To the enemy we answer—you have unsheathed the sword, and by it you shall die.
—SENATOR ARTHUR VANDENBERG, DECEMBER 8, 1941
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT GATHERED IN the oval study with his advisers on the frigid afternoon of December 21, 1941, two weeks to the day after the Japanese pounded Pearl Harbor. The president had addressed Congress at 12:30 p.m. the day after the attack. Sixty-two million listeners—almost one out of every two Americans—tuned in to hear his 518-word speech, the largest daytime audience ever for a radio broadcast. Roosevelt followed those remarks a day later with a fireside chat designed to prepare the public for life at war, from the need for troops to fight on foreign shores to the material shortages, increased taxes, and long hours Americans would battle on the home front. “We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way,” Roosevelt warned in the twenty-six-minute speech. “Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war.”
Only days earlier Navy Secretary Frank Knox, who had flown to Pearl Harbor to survey the damage sustained in the 110-minute assault, submitted his nineteen-page report to the president. Of the eight battleships at Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning, the Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee had escaped serious damage. Knox estimated that the Nevada and the California—hit by a combined three torpedoes and six bombs—could both be refloated in a few months. The West Virginia in contrast had taken a much bigger beating, pounded by as many as nine torpedoes that ripped open the entire port side. Knox reported that the ship could be raised but would require two years to overhaul. The capsized Oklahoma likewise could be righted, but the Navy secretary questioned whether the aged battleship even warranted salvage. The worst damage centered on the Arizona, hit by aerial bombs that blew out the sides. Some eleven hundred sailors remained entombed inside. “The Arizona,” Knox reported, “is a total wreck.”
The surprise attack had outraged the American public, a reaction reflected in newspaper editorials nationwide. “The battle is on,” declared the New York Herald Tribune, while the Los Angeles Times denounced the raid as the “act of a mad dog.” “Japan has asked for it,” the paper wrote. “Now she is going to get it.” “Do the war-mad officials of the Japanese Government honestly believe they can get away with a crime like this,” asked the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Or are they intent upon committing national hara-kiri?” Beneath the bluster and bravado many papers underlined the importance of national unity. “If we have not forgotten our differences before, we will forget them now,” observed the Palm Beach Post, while the Chicago Sun wrote that “the nation is one or it is nothing.” “‘Politics is adjourned,’ whether between parties, factions, or economics,” argued the San Francisco Chronicle. “From now on America is an army with every man, woman, and child a solider in it, all joined to the one end of victory.”
The president didn’t need the papers to read the nation’s mood. Thousands of telegrams and letters arrived daily at the White House, including messages of support from nearly three dozen of the nation’s forty-eight governors, many echoing New Mexico’s governor, John Miles. “This is the home of the Rough Riders,” Miles wrote. “You can depend on us.” Even Roosevelt’s former foe in the 1936 election, Governor Alf Landon of Kansas, vowed his support: “Please command me in any way I can be of service.” Dozens of mayors likewise wrote in support, from large cities such San Francisco, Atlanta, and New Orleans to small towns like Minnesota’s Anoka, home to just seven thousand residents. Diverse groups, from the Crow Indians of Montana to African Americans and even the Ku Klux Klan, cabled support. Many more letters and telegrams arrived from regular citizens, including a taxicab driver in Washington who had just paid off his car and offered to chauffeur government officials for free. Others offered up their children and husbands. Even four-year-old Ivor Ollivier of California vowed to fight: “I would like to kick every Jap into the middle of the Pacific and watch them sink.”
Roosevelt knew he needed all the support he could muster as the news worsened. The Japanese had not stopped at Pearl Harbor, but targeted American forces across the Pacific. Guam fell soon after the raid on Hawaii, and forces on Wake stood just hours before surrender. The enemy likewise had wiped out much of America’s airpower in the Philippines and would soon seize the capital of Manila. The British had suffered similar defeats. Hirohito’s forces sank the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse—important symbols of British naval power in the Pacific—and would soon capture Malaya. The Japanese onslaught appeared unstoppable. “I never wanted to have to fight this war on two fronts. We haven’t got the Navy to fight in both the Atlantic and the Pacific,” the president had confessed to his wife, Eleanor, soon after Pearl Harbor. “We will have to build up the Navy and the Air Force, and that will mean that we will have to take a good many defeats before we can have a victory.”
The president understood that continued defeats would only demoralize the American public, already anxious now that sandbags crowded West Coast windows and blackout curtains dangled in the White House. Polls showed that one out of every two Americans now feared the enemy would bomb American cities. Those worries had even infected some of the president’s top advisers. “You are not only the most important man to the United States today, but to the world,” chief of naval operations Admiral Harold Stark warned in a letter five days after the attack. “If anything should happen to you, it would be a catastrophe.” The Secret Service aimed to prevent such a crisis, converting a vault under the Treasury Department into a bomb shelter. The president had bristled at the increased security, but consented to at least strap a gas mask to his wheelchair. “Henry,” he told Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, “I will not go down into the shelter unless you allow me to play poker with all the gold in your vaults.”
Victory on the battlefield and at sea was the only way to allay the nation’s fears and nurture the vital patriotism that had arisen from the ashes of Pearl Harbor. Once that unity faded, the blame would begin. Already those resentments festered beneath the surface, as evidenced by a White House report days after the attack that had analyzed editorial opinions. “The shock and awareness of loss occasioned by the attack gave rise to the expression of certain resentments in the press,” warned the December 15 memo. “There was guarded criticism of the military and naval command in the Pacific.” Many Americans no doubt shared the private outrage Roosevelt’s close friend Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long captured in his diary the day after the attack. “Sick at heart,” Long wrote. “I am so damned mad at the Navy for being asleep at the switch at Honolulu. It is the worst day in American history. They spent their lives in preparation for a supreme moment—and then were asleep when it came.”
These challenges confronted Roosevelt as he welcomed his military advisers into his cluttered study at 2:55 p.m. Despite the troubles in the Pacific, he had enjoyed a quiet Sunday. Eleanor had hopped the train to New York for the weekend, where she had seen the Cole Porter play Let’s Face It! on Broadway before traveling up to the family’s home in Hyde Park. Snow flurries fell and the pond showed signs of freezing as she marveled at the foothills of the Catskills, a welcome reprieve from the war that now dominated her husband’s life. “I wish I could tell you how clear and beautiful the stars were that twinkled through the windows of my porch Saturday night. I almost felt I could touch them,” she wrote. “They made the world of war and sorrow seem so very far away and unreal.” The president had eaten lunch with Harry Hopkins before meeting for twenty-five minutes with Ambassador Lord Halifax of Britain. Roosevelt had seen the diplomat out the door as he ushered in his war council.
Around the study sat Hopkins, War Secretary Stimson, Knox, Admiral Stark, newly appointed U.S. Fleet commander Admiral Ernest King, Army chief of staff General Marshall, and Lieutenant General Henry “Hap” Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Roosevelt opened with news that Prime Minister Churchill and his team of more than eighty advisers would arrive the next day in Washington. Marshall gave the president an estimate of the situation, before Roosevelt zeroed in on the Far East, demanding America build up forces in Australia, the East Indies, and the Philippines. The president, like most Americans, felt anxious to fight. He planned to press Churchill about sending American troops into battle in the Atlantic theater, a move he felt would not only deliver a blow to German morale but buoy domestic spirits. Roo-sevelt wanted to achieve the same goal in the Pacific, where a White House analysis of editorial opinion revealed “almost unanimous endorsement of forceful action against Japan.”
The challenge Roosevelt faced was that America was in no position to go on the offensive. The president’s long struggle against isolationist lawmakers had handicapped America’s war preparation at the same time Japan had stockpiled raw materials and hammered out thousands of new tanks, planes, and warships. Roosevelt had witnessed firsthand the struggle of the Army when he inspected maneuvers in August 1940 in upstate New York, only to discover soldiers drilling with drainpipes in place of mortars and broomsticks for machine guns. Some had never even fired a rifle. The Air Forces suffered similar shortages. Of America’s three thousand combat planes, only about one-third were ready for war. So desperate was the Navy to recruit new sailors that it slashed standards for eyesight, height, and teeth; applicants needed as few as eighteen teeth, including just two molars. Even the president’s war council appeared to suffer from such disorganization—no one bothered to take formal meeting minutes—that it would only infuriate British military leaders scheduled to arrive within hours. “The whole organization,” one later griped, “belongs to the days of George Washington.”
Roosevelt looked past these challenges and pressed his advisers: When could America operate from airfields in China? China appeared America’s only real option to take the fight to Japan. The fall of Guam coupled with the siege of Wake and the attack on the Philippines had robbed America of strategic air and naval bases in the region. The Russian port city of Vladivostok would have been preferable—it was only 675 miles from Tokyo—but the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of April 1941 meant Premier Joseph Stalin would likely refuse such a request. Allowing American bombers to operate from Russia would only risk Japanese retaliation, a threat the beleaguered Soviets could not afford, given the war in the west against Germany. Marshall briefed Roosevelt on militarizing ex-Army officers who had volunteered to fly missions in China under Colonel Claire Chennault, a former fighter instructor who had passed on a quiet Louisiana retirement to advise the Chinese. The morning papers reported that Chennault’s fliers had shot down four Japanese planes only the day before.
Though pleased with the news, the president wanted more. It was not enough to pick off a handful of enemy planes over the distant skies of China. Such a scuffle would hardly dent Japan’s powerful war machine, much less spark fear among the empire’s military leaders or civilian population. Likewise, such a small victory set against the continued defeats would have no real effect on the shell-shocked American public, particularly when compared with the spectacular raid on Pearl Harbor that had killed and injured thousands and crippled an entire fleet. The Japanese needed to experience the same shock, humiliation, and destruction that America had suffered. Roosevelt understood there was only one way to accomplish that lofty goal, a demand he would repeatedly press upon his advisers in the days and weeks to come. “The president was insistent,” Arnold recalled, “that we find ways and means of carrying home to Japan proper, in the form of a bombing raid, the real meaning of war.”
ADMIRAL ERNEST KING RETIRED to his cabin after dinner on the evening of Saturday, January 10, 1942. Much to the frustration of the sixty-three-year-old Ohioan, who served as commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, Christmas and New Year’s had passed without any reprieve from the bad news that dominated the Pacific. The admiral had spent the afternoon at a conference of two dozen senior American and British military leaders at the Federal Reserve Building, downtown on Constitution Avenue, the eighth of twelve such war strategy sessions that would later be known as the Arcadia Conference. The two-and-a-half-hour meeting, which had focused on topics ranging from how to blunt Japan’s southward advance to immediate assistance for China, had adjourned with plans to meet again the following afternoon. King had hurried back to the Washington Navy Yard in time for dinner and an evening of work aboard his flagship, the Vixen, a 333-foot steel-hulled yacht moored in the frigid Anacostia River.
King was no stranger to long hours. The six-foot-tall admiral, who always wore a hat to hide his baldness, had graduated fourth in the class of 1901 at the Naval Academy, where his rosy cheeks had earned him the nickname Dolly, which he despised, favoring instead the name Rey, the Spanish word for king. He had served aboard destroyers and battleships and later commanded submarine divisions and even the sub base in New London, Connecticut. Recognizing the importance of naval aviation, King had earned his wings at forty-eight and later commanded the carrier Lexington. But the admiral wasn’t without his flaws, from his wandering hands, which left women afraid to sit next to him at dinner parties, to the thirst for booze that had prompted him to invent his own cocktail, a mix of brandy and champagne that he dubbed “the King’s Peg.” The admiral’s biggest fault, however, was his volcanic wrath, best described by one of his daughters: “He is the most even-tempered man in the Navy. He is always in a rage.”
Despite his personal failings King had passion for military history and proved a brilliant strategist. A crossword puzzle addict, he admired Napoleon and walked the Civil War battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg. His appreciation of history had led King—appointed by the president on December 20—to try to stall the official date he would take command until January 1, a move he felt would prevent the calamitous losses of 1941 from staining the legacy he hoped to create. Though America’s war plan called largely for playing defense in the Pacific until the defeat of Hitler, King planned to seize every opportunity to go after the Japanese. That was the best way to keep the enemy off guard and unable to strike, a philosophy he outlined in a memo to fellow senior military leaders. “No fighter ever won his fight by covering up—by merely fending off the other fellow’s blows,” King wrote. “The winner hits and keeps on hitting even though he has to take some stiff blows in order to be able to keep on hitting.”
Captain Francis Low appeared at the admiral’s door on the Vixen. The forty-seven-year-old New York native, who served as King’s operations officer, had graduated in 1915 from the Naval Academy. The son of a retired Navy commander, Low captained the academy’s swim team, setting the school’s 220-yard record and earning the nickname Frog. He had spent much of his career in the submarine service, commanding five boats and later a squadron before he landed on the admiral’s staff. If anyone was used to King’s tirades it was Low, who viewed his boss at times as both “rather cruel and unusual” and a “little understood and immensely complicated individual.” “He was difficult to work for,” Low later wrote in his unpublished memoir, “but serving with him was a liberal education—if one survived.” Low had suffered one such blowup a year earlier on the battleship Texas when he was executing a routine course change in the middle of the night. The admiral appeared on the bridge within minutes.
“Who made that signal?” King barked.
“I did,” Low answered.
King exploded, accusing Low of usurping power and undermining his authority. The shocked subordinate escaped to a wing of the bridge, his pride wounded. King cooled down and tried to apologize. “Low,” the admiral began, putting his hand on his shoulder. “Don’t feel too badly about this.”
But Low turned on his boss.
“Admiral,” he fired back, “aside from asking for my immediate detachment, there is not one goddamn thing that you can do to me that I can’t take.”
That bold move had earned King’s respect.
“What is it, Low?” the admiral asked this January evening.
Low had what he later described as a “foolish idea,” but given the dark early days of the war felt it was at least worth a mention.
“I’ve been to the Norfolk yard, as you know sir, to see the progress made on the Hornet,” the captain began. “At the airfield they have marked out a strip about the size of a carrier deck, and they practice take-offs constantly.”
“Well,” King replied, baffled by the direction of Low’s comments. “That’s a routine operation for training carrier-based pilots.”
“If the Army has some plane that could take off in that short distance,” Low continued. “I mean a plane capable of carrying a bomb load, why couldn’t we put a few of them on a carrier and bomb the mainland of Japan? Might even bomb Tokyo.”
Low waited for the irascible admiral to brush him off—or worse—but to his surprise King leaned back in his chair. This was precisely the bold concept that appealed to the admiral’s desire to go on the offensive. “Low,” King answered, “that might be a good idea. Discuss it with Duncan and tell him to report to me.”
Low phoned Captain Donald Duncan, King’s air operations officer. The forty-five-year-old Michigan native, who still answered to his Naval Academy nickname Wu, had graduated just two years behind Low. A trained naval aviator with a master’s degree from Harvard, Duncan had served as navigator on the carrier Saratoga, as the executive officer of the Pensacola Naval Air Station, and later as commander of the first aircraft carrier escort, Long Island. He was also politically connected. His sister Barbara, before her 1937 death of cancer, was married to Harry Hopkins. “One thing I’ll say about you,” King once told Duncan, “you’re no yes-man.” Duncan would never forget that comment: “I always thought that, coming from Admiral King, was a very great compliment.”
“This better be important,” Duncan warned Low when the two met that Sunday morning at the Navy Department on Constitution Avenue.
“How would you like to plan a carrier-based strike against Tokyo?”
Low had piqued Duncan’s interest.
“As I see it,” Low explained, “there are two big questions that have to be answered first: Can an Army medium bomber land aboard a carrier? Can a land-based bomber loaded down with bombs, gas, and crew take off from a carrier deck?”
Duncan considered the questions, explaining that a carrier deck was too short for a bomber to land on. Even if it could, the fragile tail would never handle the shock of the arresting gear. Furthermore, a bomber would not fit in the aircraft elevator, making it impossible to stow the plane below to allow others to land.
“And my second question?” Low pressed.
“I’ll have to get back to you.”
Duncan started right away, drafting a preliminary plan. The main question was what, if any, plane could handle such a mission. Low had initially suggested the bombers might return to the carrier and ditch in the water, though Duncan’s study showed it would be better if the planes could fly on to airfields in China. Since intelligence indicated that Japanese patrol planes flew as far as three hundred miles offshore, America would need a bomber that could launch well outside that range, strike Tokyo, and still have enough fuel to reach the mainland. Duncan reviewed the performance data of various Army planes. The Martin B-26 could cover the distance and carry a large bomb load, but it was questionable whether the bomber could lift off from a carrier’s deck. Likewise, the B-23 could handle the demands of the mission, but the plane’s larger wingspan risked a collision with the carrier’s superstructure and limited how many bombers would fit on deck. Duncan realized that the twin-engine North American B-25 appeared best suited for the mission. Not only would its wings likely clear the island, but with modified fuel tanks the B-25 could handle the range and still carry a large bomb load.
Duncan next turned to ships. The Pacific Fleet had just four flattops, the Saratoga, Enterprise, Lexington, and Yorktown, the latter reassigned from the Atlantic after the attack on Pearl Harbor. But Duncan had another carrier in mind—the new 19,800-ton Hornet, undergoing shakedown in Virginia. Duncan knew the Hornet would report to the Pacific about the time it would take to finalize such an operation. Low had recommended the use of a single carrier, but Duncan realized the mission would require two. With the cumbersome bombers crowding the Hornet’s flight deck, a second flattop would have to accompany the task force to provide fighter coverage along with more than a dozen other cruisers, destroyers, and oilers. Lastly, a check of historical data revealed a likely window of favorable weather over Tokyo from mid-April to mid-May.
When Duncan concluded his preliminary study, he and Low presented the results to King. The aggressive admiral liked what he heard.
“Go see General Arnold about it, and if he agrees with you, ask him to get in touch with me,” King ordered. “And don’t you two mention this to another soul!”
The men agreed.
King then turned to Duncan. “If this plan gets the green light from General Arnold,” he said, “I want you to handle the Navy end of it.”
GENERAL ARNOLD HAD FOR weeks mulled over the president’s demand that America bomb Japan, struggling to determine how the Army Air Forces might best execute such a bold mission. Few people in the nation could top the airpower expertise of the fifty-five-year-old Arnold, whose trademark grin had long ago earned him the nickname Hap, short for “happy.” A 1907 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he had learned to fly from none other than Orville and Wilbur Wright, taking to the skies in a primitive biplane that lacked safety belts and whose sole instrumentation consisted of a simple string that fluttered in the wind to indicate the aircraft’s skid. Only after a bug hit Arnold in the eye one day while landing did pilots adopt the trademark goggles. The six-foot-tall Arnold had completed his aviation course in just ten days in May 1911—his total flight time amounted to less than four hours—to become one of only two qualified pilots in the Army.
An avid prankster who once rolled cannonballs down a dormitory stairwell at West Point, Arnold was one of aviation’s leading pioneers. He not only earned the distinction of being the first military man to fly more than a mile high, but he was the first pilot to carry the mail and even buzz the nation’s Capitol, a stunt he joked in a letter to his mother prompted lawmakers “to adjourn.” But the two-time recipient of aviation’s prestigious Mackay Trophy nearly suffered tragedy in the fall of 1912 on an experimental flight in Kansas designed to observe artillery fire. Arnold’s plane suddenly spun around, stalled, and dove. Only seconds before his plane would have hit, Arnold pulled the aircraft out of the dive and landed. The near crash so rattled him that he refused to fly. “At the present time,” Arnold wrote to his commanding officer, “my nervous system is in such a condition that I will not get in any machine.” To a fellow flier he was more blunt. “That’s it,” he confessed. “A man doesn’t face death twice.”
A sense of failure haunted Arnold for the next four years until he finally conquered his fear and climbed back into a cockpit. Over the years, Arnold advanced up the ranks, often in spite of himself. The maverick spirit that propelled him to risk his life in flimsy early airplanes made Arnold bristle at authority, drawing the frequent wrath of his superior officers, one of whom went so far as to hurl a paperweight at him. Arnold even clashed with Roosevelt in the spring of 1940 over Allied aircraft sales, resulting in the president’s threatening to send him to Guam and exiling him from the White House for nine months. Despite his bullheaded personality—as well as his notoriously poor administrative skills—few could help admiring the tenacious general. The zealous advocate of American airpower, who had learned to fly in an Ohio cow pasture under the watchful eye of the local undertaker, had over three decades helped shape aviation’s fundamental mission of bombardment. “The best defense,” Arnold wrote, “is attack.”
Arnold had walked out of Roosevelt’s December 21 meeting with an order to bomb Japan but no clear path on how to execute such a mission. The general knew from experience that that was Roosevelt’s style. “Once the President of the United States agreed upon the general principles,” Arnold once observed, “he relied upon his Chiefs of Staff to carry them out—to make plans for the consummation of these general ideas.” But the challenge Arnold faced was that his forces in the Pacific had been decimated in the opening hours of the war. Of the 231 planes assigned to the Hawaiian air force, only 79 still worked. The Japanese likewise had wiped out half the Far East air force in the Philippines. The immediate demands for airplanes had reached a climax, as Americans feared further attacks on Hawaii, Alaska, and even the West Coast. “Every commanding officer everywhere needed airplanes to stop the Japs from attacking his particular bailiwick,” Arnold later wrote. “They all wanted heavy bombers and light bombers; they wanted patrol planes and fighters.”
Arnold struggled to balance his limited resources with the increased pressure to take the fight to Japan. Ideas for how to avenge Pearl Harbor flooded Washington—a California tire dealer had even offered a $1,000 reward to the first flier to hit Tokyo. Though well-intentioned, most of the proposals showed little understanding of the logistics involved, from the great distances to the fuel and range limitations of American aircraft. Some of the ideas bordered on the absurd, including the recommendation that America drop bombs into volcanoes to trigger eruptions that might “convince the mass of Japanese that their gods were angry with them.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s president, Amon Carter, a close friend of Roosevelt’s aide Edwin “Pa” Watson, suggested one of the more novel ideas: tap commercial airline pilots to fly four-engine bombers to Tokyo via Alaska. “It could, with proper secrecy and press censorship, be made in the nature of a surprise, the same as they gave our men in Pearl Harbor,” Carter wrote. “Five hundred planes carrying from two to four thousands pounds of bombs could blow Tokio off the map.”
Other ideas emerged from discussions between senior British and American officers. In a Christmas Eve conference with chief of air staff Sir Charles Portal, the British officer outlined his vision for an attack. “In his opinion,” Arnold wrote, “attacking Japan was a Navy job, that the carriers, even at this early date, could sneak up to the vicinity of Japan and make the same kind of attack that the Japanese had made on Pearl Harbor.” The mission would involve no more risk than the Japanese took at Hawaii, Portal argued, yet it would force the Japanese Navy to return to home island waters, relieving pressure on the Philippines and Singapore. Arnold dismissed the idea. He not only felt reluctant to risk the Navy’s few aircraft carriers but also questioned Portal’s motives, given the British hunger for American planes. “I always thought that Portal mixed wishful thinking in with his reasoning concerning the Pacific aerial strategy,” Arnold wrote. “I thought he was afraid if our Air Force planned to use heavy bombers against Japan it would cut down the number he would receive.”
In another conference that same day, Admiral Stark followed up on the possibility of launching attacks from Chinese airfields. Arnold pointed out that America did not yet have enough bombers in China and warned against launching a raid until the Air Forces could send enough planes to create significant damage. “The minimum number of bombers should be 50,” Arnold advised Stark. “Unsustained attacks would only tend to solidify the Japanese people.” With Russia out and China short on planes, America’s options appeared to dwindle, unless Arnold followed Portal’s advice and ceded the operation to the Navy. At a January 4 White House conference about the possible invasion of North Africa, Admiral King suggested shipping Army bombers aboard carriers. The idea piqued Arnold’s curiosity, as evidenced by the notes he scribbled. “By transporting these Army bombers on a carrier, it will be necessary for us to take off from the carrier,” he wrote. “We will have to try bomber takeoff from carriers. It has never been done before but we must try out and check on how long it takes.”
Arnold’s staff started to examine the idea immediately, though focusing on the limited concept of using Army cargo planes aboard a carrier to transport fuel for an expeditionary force of naval fighters. An informal agreement between Arnold and King—described in a January 5 memo—even proposed testing various transports off a flattop. In response, analysts pulled together data on planes with wingspans under ninety feet, including true air speed, flap settings, and ground run required for takeoff as well as the height of each plane and feasibility of removing the wings to allow storage in a hangar deck. Analysts ruled out the DC-3 and DC-2 because neither plane’s wingspan would clear a carrier’s superstructure and because the fuselages were too long to ride down the aircraft elevator. The C-63 was another option, but the Army simply didn’t have enough of them available yet. In a January 13 memo Arnold’s staff leveled with the general: cargo planes wouldn’t work. “It is not believed that any plane now available, which can operate from a carrier, would justify the test under consideration.”
About this time Low and Duncan appeared in the general’s office. Rather than launch cargo planes in support of the Navy, why not use B-25s and make them raiders? The greater range of the twin-engine Army bombers would mean the carriers would not have to approach so close to Japan. If the bombers flew on to China as proposed, then the carriers could immediately turn back, further limiting the risk to America’s precious flattops. Arnold enthusiastically embraced the concept, but he wanted to run it by his staff troubleshooter, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. The forty-five-year-old Doolittle had grabbed national headlines over the years as a stunt and racing pilot who Arnold knew also happened to boast master’s and doctoral degrees from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If anyone could evaluate this plan’s chance of success, Doolittle could. Arnold summoned him to his office.
“Jim, what airplane do we have that can take off in 500 feet, carry a 2,000-pound bomb load, and fly 2,000 miles with a full crew?”
Doolittle conducted a mental inventory of America’s arsenal, deducing that only a medium bomber would be able to lift off in that short distance. Of the four bombers he considered, three might be able to handle the job.
“General,” he answered, “give me a little time and I’ll give you an answer.”
Doolittle researched each plane’s performance data before reporting the next day that either the B-23 or the B-25 would work. Both would require extra fuel tanks.
Arnold added another demand: the plane must have a narrow enough wingspan to lift off in an area less than seventy-five feet wide.
“Then there’s only plane that can do it,” Doolittle replied. “The B-25 is the answer to your question.”
Arnold thanked Doolittle, who exited the office.
Doolittle had hit on the exact plane as Duncan. Arnold picked up the phone to Admiral King. The plan was a go. The Hornet would depart the West Coast around April 1, a date that would allow the carrier time to finish its shakedown and transit the Panama Canal. Duncan would handle logistics for the Navy. That would include overseeing trial takeoffs from the Hornet as well as a visit to Pearl Harbor to organize the task force. Arnold would need to pick someone on his side to direct the modification of the bombers and to train the aircrews. The general summoned Doolittle again the next day.
“Jim, I need someone take this job over—“
“And I know where you can get that someone,” Doolittle interrupted.
“Okay, it’s your baby,” Arnold told him. “You’ll have first priority on anything you need to get the job done. Get in touch with me directly if anybody gets in your way.”