8oth Anniversary Doolittle Raid

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.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&qpvt=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&FORM=IGRE http://doolittlereunion.com/

http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=C9A94F93-E10A-57A0-B694B0AFFE69184C

Jonna Doolittle Hoppes "Jimmy Doolittle Raid" presentation at Historic Flight Foundation

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

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

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.

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