CHAPTER 4
(APRIL 1942)
Stunned by the surrender on Bataan and the broad scale of Japanese attacks in the Pacific, many Americans saw the war they had sought to avoid as a succession of military disasters. Pearl Harbor had awakened the “sleeping giant,” but since December 1941 it had seemed as though there was little that the giant could do to stop the onslaught.
On 1 January 1942, representatives of twenty-six countries, calling themselves the United Nations, signed the Atlantic Charter, drafted by Roosevelt and Churchill. In it, the signatories pledged to “wage total war” against the German-Japanese-Italian Axis. But the document had little immediate effect on the global battlefield. The headlines in U.S. newspapers continued to carry a steady stream of bad news from around the world.
In the Pacific, it certainly appeared as though the Japanese were invincible. Guam—the first American territory to be seized by a foreign power—fell only hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The tiny garrison of Marines and sailors on Wake Island had fought back valiantly against overwhelming odds but had finally succumbed on 23 December. Forty-eight hours later, on Christmas Day, the British surrendered Hong Kong, the crown jewel of their Far Eastern colonies.
The Japanese didn’t take time off to celebrate the new year or their victories. As they reinforced General Homma’s effort to crush opposition in the Philippines, they moved simultaneously to seize French Indochina, Thailand, Malaya, and the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, and moved against the British in Burma. By 15 February, when Singapore fell—just over two months after Pearl Harbor—the Japanese had killed or captured more than 150,000 British, Australian, Dutch, and Indian troops. Four days after the fall of Singapore, Japanese carrier-based aircraft bombed Darwin, Australia, sinking thirteen Allied ships and razing the port.
On 23 February, a long-range I-class submarine shelled the coast of northern California and incendiary flares attached to small balloons started forest fires in Oregon. Though militarily insignificant, the attacks on the U.S. mainland caused panic in Washington. The American press, distracted by these events, barely covered a real disaster on 27 February in the Java Sea. There the Japanese destroyed a hastily cobbled together U.S.-British-Dutch task force and eliminated the last remnant of Allied naval power anywhere near their Home Islands or newly seized possessions. From that point on, the Americans were virtually fighting alone against the Japanese in the Pacific.
In an effort to slow the Japanese advance, every available submarine and all three carrier battle groups of the Pacific Fleet were thrown into the fight. Though poor torpedoes and inexperienced crews limited the initial effectiveness of the U.S. subs, the carriers scored some successes.
Between 1 February and the end of March, Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey with the USS Enterprise, Rear Admiral Jack Fletcher on the USS Yorktown , and Vice Admiral Wilson Brown aboard the USS Lexington conducted a series of fast carrier raids over vast areas of the southwest Pacific. Japanese installations, ships, and forces were hit in the Marshall Islands, the Solomons, and the Bismarck Archipelago, and successful attacks were conducted against Kwajalein, Marcus, and Wake Islands.
Though these fast carrier raids did little serious long-term damage to the Japanese, U.S. commanders and pilots were quickly gaining skill and proficiency against their far more experienced adversaries. Using newly built fleet oilers and fast resupply ships, the U.S. carriers perfected the ability to replenish under way, allowing them to stay at sea for months at a time. The pilots were improving as well, and the names of U.S. naval aviators were becoming known to the American people, desperate for good news on any front. While battling Japanese bombers sent out to find the Lexington, Lieutenant Edward “Butch” O’Hare became the Navy’s first ace—achieved by downing five enemies—and was lionized in the press.
Yet as dramatic and courageous as these fast carrier raids were to the American people and the participants, they were still defensive operations, hitting at but not stopping the Japanese advance. By mid-April 1942, the Japanese had seized virtually all the territory they needed to assure the availability of strategic resources and materials for their war effort. And once the Philippines fell, they would be able to secure their entire southern flank—and neutralize Australia as an Allied base.
By the spring of 1942, the long string of defeats and near-calamities had many Americans grumbling that it was “time to fight back.” In Washington, congressional leaders complained to FDR that Radio Tokyo was broadcasting taunts that the Japanese Home Islands “were invincible and could never be attacked.”
But in April 1942, striking at Japan itself seemed nothing short of impossible. Land-based bombers in China and Australia didn’t have the range to make it to Tokyo and return. Naval air raids were out of the question. Carrier-based aircraft had to be within 200 miles of their target—300 at the very most—and it was going to be many months, if not years, before the U.S. Pacific Fleet, ruined at Pearl Harbor, could be rebuilt strong enough to seriously challenge the Japanese navy west of Hawaii.
Fast carrier raids like those conducted by Halsey, Brown, and Fletcher helped keep the Imperial Fleet off balance—it wasn’t the same as going on the offensive. And in April of 1942, with the collapse of the Philippines—even with Wainwright holding out on Corregidor—almost everyone assumed that hitting the Japanese at home was impossible.
But those who were so despondent didn’t know that the U.S. Navy and Army had been working together for months on a daring plan to do just that. And they hadn’t reckoned on Jimmy Doolittle.
ATLANTIC OCEAN
U.S. NAVY CARRIER USS HORNET
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
MID-JANUARY 1942
Two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Captain Francis Low, a submarine officer on the staff of the chief of naval operations, Admiral Ernest J. King, was dispatched from Washington to Norfolk, Virginia. His mission was to determine what could be done to expedite the delivery of a brand-new carrier, the USS Hornet. While there, Low happened to observe some U.S. Army Air Corps bombers practicing takeoffs and landings from nearby Langley Field. Because the airfield was also used to train Navy pilots, it had the outline of a carrier deck painted on the runway. As Captain Low watched the Army bombers practice “touch and go” landings and takeoffs, his imagination took over.
Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of naval operations during World War II.
Returning to Washington, Low broached an idea with Admiral King that lesser men might have rejected, for fear of having their service loyalty—or even their sanity—questioned: “Sir, I’m wondering . . . would it be possible for Army bombers to take off from a carrier?”
No one had ever tried it before, but King, rather than rejecting the query out of hand, instantly grasped its importance. If a long-range Army bomber could take off from a carrier, the U.S. vessel—and those that accompanied it—wouldn’t have to get nearly as close to the target as smaller, shorter-range Navy aircraft did. With the Far East Air Force eliminated and the Philippines under siege, it might be the only way America could strike back at Japan for months or years to come.
Admiral King put the submarine officer to work on the concept and told him the goal was to find a way to attack the Japanese Home Islands. Although he wasn’t a pilot, Low understood that even if a fully loaded bomber could take off from a carrier, it was solving only half the problem. No large bomber could land on a carrier, and unless he could come up with a place for the Army aircraft to land, it would end up being a one-way suicide mission. Was there somewhere they could safely land?
General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commander, U.S. Army Air Forces.
Captain Low believed that the U.S. bombers might make it to a friendly base in China, where General Claire Chennault and a group of American “volunteers” were helping Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Forces fight the Japanese. Unsure, he went back to King for advice.
Admiral King took the idea up to General Henry “Hap” Arnold, the Army Air Corps chief of staff. Intrigued, General Arnold immediately called his friend Lieutenant Colonel James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle for advice. Doolittle was a stunt flier, test pilot, and Army Air Corps officer. Yet Doolittle wasn’t just a brash hotshot. He’d also earned a degree in aeronautical engineering at MIT so he would fully understand the science of flight as well as its daring mystique. He was the kind of pilot who needed to know firsthand just how high a plane could go, how fast it could fly, and just what it was made of.
Doolittle had become a charismatic and popular figure in the 1920s and’30s winning just about every aviation trophy available. His fame and notoriety were second only to Charles Lindbergh’s. Doolittle had helped to develop the first high-octane aviation fuel and had pioneered instrument flying in 1929. After covering the windshield of his airplane with a hood, he became the first person to fly a course and land “blind,” using only the plane’s instruments to guide him.
But that was old news by now, and Hap Arnold had a new challenge for his daring friend. The general asked Doolittle, “Does America have a bomber that can take off in less than 500 feet and carry a 2,000-pound bomb load?” Arnold added that the planes had to have enough range to fly at least 2,000 miles and attack Japan.
Intrigued by the challenge, after several days of research, Doolittle told his boss that the only aircraft available for such a mission was the B-25, a relatively new twin-engine, land-based bomber, built by California’s North American Aviation. Asked why he selected the B-25, Doolittle replied, “Because it’s small . . . and has sufficient range to carry 2,000 pounds of bombs 2,000 miles.” Arnold gave his assent and left it up to Doolittle to work out the details.
HQ U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS
OFFICE OF LIEUTENANT COLONEL JAMES DOOLITTLE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
25 JANUARY 1942
The B-25 bomber Doolittle selected was trim—about fifty-three feet long (about the length of the typical semitrailer) and with a wingspan just a little over sixty-seven feet. Its right wingtip could just clear an aircraft carrier’s island, the superstructure on the starboard side of the vessel. But the overriding question still had to be answered: Could it take off from an aircraft carrier?
Doolittle and the Navy tested the idea with a couple of stripped-down B-25s aboard the USS Hornet. The planes rolled down the deck, and at sixty knots—about sixty-five miles per hour—showing on the airspeed indicator, the big bombers lifted into the air before they got to the end of the carrier deck. So far, so good. But there still was no proof that a B-25 fully loaded with bombs, extra fuel, and crew could repeat the feat. Doolittle worked out the calculations and said it could be done—in theory.
That was good enough for Ernie King and Hap Arnold. Admiral King decided that the USS Hornet would be the ship, and Arnold told Doolittle that he could have as many B-25s as he needed for the operation.
The Hornet was the perfect choice for the mission. Brand-new, and outfitted at the then unheard-of cost of $31 million, it was the ship they had already used for testing the idea during her pre-commissioning trials.
Since only sixteen of the bombers would fit on the Hornet and still allow sufficient space on the 809-foot flight deck for a 500-foot takeoff roll, Doolittle now set out to find enough five-man crews to fly the mission. That should have meant he was looking for eighty men, but the forty-five-year-old lieutenant colonel needed only seventy-nine. Doolittle had convinced his superiors that he’d have to lead the attack, not just plan it.
USS Hornet. Doolittle’s Raiders launched from her deck in April 1942.
Doolittle began his search for aircrews by first asking the Army Air Corps to identify the best-trained B-25 unit. The 17th Bombardment Group, stationed at Pendleton Field, Oregon, was selected, and in early February 1942, the entire group was ordered to fly to Columbia, South Carolina, where they would be away from any possible enemy spies or collaborators. Once they arrived in South Carolina, Doolittle asked for volunteers to accompany him on a top-secret mission he described only as “dangerous.” One hundred and forty-nine men volunteered, from which he selected ninety-nine.
Doolittle divided the men into twenty five-man flight crews, and dispatched them to Eglin Field, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where they spent most of March practicing takeoffs from a 500-foot section of runway to approximate what it would be like to launch from a carrier deck. They also practiced low-level bombing runs by flying just above the whitecaps in the Gulf of Mexico.
During this Florida “shakedown” period, Doolittle had each B-25 retrofitted with extra 225-gallon fuel tanks in the bomb bay and in the crawlway behind the cockpit. Sixty-gallon fuel tanks replaced guns in the bottom turrets, so radios, batteries, and even the tail guns were removed. Broomsticks, painted black, were inserted in the turrets and blisters in hopes that any pursuing Japanese fighter planes would mistake them for real machine guns and think twice about getting too close. Doolittle also used this time to trim down his volunteers to the seventy-nine who would accompany him on the mission.
While the aircraft were being modified, Doolittle sent two lieutenants, Thomas Griffin and Davey Jones, to Washington, D.C., to learn all they could about the enemy from Army Air Corps intelligence. Without divulging their mission, Griffin and Jones collected maps and photographs of five different Japanese cities. Doolittle wanted American bombs to land on at least five different locations so that that the enemy propaganda machine couldn’t hide the facts of the attacks from the Japanese people.
Twenty-six-year-old Dick Cole was among those who gave me their account of the mission. He was Doolittle’s copilot, and the plane’s navigator was Lieutenant Henry Potter, a twenty-two-year-old from South Dakota.
Lieutenant Bobby Hite, a farm boy from Texas, had planned to become an agricultural teacher but dropped out of college after three years and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. As a twenty-one-year-old copilot, he flew in the same B-25 as Corporal Jacob (“Jake”) DeShazer, their bombardier.
LIEUTENANT ROBERT HITE, US ARMY
Secret Training Site
Eglin Field, Florida
15 February 1942
We didn’t know at the time that we were going to Japan. Jimmy said it would be very dangerous, but he couldn’t tell us more. Everybody speculated that we were going to be sent to Europe. We just really didn’t have a clue. Nobody mentioned an aircraft carrier, but the whole group volunteered anyway.
We were ready. We wanted to go with Jimmy Doolittle wherever he went. And I think, in our hearts and minds, we had the attitude “we can do it.”
LIEUTENANT HENRY (“HANK”) POTTER,
US ARMY
Secret Training Site
Eglin Field, Florida
15 February 1942
When we got to Columbia, South Carolina, Doolittle gathered the flight crews together in a hangar and briefed us, stating, “We’re gonna need volunteers for a dangerous mission that will be of great importance to the American war effort.” Nobody could figure out where he wanted us to go or what he wanted us to do when we got there, but if Jimmy Doolittle was going, we wanted to be there.
He sent us to Eglin Field in Florida, where the pilots learned how to take off at short distances and the rest of us got the additional training in navigation, bombing, and firing machine guns. I don’t think that any one of us had any lack of confidence that we’d be able to make it. After all, we were flying with the premier pilot in the Air Corps at that time. If he couldn’t do it, it wasn’t going to be done.
USS HORNET
NAVY TASK FORCE 16.2
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
1 APRIL 1942
Finally, after more than a month of arduous training exercises and flight maneuvers, the planes and men were ready. Doolittle sent the armada of B-25s from Eglin Field to McClelland Field, not far from Sacramento, California. From there, on 22 March, the B-25s flew to Alameda Naval Air Station near Oakland, on San Francisco Bay.
During the nearly 3,000-mile trip to California, Doolittle had told his high-spirited aircrews to practice low-level flying. The young daredevils flew at practically cornstalk level, skimming over farmhouses, “hot-dogging” it across the country. They flew down through the Grand Canyon, and up and down the Sacramento Valley at an elevation of ten feet above ground level, sending farmers and fruit pickers scurrying for cover.
April Fool’s Day, 1942, was the date picked for having everything ready. The following morning, the carrier and its seven escort ships, designated as Task Force 16.2, sailed from San Francisco Bay. Once well out to sea, the skipper of the Hornet, Captain Marc Mitscher, with Doolittle beside him, announced over the ship’s PA system their objective—until now top secret information. The captains of the escorts did the same, telling all hands: “Now hear this—this task force is going to Japan.” Those who were there remember the cheering that reverberated across the decks.
Northwest of Hawaii, the Hornet and her escorts rendezvoused with Task Force 16.1, consisting of the carrier USS Enterprise, with Admiral Halsey aboard, and eight escorts. Together, the seventeen ships raced northwest across the Pacific, heading for the spot in the ocean 412 miles from the Japanese coast that Doolittle and the Navy planners had chosen as a takeoff point for the B-25s.
It was, for this high-risk mission, a sensible plan. U.S. naval intelligence officers knew that the Japanese had positioned picket ships along a perimeter 400 miles from their homeland. The warlords in Tokyo had done the math—they figured that the Americans would have to be no more than 300 miles from Japan in order to carry out any kind of attack with carrier-based aircraft. The U.S. Navy code-breakers also knew from intercepts of Japanese communications that the 26th Air Flotilla, with more than sixty bombers on alert, could take off on short notice and attack any U.S. vessel that the pickets sighted as far as 600 miles out—well before carrier-based task forces could launch an air attack on Japan.
Halsey’s fleet steamed west maintaining total radio silence, hoping that the 10,000-man task force could make it to within 412 miles of the Japanese coastline without being detected. Doolittle’s aircraft needed to be close enough to hit their targets and still have enough fuel to make it 800 more miles to recovery fields in China. After launching the bombers, the task force ships would turn and race south, hoping to be out of the area and beyond the range of any Japanese aircraft by the time they arrived at the launch site.
It was a superb plan—on paper. But the fliers were taking a huge risk. So were the aircraft carriers and their escorts. The Hornet and the Enterprise made up half of the entire carrier strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. If they were discovered and sunk by the Japanese, it could take years for America to rebound, rebuild its naval forces, and deal with the Imperial Navy.
Aboard the Hornet, the Army aircrews were kept busy rehearsing the mission and working on the planes—critical parts were even delivered to them by blimp. They had to memorize maps and targets, listen to intelligence briefings, learn about Japan’s cities and culture, and review their options after the bombing runs.
Doolittle hoped that he had thought of everything. His plan called for Chinese guerrillas, under Chiang Kai-shek, to place radio beacons to lead the B-25s to safe landing fields in China. Still, his greatest anxiety was having enough fuel to reach them.
But if Doolittle had any doubts, he did not show it.
Corporal Jake DeShazer, from Salem, Oregon, was a cook for a sheep-herding camp before he joined the Army Air Corps in 1940 at the age of twenty-seven. He remembers being on KP duty when Pearl Harbor was bombed and thinking to himself, “Japan is really going to get it for this.” DeShazer recalls standing alone on the Hornet’s flight deck, thinking, “I wonder how many more days I am going to spend in this world. Maybe I wasn’t so fortunate after all to get to go on this trip.”
On 16 April, in heavy seas, the sailors and Army airmen aboard the Hornet moved the B-25s to a parking area at the rear of the flight deck, where they would be ready to take off. The following day the weather deteriorated further. Halsey and Doolittle, concerned about the ability of the sailors and airmen to work on the open flight deck, ordered the planes fueled and bombs loaded, even though the task force didn’t plan to be at the launch point until late on 19 April.
By darkness on 17 April, the airmen and deck crews were exhausted, but Halsey and Doolittle had done all they could to prepare. Now if they could just avoid the enemy picket ships and patrol craft, the Hornet might be able to get within 400 miles of Japan—and that edge might give the B-25s and their crews a chance of surviving the mission. But it wasn’t to be.
USS HORNET
TASK FORCE 16.2
650 MILES OFF JAPANESE COAST
18 APRIL 1942
In the predawn morning hours of 18 April, a radar operator on the Enterprise reported a “surface contact”—a ship—about ten miles from the carrier. Though the Enterprise was still more than 650 miles from Japan, Halsey ordered the entire task force to change direction to keep from being spotted by what had to be a Japanese ship. Then, at 0600, an American scout plane scouring the waters ahead of the American ships saw a Japanese patrol boat.
Hoping to sink the vessel before it could notify Japan of their presence, Halsey’s cruiser, the USS Nashville, engaged with five-inch gunfire at 0738, and immediately afterward dive-bombers from the Enterprise attacked the picket ship. The Nitto Maru, designated as Japanese Naval Patrol Boat No. 23, sank in minutes. But not before the crew radioed Imperial Fleet HQ at Kure that three American aircraft carriers were headed for Japan.
Aboard the Enterprise, Navy code-breakers intercepted the Nitto Maru’s radio traffic, and though the Nitto Maru incorrectly warned that there were three American carriers, it still meant that, despite the weather, the task force was now in great jeopardy. So, too, was Doolittle’s attack plan.
The Hornet, with the sixteen B-25s aboard, was still hundreds of miles away from its intended launch destination, and hundreds of miles more from the targets in Japan. Halsey had planned to steam west another thirty-two hours before launching the bombers, so that they would arrive over their targets on the night of 19 April—and be able to find their landing fields in China on the next morning.
Admiral Halsey and Doolittle now had to make a serious decision, and it had to be made quickly. The carriers couldn’t proceed closer to the intended launch point, loath to engage an overwhelming Japanese naval force or provoke an attack by land-based bombers. But could the B-25s still make it to their targets—and then on to safety in China—if they launched now? If not, their only alternative was to abandon the mission. By signal light, from his flagship to the Hornet, Halsey presented the options to Doolittle.
The Army flight leader wasted no time in making a decision. Even though they were still nearly 700 miles from Tokyo, with almost no chance of reaching the recovery airfields in China after the bombing raid, Doolittle signaled back, “Let’s go now.”
Halsey ordered the task force to turn into the wind and gave the order to launch the aircraft. The admiral ended his message with, “Good luck, and God bless you.”
Aboard the Hornet, Army airmen and sailors sprang into action as loudspeakers blared, “Army Air personnel, man your airplanes for immediate takeoff.” The aircrews raced onto the flight deck and readied the sixteen bombers for takeoff as high winds and thirty-five-foot swells tossed the ships about like toy boats. With water breaking over her bow, the Hornet turned into the wind, now blowing at twenty-five to thirty knots.
To the uninitiated, the idea of trying to launch sixteen overloaded B-25s from the terrifyingly short, pitching deck of an aircraft carrier into the teeth of a raging gale might seem like madness. But to Jimmy Doolittle, the MIT engineer perched in the lead aircraft, the plane that had the shortest takeoff roll, the wind was now their ally. It offered hope that all his aircrews could succeed in doing what no one had ever done before—first, getting the planes, weighing nearly fifteen tons, into the air, and then bombing the Japanese homeland.
CORPORAL JACOB “JAKE” DESHAZER, USAAF
Aboard the USS Hornet
18 April 1942
The announcement came: “Army personnel, get your airplanes ready; in ten hours will be takeoff.” And just after they did that, the fog lifted up and we saw a Japanese ship. We could all see it. And one of our ships turned and shot into that Japanese ship and I could see it sinking. One end was up, the other end headed for the bottom of the sea. Right after that happened, they made the announcement: “Army personnel, man your airplanes, take off immediately!”
I saw Doolittle going out to his airplane; he was the first one off. We were all watching pretty close because his plane only had about 400 feet for takeoff on that aircraft carrier.
LIEUTENANT ROBERT HITE, USAAF
Aboard the USS Hornet
18 April 1942
0920 Hours Local
Yeah, the space that we had for takeoff was from the island to the end of the flight deck, about 400 feet. So we had that much to get off of the carrier. But the secret of being able to do this was, we had about a thirty-knot wind that we were going into, a west wind. And the carrier was traveling at about close to thirty knots, so that gave us a wind across the deck of about sixty knots. This was very advantageous for what we were going to do. We used full flaps and full power on our B-25s, which was enough to lift us from the carrier.
The original plan was to take off in the evening and do our bombing raid at night. That changed after they sank the Japanese patrol boat that had radioed that we were coming. So Jimmy and the commander from the Hornet, and Halsey with the Enterprise decided we better get those B-25s off the deck and on the way.
The last thing that Jimmy said before we took off was, “We don’t have any new information on the mission. And we’ll have to do the best we can.”
We knew he was a great pilot, so if Jimmy could do it, we were going to try it. Jimmy being the number-one aircraft was the first one off, and he did it perfectly. It gave us great confidence to know that it could be done, to see him make that takeoff.
Jimmy took off at 8:20 AM and we were the last aircraft, number sixteen, taking off at 9:20 AM, so it took one hour to get the American B-25s off of the Hornet.
Once we were at altitude, we made meticulous use of the mixture control and our rpm to minimize the flow of gasoline through the engine. The standard B-25 engine runs on about 150 to 160 gallons an hour, but we had our B-25 running at about 60 gallons per hour. We had planned to launch within about 400 miles of our target, but we actually took off about 700 miles out.
LIEUTENANT RICHARD (“DICK”) COLE, USAAF
Aboard the USS Hornet
18 April 1942
0920 Hours Local
The first thing we heard that morning was the guns going off, from the cruiser that had spotted the picket ship. I was at breakfast when they started firing. And immediately we all put breakfast aside and ran up topside to see what was going on. Then, right away they announced over the PA system, “Army personnel, man your planes!” I had to run back down to where my quarters were and get my gear. For those of us who flew with Jimmy, the name of the game was to get to the airplane before the old man did.
I got there in time to help Fred Braemer and Paul Leonard pull the props through and make a walk-around check, and we were “air-available” when the boss came. There was a low overcast and the sea was running high enough where water was coming up over the bow. In fact, the area where we were got wet, and they had to put down some abrasive pads for some of the later airplanes because they were sliding back and forth on the deck.
As far as whether or not we were going to make it off the deck, I didn’t even think about it. We had done the same thing off of a runway with not near as much headwind. I had no doubt about it. We were flying with the best pilot in the world and besides that, being a second lieutenant, I had to worry about flaps, landing gear—stuff like that.
USS HORNET
TASK FORCE 16.2
650 MILES OFF JAPANESE COAST
18 APRIL 1942
A 16mm film made by a U.S. Navy combat cameraman that stormy morning shows the deck crew pulling the wheel chocks from the lead B-25. Then, at 0820, with both engines at max rpm and sea spray whipping down the deck, Jimmy Doolittle’s plane lumbered just a few hundred feet and leapt into the air—a dozen feet before reaching the end the Hornet’s bow. The sailors on the flight deck let out a cheer. It could be done after all.
Doolittle’s B-25 climbed immediately and circled, buzzed the Hornet to synchronize his magnetic compass heading with the ship’s, and then headed west, while behind him the rest of the planes took off. One by one, the fifteen B-25s, each carrying 2,000 pounds of munitions, and nearly that much weight in fuel, along with five crewmen, followed Doolittle’s example and took off.
The first six did it flawlessly. The seventh plane—its flaps mistakenly left up in the pre-flight tension—took off but slipped dangerously low as it left the deck of the carrier, almost dropping into the waves. But the pilot recovered in time and lifted his craft smoothly, up into the blustery skies with the rest of the bombers. The other nine B-25s followed without a hitch—almost.
Just before the last bomber cleared the deck, one of the sailors helping to launch the planes fell into the spinning prop of copilot Bob Hite and bombardier Jake DeShazer’s B-25. Both men watched in horror as the blade tore off the sailor’s arm, expecting that it had killed him. It wouldn’t be until after the war that they would learn the sailor survived.
Admiral William “Bull” Halsey commanded U.S. Navy carrier forces, and was later CINC South Pacific forces.
Doolittle had instructed his pilots that once they were airborne, they had to maintain course just forty feet above the ocean at a speed of 150 mph in order to conserve fuel. As the Army bombers headed west, Admiral Halsey ordered the Hornet, the Enterprise, and their escorts to make a sharp U-turn and head for Pearl Harbor. The Doolittle Raiders were now completely on their own.
CORPORAL JACOB “JAKE” DESHAZER, USAAF
Plane #16, Doolittle Raid
18 April 1942
When Doolittle got up, we all let out a big cheer and we knew it could be done. In my B-25, Bill Farrow was the pilot and the copilot was Bobby Hite. George Barr was the navigator, Harold Spatz was crew chief, engineer, and gunner, and I was the bombardier. There were five men on each airplane, all doing the same kinds of duties. They told me that when our wheels left the deck of the Hornet, I became a sergeant.
I really didn’t know what was going to happen and I didn’t speculate on it. I didn’t think about it. If I got killed, I got killed.
DOOLITTLE RAID
EN ROUTE TO TOKYO
550 MILES OFF JAPANESE COAST
18 APRIL 1942
The sixteen B-25s scattered in a loose formation spreading out more than 150 miles across the skies. To add to their fuel concerns, they were bucking a twenty-five miles per hour headwind. Soon they were out of sight of one another. That didn’t matter, though. They had planned it this way. There was less likelihood of detection if they were spread out. They all had their own orders and flight plans; each aircraft had its own target list specifying where to drop its bombs.
A Japanese patrol plane at least 600 miles off the east coast of Japan spotted one of the bombers at 0945 and reported a single twin-engine, land-based plane flying toward the Home Islands. But back in Tokyo, the military intelligence people ignored the report—it had to be a mistake; no land-based enemy aircraft that large could fly that far out to sea.
That morning in Tokyo there was a routine air raid drill. The military and civilians took it in stride. Practice drills were commonplace and the people often took them for granted. After all, Tokyo was safe—the Japanese generals and Radio Tokyo had said so. And Emperor Hirohito had personally reassured them that they were safe from enemy attack. It was impossible for enemy aircraft to attack the city.
Just minutes after noon, the first of Doolittle’s planes reached their target areas. Climbing to 1,500 feet to avoid being blown out of the sky by their own bombs, they lined up their targets in the bombsights.
At 1215, the Americans released their ordnance, and in fewer than fifteen minutes, Tokyo was ablaze from the B-25s’ incendiary bombs.
The same thing happened in Osaka, Kobe, the Yokosuka Navy Yard, and three other Japanese cities. The raiders made it a point to seek out military targets, concentrating on factories believed to be serving the war effort, refineries, and docks, as well as any visible fuel and ammunition dumps. After dropping their bombs, the B-25s descended to a hundred feet so as to present less of a target to Japanese anti-aircraft guns.
The anti-aircraft fire was ineffective, and though enemy fighter planes were aloft and others were sent up during the raids, not one of the B-25s was shot down. Several Japanese fighters tried to close in on some of the U.S. aircraft after they had dropped their bombs, but it was no easy task. After hitting their targets, the Americans were squeezing every bit of speed they could out of their planes, achieving speeds of up to 300 mph. Those B-25s that were threatened responded with the only weapons Doolittle had let them keep—two lightweight .30-caliber machine guns. At least two Japanese fighters that got too close were downed.
For Doolittle and his raiders, escaping Japanese anti-aircraft batteries and fighters over land wasn’t the end of their jeopardy. By the time they had cleared the west coast of Japan and headed over the East China Sea, the B-25s had enough fuel to fly about 800 miles. Unfortunately, the safe area in China was 1,000 miles away. But as the American aircrews began reviewing procedures for ditching at sea, something happened that seemed contrary to the laws of nature. A storm came up and the winds shifted. It seemed impossible to the navigators, who knew that the prevailing winds always blew from the China Sea toward Japan. But that day, the headwinds that they had bucked all day turned into tailwinds, and began to blow them toward China.
It was, in the minds of some of the weary airmen, an answer to prayer—a miracle! The winds were now helping the bombers to make up some of the hundreds of additional miles they had had to fly when they took off early from the Hornet.
Still, the wind shift hadn’t solved all their problems. None of the B-25s were able to pick up the homing signals in free China that were supposed to guide them to their recovery airfields. It was only later that they would learn that the plane dispatched to place the transmitting beacons had crashed in the same storm that helped extend the range of Doolittle’s B-25s. Without those homing signals to guide them to friendly airfields, they were on their own.
Finally, nearly ten hours after they had bombed Japan, one by one, lost in a tropical storm, with fuel gauges at “empty,” their engines began to sputter. Doolittle’s crew and the men aboard ten other B-25s decided that their best option was to bail out before the planes went down. Four other bombers made forced landings on the Chinese coast, but one crashed into the sea while trying to ditch. The plane hit the water at more than a hundred miles per hour, and the five men inside were pulled beneath the waves, still strapped in their seats. Three of them managed to unbuckle themselves and get out before the plane sank. These survivors managed to climb into a rubber life raft and make it to land. Soon after, the three were captured by Japanese patrols.
Only one plane was able to locate an airfield for a landing—but that was because the pilot knew they wouldn’t have enough fuel to get to China. He’d decided instead to head for Vladivostok, a Russian port in southeastern Siberia, some 500 miles west of Japan. When their B-25 landed, the Russians took the crewmen into custody and confiscated their bomber. Though the Soviets were ostensibly our “allies,” the American flyers were kept in Siberia until they escaped about a year later, eventually making their way through Iran to the Middle East and back into Allied hands.
The B-52 in which Jake DeShazer served as bombardier made it almost 300 miles into China. It wasn’t far enough. He and the other four men on his plane parachuted safely from their doomed aircraft, but were soon captured. The Japanese wasted no time in parading the Americans before the cameras for propaganda purposes. In all, eleven of the Doolittle Raiders were captured and became Japanese POWs. Three of them, DeShazer’s crewmates, were executed to exact revenge for the bombings. Jake DeShazer survived to tell the story.
CORPORAL JACOB “JAKE” DESHAZER, USAAF
Plane #16, Doolittle Raid
3,000 Feet Above China
18 April 1942
Our airplane flew farther than any of the rest of them. At 10:30 at night we were at 3,000 [feet] and the pilot said, “We’re going to have to jump. Jake, you’re first.”
I took a hold of the edge of the fuselage, pushed real hard, and jumped away from it. I counted to five real fast, pulled the ripcord, and the parachute opened up, and I thought, “I’m on the way now. I’m gonna get down.” And sure enough, I hit the edge of some kind of a rice field.
I tried to find a road or something that night, but I just went around in circles, so I came back to the same place where I started, found a place where I could get in out of the rain, and the next morning I started out looking for a road or some telephone lines. I found some kids about fifteen years old who had uniforms on. So I went up to them and asked them if they were Chinese or Japanese. And one fellow said, “Me, China.” I had my .45 all ready to go, because I was trying to find out if I was in free China or Japanese-occupied China. And they said, “Let’s go down to the camp.” It was only about a quarter of a mile away.
But when I got there, they surrounded me and every bayonet was pointed right at me. So I let them have my gun. They fed me and then I found out that I was in the hands of the Japanese military. They had captured all five of us. That started my three years and four months in a Japanese prison.
A few days later they flew us to Tokyo and started asking us questions. The hardest part was to be questioned for twenty-four hours and then taken down to our cells and maybe get a piece of bread to eat with a little rotten potato-peel soup.
When they did give us a little sleep, it would be only an hour or so. I was all tied up, and if I squirmed around, the guard would hit me on the side of the head with his club. It was more than I could stand.
We were kept in solitary cells and questioned for sixty days. Dean Hallmark got dysentery so bad that we’d have to carry him over to the toilet. Later on they took Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz away and executed them.
LIEUTENANT DICK COLE, USAAF
Plane #1, Doolittle Raid
3,000 Feet Above China
18 April 1942
Paul Leonard bailed out first, then Fred Braemer, then Hank, and then me. I tried to see when I was going to hit the ground, but it was foggy and I couldn’t see how high I was, until all at once I felt some leaves brushing my face just before I hit the ground.
I was probably the luckiest guy in the bunch. My chute drifted over a pine tree and so I didn’t hit the ground very hard. I don’t really recall much except that I made it down safe.
I waited until dawn, took out my compass, and just started to walk west. Toward evening I came to the edge of a cliff. And down below, there was a military compound flying a Chinese nationalist flag, so I went down there.
An hour or so later, Bombardier Fred Braemer came walking down the same path that I had followed. Neither of us could speak Chinese, so after a while, Fred and I used hand signals to let them know we wanted to leave.
This group obviously had some means of communications and they knew where they wanted to take us. We ended up in a headquarters with the Chinese general in charge of that area. By the time we arrived, Doolittle was already there. And in the meantime we’d picked up the fifth member of our aircrew, Paul Leonard.
They kept us there for about a week. And then they put us on a kind of river junk to keep us moving. Japanese patrol boats were going up and down the river with searchlights but we were never challenged.
They eventually brought us ashore and moved us over land on foot until we ended up in Hen Yang. A few days later a C-47 came in and picked us up and took us to Chungking. From there I was fortunate enough to eventually be returned to the United States.
Surprisingly, the first news of the raid came from Radio Tokyo, carrying broadcasts by Japan’s furious military leaders, promising revenge. An announcement from Washington, a few hours later, was vague and terse: “American planes might have participated in an attack upon the Japanese capital.” But by the following day, though details were still scant, newspaper headlines across the U.S. trumpeted the news: “Tokyo Bombed in Broad Daylight,” “U.S. Warplanes Rain Bombs on Jap Empire,” and “U.S. Bombs Hit Four Jap Cities.” Pressed by reporters to explain how the B-25s had managed to get all the way to Japan, FDR said that they had launched from “Shangri-La.”
But while Americans celebrated the feat, many of the participants were still suffering. Pilot Ted Lawson, whose plane had crashed into the sea, had a crushed leg, and by the time the flight surgeon, Thomas “Doc” White, found him, the leg was rotting from gangrene. Doc White figured that to save Lawson’s life, the leg would have to go.
Operating in a nationalist Chinese jungle encampment, the surgeon gave Lawson a spinal injection with Novocain to numb the pain, then used a hacksaw to methodically cut through the fetid flesh and thick leg bone. Lawson remained conscious throughout the long procedure, and when it was over, he watched quietly as Doc sewed up the wound and then used a hypodermic syringe to take his own blood to transfuse the traumatized patient. As a nurse carried the sawed-off leg outside the tent to dispose of it, Lawson said, “Thanks, Doc.”
Back home, little was initially known about the fate of most of the airmen. General Hap Arnold had received a coded message from Doolittle on 21 April, relayed through the nationalist Chinese. But all that Doolittle was able to report at the time was that the mission to bomb Japan was accomplished and that bad weather, not a shortage of fuel, might mean that all sixteen of the B-25s had been lost. He also informed Washington that five American fliers had survived.
By the time Doolittle arrived back in the United States, it was known that the Japanese had captured eleven of the airmen. What no one knew until much later was that they were all subjected to horrific torture and interrogation in an effort to discover how the attack could have taken place. Even after three of their number were executed by the Japanese, the Americans gave them only name, rank, and serial number.
All of the Doolittle Raiders were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their heroism. FDR presented Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle with the Medal of Honor and promoted him to brigadier general, allowing him to bypass the rank of colonel.
Of the eighty men who went on the mission, three were killed while jumping from their planes after the raid. Eleven were captured, and the Japanese executed three of them on 15 October 1942. Another prisoner died of maltreatment by his captors, and four others were released when the war ended, following three and a half years of imprisonment.
Most of the Doolittle Raiders were reassigned after they returned to the United States and volunteered to fly combat missions elsewhere. Ten of them were killed in action, in North Africa, Europe, and Indochina, and four others were shot down in the European theater and captured by the Germans, who held them for the duration of the war.
At the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, a carefully protected display case holds eighty silver goblets, each engraved with the name of a Doolittle Raider. Every 18 April, the goblets are used at a reunion of the surviving Doolittle Raiders, in a private and emotional ceremony. They toast their comrades, living and dead, and reminisce. The goblets of those who have passed on since the last reunion are inverted inside the case. And one day soon, all the goblets will be upside down.