(from Carroll V. Glines, The Doolittle Raid:
America’s Daring First Strike Against Japan)
FOR THE FIRST months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the news from the Pacific front was disastrous. Singapore surrendered February 15, 1942. Nine days later the British withdrew from Rangoon in Burma. After taking Borneo, the Celebes, and Timor, the Japanese landed at Lae and Salamaua in New Guinea. By March 9 their conquest of Java was complete. In the Philippines fifteen thousand Americans and sixty-five thousand Philippine troops were captured and forced to walk the Bataan Death March.
Franklin D. Roosevelt kept asking his military chiefs, “How can we strike back at Japan?”
The answer, concocted by the U.S. Navy’s forward-thinking Captain Francis Low and Admiral Ernest King, became the top mission of the day. Low and King proposed placing long-range bombers aboard the navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the Hornet. Heavy bombers aboard a carrier could extend the navy’s bombing range from three hundred to one thousand miles, barely within reach of Tokyo. However, it would be a one-way mission for the pilots and crew of the bombers, which would not have enough fuel to return to the carrier—and where they could not physically land anyway. Low and King’s plan called for the bombers to fly over Japan to inland China, where Chiang Kai-shek was holding out against the Japanese. The aviators would have to hitchhike home.
Ace flyer Jimmy Doolittle—MIT Ph.D., speed record holder, the first to fly the outside loop, and confidant of the top military brass—was chosen to train and lead this adventure. Under perfect conditions Doolittle thought there might be a 50/50 chance of success, but unforeseen variables made the odds much longer. Amazingly, however, the gamble was a success: the first American attack on the Japanese mainland took place on April 18, 1942—just four months after Pearl Harbor.
“In my opinion,” wrote Admiral “Bull” Halsey, “their flight was one of the most courageous deeds in military history.” Eighty men and sixteen B-25 bombers flew over Japan. All planes were lost; three died in crash landings and eleven were captured, including three who were tortured and executed. Opening on the deck of the Hornet, this is the story of the raid narrated in part by Doolittle’s copilot, Lieutenant Richard Cole, as told in Carroll V. Glines’s The Doolittle Raid: America’s Daring First Strike Against Japan.
DOOLITTLE WENT from plane to plane, questioned the mechanics, and inspected each B-25 from nose wheel to the broomstick “guns” in the tail. On the afternoon of the seventeenth, he called the flying crews together for a final briefing.
“The time’s getting short,” he said. “By now every one of you knows exactly what he should do if the alarm is sounded. We were originally supposed to take off on the nineteenth but it looks like it will be tomorrow, the eighteenth, instead. This is your final briefing. Be ready to go at any time.
“We should have plenty of warning if we’re intercepted. If all goes as planned, I’ll take off tomorrow afternoon so as to arrive over Tokyo at dusk. I’ll drop incendiaries. The rest of you will take off later and can use my fires as a homing beacon.”
Doolittle repeated what he had been saying since the first meeting, that any man could drop out if he wished. Again, no one took him up on the offer. He cautioned the rear gunners about not dropping the five-gallon gas cans overboard after they were emptied because they might float long enough to leave a trail back to the task force.
There was one question that lurked in the minds of most of the crewmen but no one had yet dared to ask it. Finally, one pilot raised his hand and asked, “Colonel Doolittle, what should we do if we lose an engine or get hit by ack-ack fire and crash-land in Japan?”
Doolittle’s answer was quick and firm. “Each pilot is in command of his own plane when we leave the carrier,” he said. “He is responsible for the decision he makes for his own plane and his own crew. If you’re separated, each one of you will have to decide for yourself what you will do. Personally, I know exactly what I’m going to do.”
The room was silent. Doolittle didn’t go any further so one of the group asked, “Sir, what will you do?”
“I don’t intend to be taken prisoner,” he answered. “If my plane is crippled beyond any possibility of fighting or escaping, I’m going to bail my crew out and then drive it, full throttle, into any target I can find where the crash will do the most damage. I’m forty-five years old and have lived a full life. Most of you are in your twenties and if I were you, I’m not sure I would make the same decision. In the final analysis, it’s up to each pilot and, in turn, each man to decide what he will do.” Doolittle’s final caution was to get rid of any letters, diaries, photos, and identification that would link them with the Hornet, their former units in the States, or their training.
The weather was turning sour. Moderately rough during the night, the wind increased and low clouds hung ominously over the area. Rain squalls smashed across the decks and the sea began to swell into thirty-foot waves. The wind sliced off the tops of the waves and drenched the deck crews.
At 5:58, Lt. O. B. Wiseman, one of the SBD pilots, sighted a small fishing vessel. He jotted down the following message on his knee pad:
“Enemy surface ship—latitude 36-04N, Long. 153-10E, bearing 276 degrees true—42 miles. Believed seen by enemy.”
Wiseman passed the paper to the gunner in the rear seat, making a throwing motion with his hand. The gunner pulled a small bean bag from his pocket, stuffed the message inside and peered over the side as Wiseman headed for the Big E.
When the SBD was directly over the carrier, the gunner threw the bag on the deck, where it was scooped up by a sailor and rushed to Halsey on the bridge. Halsey immediately ordered all ships to turn left to a course of 220 degrees. Had Wiseman’s plane been seen? It wasn’t likely at forty-two miles, but at 7:38 another patrol vessel was sighted by a lookout on the Hornet only twenty thousand yards away. If the vessel could be seen by the Hornet, it had to be assumed that the task force had been sighted and that it had radioed the sighting to Japan.
The sighting became a certainty when the Hornet’s radio operator intercepted a message in Japanese that had originated close by. At 7:45, Ens. J. Q. Roberts sighted the vessel, now only twelve thousand yards away.
Halsey had no option but to order the Nashville to sink the enemy boat. He then flashed a message to Mitscher:
LAUNCH PLANES X TO COL DOOLITTLE AND GALLANT
COMMAND GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU
Doolittle, on the bridge when the order came, shook hands with Mitscher, leaped down the ladder to his cabin, shouting to everybody he saw, “OK fellas, this is it. Let’s go!” At the same time, the blood-chilling klaxon horn sounded, followed by the announcement: “Army pilots, man your planes!”
Doc White hurriedly passed out two pints of rye to each man as they rushed past. Lt. Dick Knobloch ran from plane to plane with bags of sandwiches he had gotten from the galley. There was confusion as army and navy men ran back and forth on their respective missions. Mechanics ripped off engine covers and stuffed them up into the rear hatches. Tie-down ropes were unfastened and wheel chocks pulled away. A navy “donkey” attached a tow bar to nose wheels and pushed and pulled the planes into takeoff position. Gas tanks were topped off and the crews rocked the planes back and forth to get rid of any air bubbles in the tanks that would prevent a few more gallons of precious fuel from being pumped in. Sailors filled the five-gallon cans with fuel and passed them hand-to-hand to the rear gunner in each B-25.
On the bridge, Mitscher ordered the Hornet to full speed into the wind and her bow plunged into towering waves that smashed across the deck. The Hornet’s air officer on the bridge brought out a large blackboard and noted the carrier’s compass heading and the wind speed so the pilots would have some idea how much airspeed they had to gain for takeoff. Hank Miller rushed from plane to plane to shake hands and wish the crews good luck. “I’ll be on the right side holding up a blackboard to give you any last-minute instructions before you go,” he shouted. “Look at me just before you release your brakes.”
Doolittle, in the lead plane, started his engines and warmed them up. Near the bow on the left side, Lt. Edgar G. Osborne, the signal officer, stood by holding a checkered flag. When Doolittle was satisfied that his engine instruments were “in the green,” the checklist complete, and crew ready, he gave a “thumbs up” to Osborne. Osborne responded by swinging the flag in a circle as a signal for Doolittle to ease the throttles forward. Osborne swung the flag in faster and faster circles, keeping one eye on the bow. At the instant the deck was beginning its upward movement, chocks were pulled from under Doolittle’s wheels and Osborne gave him the “go” signal. Doolittle released the brakes and the B-25 inched forward, slowly at first, then faster. As the plane passed the ship’s island, the nose wheel rose first, followed by the main wheels, and Doolittle was airborne with plenty of deck to spare.
All the remaining pilots, now getting ready to be jockeyed into position, had watched Doolittle’s plane apprehensively. They knew that if he had had trouble and didn’t make it, they couldn’t. They breathed sighs of relief as Doolittle brought up his gear and flaps, circled to the left, came back over the deck to check his compass against the carrier’s course and faded off into the distance.
The log of the Hornet noted that Doolittle was airborne at 8:20 ship time. Instead of following three hours later as originally planned, Lt. Travis Hoover was maneuvered into takeoff position, started his engines, and took off five minutes after Doolittle.
Lt. Richard E. Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot, recalled:
After takeoff and when everything was squared away, the boss and I took turns at flying. When I wasn’t flying, Hank Potter, Braemer, Leonard, and I were continually checking the gas or other things about the ship. No one slept or got sick. Everyone prayed but did so in an inward way. I guess we all wondered more than anything—trying to imagine what was in store for us. If anyone was scared it didn’t show. I believe I can honestly say that no one was really scared. I don’t say this in a bragging way, it’s just that at least we had never faced danger and didn’t have sense enough to be scared.
One thing I remember clearly is that the tune “Wabash Cannonball” kept running through my mind. One time I was singing and stamping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked at me in a very questioning manner like he thought I was going batty.
We flew low and kept a sharp lookout for surface ships and other aircraft. We veered once or twice to miss some ships and flew directly under a Japanese flying boat, which didn’t see us. Aside from this our trip from the Hornet to Japan was uneventful.
Since we had a load of incendiaries, our target was the populated areas of the west and northwest parts of Tokyo. Over the target I kept Paul Leonard advised of enemy aircraft and at one time counted more than eighty. We were not bothered by fighters; however, flak shook us up a little and left some holes in the tail. We made landfall on the Chiba Peninsula east and northeast of Tokyo. Japan looked very pretty and picturesque from what I could see. We flew at treetop level until our target area then pulled up to twelve hundred feet, dropped our bombs, and lowered to treetop level again. People on the ground waved to us. It was about 12:15 Tokyo time, the weather was clear but a little hazy, which limited forward vision. We could see the moat, the Imperial Palace, and downtown Tokyo. Hoover flew on our wing practically all the way to the target, then he turned off and headed for his target, which was an electrical plant. I saw his bombs hit and explode, throwing much debris into the air.
Hank Potter did a fine job of navigating. After we left the target area we headed for open sea, taking a southwest course to the southernmost tip of Japan. As we headed out over the China Sea, Hank estimated we would run out of gas 135 miles from the Chinese coast. Because of this we began making preparations for ditching. Without our knowledge the good Lord had fixed us up with a brisk tailwind. We flew at low level and occasionally could see sharks basking in the sun—which made the ditching very unappealing.
We made landfall on the Chinese coast about 8:45 p.m. as it was just getting dark. Shortly after we climbed to eight thousand feet and we all bailed out when the fuel warning light came on. I dove out head first facing the rear of the ship. This caused me to scrape or drag on the sides of the hatch. Fortunately, it didn’t affect the operation of the chute. I remember I had my flashlight in my right hand and after bailing out changed it to my left so I could pull the rip-cord. The descent seemed like ages. The clouds, rain, and fog were so thick nothing could be seen, so I just waited. Suddenly a tree limb brushed my feet and I came to a stop. My chute had drifted over the top of a thirty-foot pine tree. I couldn’t have landed easier if I had planned it. Except for a black eye, I was all in one scared piece and I do mean scared.
I climbed to the top of the tree and untangled my chute, then got down for a look around. I had landed on the top of a very steep mountain and from what I could see with my flashlight, it looked treacherous. I decided to make a hammock from my chute and spend the night in the tree. This I did. It was quite comfortable and kept me dry but I didn’t sleep except for short dozes.
My only visitor was a cottontail rabbit, which I could see with my flashlight. Daylight came about 5:30 so I gathered up my chute and started walking. Using my compass I walked due west keeping to the ridges and avoiding traveled footpaths. I ran across several wood gatherers, farmers, and even one hunter. They paid no attention to me nor I to them.
Since most of the walking was up and down, I figure I walked only ten or fifteen miles. About sundown I came to a well-traveled path which circled a high peak. I could not avoid this path so I started walking it. Shortly, I ran into an Oriental gentleman who was too nosy to suit me, so I pulled my .45 and chased him away. As I walked, he followed me at a good safe distance. At the top of the mountains below my path I could see a small settlement or compound. It looked peaceful enough so I decided to try my hand at meeting the Chinese. As I neared the buildings I could see a Chinese Nationalist flag flying from one. Approaching this, a small boy ran out to meet me, yelling something in Chinese. A Chinese soldier appeared and beckoned me to come inside. He showed me some drawings of an airplane with five chutes drifting down. After a time he and his fellow soldiers understood that I wanted to be taken to the place where the artist had drawn the pictures and the artist was the old man I had seen previously. He turned out to be a loyal Chinese who later served as our guide and stayed with us until we passed out of occupied territory.
Shortly after this I was taken to the place where the boss was located. He appeared none the worse for his experience except that he had landed in the middle of a rice paddy and was still damp. Later, Potter, Leonard, and Braemer were brought in. They had been picked up by a roving band of renegade guerrillas who robbed them and tied them up. This band was fortunately interrupted by a band of friendly guerrillas who rescued the boys and returned their belongings.
We were holed up in occupied territory at a place called Tien Mu Shen which is between fifty and one hundred miles southwest of Hangchow. This was our base of operations while the boss visited the wreck of our ship. After they decided to move us, we walked, rode small horses, and were even carried in seat chairs to a secret place where we were kept until dark. At about 9:00 p.m. we boarded a Chinese riverboat. The scheme was to move us down the river to a point where another river joined, thence up the second river and out of occupied territory. We got underway about midnight, and as we moved down the river we could see the searchlights of Japanese patrol boats. Fortunately, we were not stopped and completed the journey without difficulty. We arrived at Chosin where we were greeted by all who arrived before us.