which takes a deep dive into the lives of three famous pilots: Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles Lindbergh, and James Doolittle. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you are interested in this period as well as aviation, this is a must-read.

Lindbergh may well have been the best pure pilot of the three. What is telling is his performance in WWII when he was making a tour of the Pacific, and he outflew every young pilot when flying with them in the Corsairs (USMC) and with the Army pilots in their P-38s. (The Marines loved him and took him in as one of their own. The Army pilots weren't as accepting!)

There is an excerpt in the book, when he was flying combat missions (He wasn't supposed to) and the squadron was trying to develop their dive bombing skills. Plane after plane rolled in on this barge of supplies, dropping to the left and the right, in front and in back, but no hits. Lindbergh said something like "Watch, this is how it is done..." and rolled in and planted a bomb squarely on the barge.

Then, when he was flying with the P-38 squadrons, he shot down one plane (while almost getting shot down himself) but his biggest contribution was teaching the pilots lessons about how to wring every ounce of fuel most efficiently out of the planes. He told them that if they ran their engines high manifold pressures and at a lower RPM while running the fuel mixture leaner, they could dramatically increase the range of the plane.

Many of the younger pilots (and older ones, too) thought it was absurd. They thought he was an old man, over his head in war. Lindbergh said (I paraphrase) "These engines are built to take military-grade punishment. You won't burn them out or damage them if you run them this way. But they are your ships, and you are the Captains of your ships. Do as you see fit."

When he came back from missions, it came to be a custom for the ground crews and pilots to gather round Lindbergh's P-38 as the ground crew popped the fuel caps and stuck rods into the fuel tank to gauge his fuel levels more a accurately. They were astonished to see how much fuel he came back with, but many said he was sacrificing his engines to do that. But when they broke down his engines to rebuild them, they saw no evidence of damage, and that sealed it. They all began religiously following Lindbergh's instructions on how to make the fuel last. He increased the operating radius of the P-38s by more than 400 miles.

Using this newfound "range", they raided a Japanese airfield our Japanese enemy thought was absolutely safe beyond the reach of our fighters, and we caught them with their pants down and obliterated their base! On a side note, the brass heard from jealous pilots that Lindbergh was flying combat missions and they put a stop to it. He was then instructed to fly to Australia to meet directly with General Douglas MacArthur to be reprimanded. However, when he got there, and being in an expansive mood, MacArthur was bragging to him about various war plans, Lindbergh described the increases in range that resulted from his training.

MacArthur was so blown away, that 400 mile radius increase opening up a host of strategic attacks that could now be deployed, he "gave" Lindbergh his very own P-38 and told him he could fly whenever and wherever he wanted to. I am not a fan of MacArthur in general, but I give him full credit for seeing that and acting on it.

Rickenbacker was, in my opinion, the toughest. By a long shot, and that is no disrespect to either Lindbergh or Doolittle. Rickenbacker was a race car driver, and in between the wars, he was responsible for saving the Indianapolis Speedway. He also started his own car company, and by all accounts the cars were quite good and technically advanced (with features such as all wheel brakes) but there was a concerted whispering campaign from the established automakers that sunk him.

In 1935 he was the General Manager of Eastern Airlines, and he purchased it when it was sold. On February 26th, 1941, he was in one of his company's DC-3s flying into what is now Atlanta International Airport, and they clipped trees and crashed in poor visibility. When the plane didn't show up, Eastern employees got into their cars and began driving all around the area, eventually finding the plane. Half the people were killed, and he was so badly injured the radio announced that he had died.

His pelvis was broken in multiple places, as was his right leg, and he had compound fractures of multiple ribs. On top of that, his eyeball had been popped out of his eye socket and was resting on his cheek, in addition to all of his lacerations. He was fully pinned behind the dead pilot, and it was nearly nine hours before the plane was found and he was cut out of the wreckage. During that time, he had tried to extricate himself, even with his ribs sticking though his chest. There was a piece of sharp metal, and that was what gouged out his eye as he jerked his head trying to get loose. He was delirious, but could smell gasoline all around, and he heard some survivors talking about building a fire to stay warm...he was nearly frantic trying to speak loudly enough to dissuade them, as it almost certainly would have incinerated him, trapped in the wreckage as he was.

He was so unpleasant and cantankerous in the hospital that in a moment he was conscious and could hear a radio, he threw something at the radio when they announced him dead.

One would think all of this would be pretty much the end of any career doing much of anything, but when the war came, in the early days he was asked by the government to take a trip out to various Pacific Islands to motivate the troops, whose morale was low.

They were flying to Canton Island (halfway between Hawaii and Fiji, and the Navigator on the B-17 made a mistake and got them lost. They ran out of fuel and had to ditch, and didn't get off a position report.

They spent 21 days in that raft, and all might have perished if not for Rickenbacker. He was merciless, and they all grew to hate him with such a white-hot-burning-passion because he would simply not allow them to roll over and die. By all accounts, they hated him so much that they vowed inside themselves NOT to die just to spite him!

But I think Doolittle might have been the smartest and most pragmatic of the three, and not far behind either of them in flying skill...if he was indeed behind them at all. This was absolutely my favorite Jimmy Doolittle story he told:

In 1926, the night before Jimmy Doolittle (then a young Captain) was supposed to do an aerobatic demonstration of Curtiss P-1 in Argentina to convince the Argentinians to purchase the planes, he attended a party, and everyone was smashed. He was demonstrating various handstands and such, and bragged that all young American men were capable of it, that they were all Errol Flynn wannabes. They didn't believe him, so he went outside to a 2nd story balcony and did a handstand on the ledge of the balcony. They all applauded, and he was feeling his oats (he had been a gymnast in college, and couldn't resist really showing off) so while hardstanding on the ledge, he executed a complete horizontal leg split, which caused his admirers to break into raucous applause, and at that moment...the ledge he was hardstanding on gave way and he fell to the paved courtyard below, managing to land on his feet but breaking both of his ankles.

They took him to the hospital, where they casted both of his lower extremities, but because he had to do the demo, he signed himself out of the hospital against the advice of the clearly angry doctors. When he took the plane up, he destroyed both of the casts, putting the plane thorough a violent performance.

He landed and went back to the hospital, where they refused to cast his legs again, and he had to find some unlicensed doctor somewhere to cast his feet and he gave specific instructions to the doctor on how to make the cast smaller so he could fly.

He went up the next day, and broke one of the casts, and was unable to push that rudder pedal, so he did the entire show with only using the other rudder pedal, nobody noticed, and they bought the planes!

After a few more days, he ended up ripping the casts off himself, IIRC. I think he had to have both of his ankles later re-broken to get them to heal correctly.

First to perform an outside loop, then thought impossible. First to perform an instrument blind takeoff, flight, and landing. Won all the aeronautical trophies. First American to obtain a doctorate in Aeronautical engineering. For his doctoral thesis at MIT, he wrote a brilliant, groundbreaking paper on test flight and handling characteristics. In WWII, besides planning and flying the Doolittle Raid, he changed fighter doctrine when he was assigned to the Eighth Air Force, breaking the convention that the fighters had to stay with the bombers at all costs, freeing them up to go after the German fighters.

When he was with the 344th Bomb Group in Italy (before he went to the 8th Air Force) they were flying the B-26 which was racking up high crash and fatality rates because it was so tricky to fly that pilots who made errors died and didn't get a chance to learn from their mistake. Doolittle was ordered by Hap Arnold to evaluate the plane, and Doolittle liked the plane. He thought with the correct training, it was a very good plane. He went to various flight schools and asked students and instructors what they had heard about the B-26 airplane. Almost all said they had heard it wouldn't fly on one engine, you couldn't make a turn into a dead engine, and landing it safely on one engine was just about impossible. Problem was, when he got to the squadron in Italy, they were in a near mutinous condition, refusing to fly the plane.

He lined them all the pilots up on the side of the runway. He randomly chose one plane spotted on the tarmac to do the flight demo in (not some specially well running plane). Doolittle took off, came in for a landing, lined up on the runway, feathered the left engine during the takeoff roll, and made a steep turn into the dead engine, flew around the pattern, and landed with the engine still inoperative. He did it again in the other direction with the right engine feathered. And he did this without a copilot, which really turned their heads. This convinced the doubters that all of these "impossible" maneuvers were notonly possible, but easy, if you paid close attention to what one was doing. He had no trouble with pilots after that.

A real wild man. A boxer, gymnast, world class flier, war hero, pioneer aeronautical engineer, and...Hell raiser!

A real man.

THAT is an excellent anecdote! You are lucky-you not only know History, you saw history, and you have had connections to History!

I feel pity for so many people to whom history is absolutely nothing. They are drones who don’t know that they are missing!

Thanks! I think Rickenbacker survived a ship sinking somewhere along the line, I remember an anecdote — they had some loaves of bread and would use slices to soak up their urine (they didn’t have any containers, I’d guess) and ate this to keep from dehydrating. Just a tip for anyone who winds up in the predicament, be sure to nab a couple loaves of bread before the ship goes down. :^)

I mention that in the red text-he had barely recovered from his DC3 accident, and when the government asked him to go out to the Pacific...he just went.

I think he was still walking with a cane at that point.

Excellent review...

I’m old enough to remember the joy and celebration of the first raid on the Japs... I was 8.5 at the time...

In particular, my Dad, who had joined the Marines in January, was home on furlough...

It was the last time we would see him until 6 months after the war ended...

I love this from the movie:

And this is the elderly Chinese woman crying for the American pilots:

How different things might have been if we didn't stab the Nationalist Chinese in the back in favor of the Communists.

Wow. We forget that, don’t we?

Not so see your father for three or four years. Or never.

Beyond Doolittle: The Navy Role in the Doolittle Raid [15:16] [04/18/2025]

Busted! I didn’t finish your entire post. [blush]

Oh wow, you’re welcome! That was a few years ago. I was trying to find the link to this topic in the Latest News list, couldn’t find it, then plucked the topic # out of my reply post and went, “oh, duh”. Looks like I’d been in here before. :^)

I have read your post 20 times and just love it. (I keep hoping something changed and the NEXT time I read it I will see her picture 😀. I also tell myself it really ends with “and we just celebrated our 50th anniversary”)

LOL, there is no shame at all in not reading my post. They are long winded, I know that. I post them so if someone WANTS the info, they can get it.

Never been able to compose posts of brevity...:)

Oh, I grok that. I’ll type a while, then preview it, and have often been appalled at the length. For a long time I’ve been trying to hide it (rather than edit ‘em down) by using the ‘small’ tags. :^)

I have a long time friend who would appreciate your post as much as I did.

When I was younger I read up of all three of these men. They were truly great.

Indeed!

I always felt bad for the situation with Lindbergh. I know that as he got older, he drifted far to the left to the point where people thought he was nuts, but when he was younger, he weighed things very carefully.

The slander against him was that he was a Nazi sympathizer. Part of it was due to a trip he took to Germany in the pre-war years, and had a firsthand look at the Luftwaffe, where they wined and dined him, taking him on tours of the airfields.

He was astonished at the Advanced German air forces, and he fully knew the condition of our air forces, and publicly said that if we got into war, we were going to be in trouble.

What he did not know was that as he was taken from airfield to airfield by the Germans, they were taking their state of the Art bombers, their Henkel 111’s and other more advanced planes, and flying them from one field to the other and parking them wingtip to wingtip.

He had a completely unrealistic view of their air forces based on what they showed him, and that was done deliberately by them. He had no idea they were performing that kind of deception.

And then, when he went to some dinner, they gave him some kind of Nazi award.

He was crossways with the putrid Roosevelt administration at the time, and they made a political enemy out of him and smeared him as a Nazi sympathizer.

When war came, they refused to allow him to join the military services, even though he maintained the rank of Colonel From his prior military service.

Yes, he was an America First guy in the 30’s and did not support getting into another European War, much like a majority of the American people.

When war came, he immediately applied for active duty to serve his country and was deliberately refused because of his opposition to FDR. It was vindictive.

I despise FDR. Statist POS. Many of the ills we face today can be traced back to him and his acolytes.