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U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues
Where Duty, Honor and Country
are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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General James Harold "Jimmy" Doolittle
(1896-1993)
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Doolittle was one of the pioneers of instrument flying and of advanced technology, while also being an outstanding combat leader, commanding the Twelfth, Fifteenth, and Eighth Air Forces during World War II.
James Harold Doolittle, the son of Frank H. and Rosa C. (Shephard) Doolittle, was born on December 14, 1896 in Alameda, California. Jimmy Doolittle grew up in Los Angeles and as a fast punching boy became renowned for his street fighting. After at least one arrest for brawling, he turned to amateur boxing and became the amateur flyweight champion of the West Coast. James attended Los Angeles Junior College, and spent a year at the University of California School of Mines before dropping out to enlist as a flying cadet in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps Reserve in October 1917 and trained at the School of Military Aeronautics, University of California and Rockwell Field California. It was here that he married the lovely Josephine E. Daniels on December 24, 1917.
He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps on March 11, 1918, and served successively at Camp Dick, Texas; Wright Field, Ohio; Gerstner Field, Louisiana; and returned back to Rockwell Field, chiefly as a flight leader and gunnery instructor. He then went to Kelly Field, Texas, for duty first with the 104th Aero Squadron, and next with the 90th Squadron on border patrol duty at Eagle Pass, Texas.
After World War I Doolittle received his commission in the U.S. Army on July 1, 1920 and a promotion to first lieutenant. He then took the Air Service Mechanical School and Aeronautical Engineering courses at Kelly Field and McCook Field, Ohio, respectively. In September 1922 he made the first of many pioneering flights which earned him most of the major air trophies and international fame.
Lt. James Doolittle
On September 4, 1922, Lieutenant Jimmy Doolittle flew a DH-4B, equipped with crude navigational instruments, in the first transcontinental flight across the country, taking off from Pablo Beach, Florida, and landing at Rockwell Field at North Island, San Diego, California, covering a distance of 2,163 miles in 21 hours and 19 minutes. He made only one refueling stop at Kelly Field near San Antonio, Texas. The military awarded him his first Distinguished Flying Cross for this historic feat. In the same year he received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of California.
In July 1923 he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for special engineering courses and graduated the following year with a master of science degree, completing his doctoral of science degree in Aeronautics a year later, and being one of the first men in the country to earn a doctorate in aeronautics.
Jimmy Doolittle flew an O2U Corsair forThe Guggenheim Laboratory to develop cross-country flying instruments and navigation aids.
Doolittle's doctoral dissertation, "Wind Velocity Gradient and Its Effect on Flying Characteristics," disproved the popular theory held by many pilots of the day that they could tell wind direction and the level plane by instinct even when they could not see the ground or horizon. Applying classroom theory to test flights in the worst possible weather, Doolittle determined that there was no accurate way for a pilot to know how the wind was blowing or the altitude of the plane unless he had visual aids or instruments. These were believed to be the first studies in aeronautics to directly combine data from the laboratory with data from the flights of a test pilot.
Lt Jimmy Doolittle with 90th Fighter Squadron
In March 1924 he served at McCook Field conducting aircraft acceleration tests. In June 1925 Doolittle went to the Naval Air Station in Washington, D.C., for special training in flying high-speed seaplanes. During this period he served for a while with the Naval Test Board at Mitchel, New York, and was a familiar figure in airspeed record attempts in the New York area. In October 1925, fitted with streamlined single-step wooden floats and designated the Curtiss Navy Racer, R3C-2, Doolittle won the Schneider Cup - the World's Series of seaplane racing - with an average speed of 232.57 miles per hour. On the day after the Schneider Cup race, Doolittle flew the R3C-2 over a straight course at a world record speed of 245.7 m.p.h. This was the fastest a seaplane had ever flown, and Doolittle the following year received the Mackay Trophy for this feat.
September 1929
Jimmy Doolittle makes the first blind flight. He took off and landed at Mitchel Field using only instruments. All of the instruments in his Consolidated Husky are made by Long Island companies.
In April 1926 he was granted a leave of absence to go to South America on airplane demonstration flights. In Chile he broke both ankles but put his Curtiss P-1 through stirring aerial maneuvers with his ankles in casts. He returned to the United States and was in Walter Reed Hospital for these injuries until April 1927 when he was assigned to McCook Field for experimental work and additional duty as instructor with Organized Reserves of the Fifth Corps Area's 385th Bomb Squadron.
Returning to Mitchel Field in September 1928, he assisted in the development of fog flying equipment. He helped develop the now almost universally used artificial horizontal and directional gyroscopes and made the first flight completely by instruments. He attracted wide newspaper attention with this feat of "blind" flying and later received the Harmon Trophy for conducting the experiments.
Doolittle in the R-1 crosses the finish line during his speed-record attempt
Doolittle resigned his Army commission on February 15, 1930 because of what he called his advanced age. He was 34. He transferred to the Officer Reserve Corps and received a commission as a major in the Specialist Reserve Corps a month later. Jimmy, now in the private sector, was named manager of the Aviation Department of the Shell Petroleum Corporation, in which capacity he conducted numerous aviation tests. He returned to active duty with the Army frequently to conduct tests, and in 1932 set the world's high speed record for land planes with a speed averaging 252 miles per hour. He won the Bendix Trophy in a race from Burbank, California, to Cleveland in a Laird Biplane, and participated in the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, where he took the Thompson Trophy in the Gee Bee racer, an erratic aircraft some called the flying death trap, setting a world land speed record of 296 miles an hour (476 kilometers an hour).
A bemused—and lucky—Doolittle with the wreck of the Super Solution.
In April 1934 Doolittle became a member of the Army Board to study Air Corps organization and a year later was transferred to the Air Corps Reserve. In 1940 he became president of the Institute of Aeronautical Science. That year, on July 1, 1940, he again returned to active duty as a major and assistant district supervisor of the Central Air Corps Procurement District at Indianapolis, Indiana, and Detroit, Michigan, where he worked with large auto manufacturers on the conversion of their plants for production of planes. The following August he went to England as a member of a special mission to survey British aircraft production and brought back information about other countries' air forces and military buildups.
Jimmy Doolittle
Winner
1932 Thompson Trophy
His next assignment put him at the controls of the new, twin-engine B-26 Marauder bomber, which pilots called the "widowmaker" because several had crashed. Its 100-mile-an-hour (160-kilometer-an-hour) landing speed and stubby wings made it tricky to handle. Doolittle proved that the B-26 was a safe and effective aircraft and convinced pilots that all they needed to do was learn how to fly it. Lieutenant General H. H. Arnold, the Chief of the Army Air Forces, gave Doolittle the job of proving that the B-26 was a safe and effective aircraft. Arnold was one of the first pilots in what would become the U.S. Army Air Forces and had received his wings in 1911 after being personally instructed by one of the Wright Brothers. Doolittle was successful in taming the B-26 Marauder and convinced pilots that all they needed to do was learn how to fly it properly.
Jimmy Doolittle & the Gee Bee R-1
A month after the Pearl Harbor disaster, at a White House meeting on January 4, 1942, President Roosevelt asked his senior military leaders to find a way to strike back at Japan. At this grim point in the Pacific War, he believed that an air attack against Japan was the best way to bolster American morale.
Realistically, little could be done. Proposals included sending Army planes to bomb Japan from bases in the Aleutian Islands, Soviet Siberia, and China. But the Aleutians were too far from the main Japanese island of Honshu. The Soviet Union and Japan were not at war. Transporting bombs and fuel to bases in China was extremely difficult, and Japanese air and ground forces could easily thwart such a venture.
Roosevelt was particularly taken with the idea of bombing from bases in China. Lieutenant General H. H. Arnold responded that he was studying such a bombing mission against Japan. Preliminary plans were being developed calling for the bombers to fly to advanced bases in China, land under cover of darkness, refuel, and fly on to bomb Japan. But, added Arnold, it would take "a few months" to get the gasoline and fields available for the bombers and that these advanced bases in China could be easily attacked should the Japanese learn of the operations.
The problem seemed unsolvable until an idea came to Captain Francis S. "Frog" Low, the operations officer on the staff of Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief U.S. Fleet. Captain Low advised Admiral King that when he was taking off from Norfolk, Virginia, on a flight back to Washington, he had noticed the outline of a carrier flight deck painted on the runway of the naval airfield used to train Navy pilots. "I saw some Army twin-engine planes making bombing passes at this simulated carrier deck. I thought if the Army had some twin-engine bombers with a range greater than our [carrier planes], it seems to me a few of them could be loaded on a carrier and used to bomb Japan."
After listening to Low, a submariner, King, who had been both an aviation and submarine officer, leaned back and thought a moment. Then he said, "You may have something there, Low. Talk to Duncan about it in the morning. And don't tell anyone else about this." Thus, the plan was born for the first direct attack against Japan. It was the evening of January 10, 1942, on board King's flagship VIXEN, a former German yacht moored at the Washington Navy Yard.
The next morning, Low met with Captain Donald B. Duncan, a pilot, who was King's air operations officer. Duncan told Low that it was impossible for an Army twin-engine bomber to land on a carrier. If it could be lifted on by crane, a fully armed plane might be able to take off, but it would have to fly back to a land base.
Despite the many provisos, Duncan was intrigued by the possibilities of a carrier-based raid on Japan, and for the next few days he and Low read Army technical manuals on twin-engine aircraft, checked carrier specifications, and prepared a 30-page handwritten memo. It was a brilliant analytical paper. It concluded that such an operation was possible, although fraught with problems and risks. Duncan and Low then went to Admiral King and briefed him on their progress. After hearing them out, King told them, "Go see General Arnold about it, and if he agrees with you, ask him to get in touch with me. And don't you two mention this to another soul!"
Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, accepts from the skipper of the Hornet, Capt. Marc A. Mitscher, a medal once given to a U.S. Navy officer by Japan. This medal was wired to a 500-lb. bomb for return to Japan "with interest."
Photo courtesy of the USAF Museum at Wright Patterson Air Force Base
On January 17, Low and Duncan outlined the idea to General Arnold, who immediately agreed to the proposal. Duncan and Low proposed a test takeoff of twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier HORNET, then at Norfolk, Virginia. Arnold assigned three B-25s to try some short-field takeoffs, and on February 2 two of them were lifted aboard the HORNET by crane and spotted, one forward and one aft, as if they were two of 15 tightly arranged on the flight deck. The carrier steamed out into the Atlantic, and the Army pilots easily took off. But there was a great difference between flying off two bombers, with little fuel and no bombs, and perhaps a dozen or more fully loaded planes in the rough seas of the North Pacific.
Meanwhile, Arnold had assigned Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle to assemble a group of volunteer pilots and planes for the raid, modify the planes with extra gas tanks and other features, and start a training program –all quickly and with the utmost secrecy.
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