Nov 11, 2012,10:49am EST
Doolittle's Raiders And The Miracle That Saved Them*
![The USS Hornet with 16 Army Air Forces B-25s on deck, ready for the Tokyo raid (U.S. Air Force... [+] photo)](https://b-i.forbesimg.com/maryclairekendall/files/2013/04/USS-Hornet-300x2396.jpg "USS Hornet")
My thoughts go to the Doolittle’s Raiders this Veterans Day, four of whom I recently spoke with during the 15th Annual American Veterans Center conference.
April 18th of this year marked the 70th anniversary of the “Doolittle Raid” on military targets on the Japanese home island of Honshu—a pivotal, morale-boosting retaliatory strike, just 131 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, demonstrating Japan was vulnerable to U.S. attack. Tom Casey, Raiders manager, set the scene at the AVC forum featuring them:
... It was a Saturday morning, the
Empire of Japan. The City of Tokyo was very busy at midday, when suddenly the citizens of Tokyo heard the sound of aircraft engines flying very low overhead and they looked up and they saw the underbody of a twin engine bomber. They were expecting to see the big red ball insignia of the Japanese Air Force under its wings. They didn’t see a big red ball; they saw a very little red ball inserted in a bright white star in a blue circle. What they were looking at was the insignia of the United States Army Air Force. The aircraft was a North American B25 model B. And, at its controls was one of America’s top aviators, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle. To his right was the very young lieutenant Richard Cole. On board also was a navigator, bombardier and a crew chief gunner. Within the next few minutes the citizens of Tokyo would hear the sounds of bombs going off within their city. Within the next hour, the citizens of the Empire of Japan and other major cities like Yokohama and Kobe would also hear the impact of bombs going off as 15 other B25s found their designated targets and started bombing the Empire of Japan.
Immortalized in Oscar-winning Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), starring Spencer Tracy as Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, the raid was the only time in U.S. military history that United States Army Air Forces bombers launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. Seven of the 80 men who flew the mission did not survive. Of the 16 B-25s that flew, 15 were destroyed and one, Plane #8, was lost after it made an emergency landing in Vladivostok because of a malfunctioning carburetor. To this day, it has yet to be recovered. The film is based on the 1943 book by Captain Ted
The four Doolittle’s Raiders (out of five survivors) at the conference included:
- Lt. Col. Richard Cole (97), Doolittle’s Co-Pilot, Plane #1;
- SSgt. David Thatcher (91), Engineer Gunner, Plane #7, The Ruptured Duck, who saved his crew and was played by Robert Walker in the film;
- Major Thomas Griffin, Navigator, Plane #9, whom Doolittle tasked with going to the Pentagon to get Japanese maps and charts, trusting he would stay mum on the mission, more secret than the Manhattan Project; (Later captured and held in a German prison camp, he played a key role featured in The Great Escape); and
- Lt. Col. Edward Joseph Saylor, Engineer, Plane #15, who saved his plane by changing the engine on the Japan-bound carrier.
These men are the very best of America, embodying humility, grace, courage, humor and love of country. Truly they are the “salt of the earth.”
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and the Real Raid
SSgt. David Thatcher, asked if he thought Robert Walker did a good job playing him in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, said "Oh, yeah." Thatcher also said the film “followed the book well” and “was pretty accurate.”
“I did enjoy it,” said Major Tom Griffin. “I thought they did a good job by and large. They had a few little mistakes and exaggerations but other than that they did a good job telling the story.” Asked about Robert Walker playing Thatcher, Griffin said, “That’s a handsome young man, naturally. He looked at me and didn’t want to play me.”
Lt. Col. Ed Saylor said his character was featured “a little bit” in the film when “I came in and sat down with Capt. Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) before they took off” and thought “It was pretty accurate.”
Of the real raid, Griffin said: “It was a great challenge to us and we were all very proud of the part that we played in that. It was a dangerous raid.”
Saylor described his amazing feat repairing the engine in Plane #15:
I had to take an engine off the airplane on the flight deck of the carrier and take it down to the hangar deck and take the back half of the engine apart and do some repairs in there and put it back together and back on the airplane. Working on an airplane, you couldn’t lay any tools, anything on the deck. It would go right overboard. Every tool and nut and bolt and everything had to go up inside the airplane and then I had to find it.
Then, he chuckled at the memory of this seemingly impossible task.
Lt. Col. Richard Cole said he did not realize in the immediate aftermath the great boost to morale the raid provided. As he told me, “At the outset we were told we would get to come home if we survived the mission.” But he said, “There were 20 of us that didn’t get to go home, so we had no idea what took place after the raid. Fourteen months later we were able to come home.” But, “All of us didn’t realize at the time I don’t think the effect of it.”
Had he seen the film? No, only snippets, he said. “I’ll get my grandson to make sure I watch it.”
‘Boy, am I glad to see you!”
Cole recounted the reunion scene in China after the raid:
I’d been walking all day. I came out on a clearing and looked around at what looked like a little military compound... so I walked down and a young soldier took me to a building and I sat at a table and on the table was a piece of paper with a sketch of one airplane with five chutes coming out of it and a bunch of hieroglyphics and so forth. And, I got him to take me where he took the individual (who did the sketch) and I walked in and lo had behind there was Col. Doolittle. I said, ‘Boy, am I glad to see you!’ And, he greeted me and was glad I wasn’t injured and later on that evening, they brought in the rest of the crew and we were all together at that time.
Cole’s expression of relief can only be appreciated if you have some understanding of the “great challenge,” as Griffin characterized it, that the mission entailed.
The Mission—Development and Execution
After Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt immediately called in his military Chiefs of Staff and asked them to find a way to attack Japan in retaliation. With no base to launch an attack from, they were at a loss. Roosevelt went so far as to call Joseph Stalin to see if they could launch from Russia but he said no; he was practically losing to Germany in the west and did not want to start a war with Japan in the east. Then something fortuitous happened. In early January, Admiral King, Navy Chief of Staff, asked Francis Low, a young Navy captain, to go down to Norfolk, Virginia to do an inspection tour on the newest carrier, the USS Hornet, then going through its sea trials. As he was leaving Norfolk a week later, flying over the Navy station, Casey said:
... (Low) just happened to look out the window and saw two Army bombers doing touch and go landings on what appeared to be a runway that was clearly marked off as an aircraft carrier. This was, of course, set up for Navy training. He made a mental note of that.
When he got back to Washington he started asking around to see if it’s “possible for a twin engine bomber to take off the deck of an aircraft carrier.” No one could answer the question. Finally, Hap Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Army, though also unable to solve his quandary, said, “But, I have a gentleman, I just commissioned and his job right now is to run around the United States and visit automobile factories, converting them into airplane factories. His name is James H. Doolittle, Major James H. Doolittle.”
A marvelous collaboration was about to begin. The United States Navy had already developed contingency plans, working out all the logistics, setting up an attack fleet, and moving the Hornet to California in lieu of Pearl Harbor, where it would “stand by.” The Navy “looked at the four types of twin engine bombers the Army was flying at the time,” said Casey. “Two of them were discounted immediately.” Built by Boeing, “they had these long wings that just couldn’t maneuver on the deck of a carrier.” So it was down to two twin engine planes, the brand new B26 and the North American B25.
The Navy gave Doolittle the B25 and B26 to look at. After deciding the 26 “was too new and took too much runway,” Doolittle sat down with the Navy to get all the specs on the Hornet—“how much deck did he have, how long was it, how wide was it, how fast could this carrier go” then focused seriously on the B25. As Casey said:
Doolittle was an engineer by trade so he immediately put everything on paper and started to work out his plan, took the B25, got familiar with it real quick, found out what it could do and couldn’t do. He decided the B25 was going to be his airplane but it needed to be modified. It was carrying a lot of equipment he didn’t think it needed, especially a big belly turret that was totally useless on an airplane. He removed that and started to design the airplane to take on more fuel...
After Doolittle completed the redesigned plane, the Navy then sat down with him to come up with a workable plan for the attack. “The carrier,” said Casey, “would go to a certain distance and launch the planes, the planes would hit their targets in Japan and then they would land in China”—in territories not captured by the Japanese. They picked Choo Chow to land initially and refuel and from there they would head on to Chungking where they would turn their planes over to the Chinese National Air Force for safekeeping until they could be recovered.
On paper, the raid “looked like a wonderful blue print,” said Casey.
Then, Doolittle got down to the task of recruiting and training men to “take the 25 off in less than 500 feet” and found Eglin Army Air Force Base in North Florida, which “was perfect because it had auxiliary fields north of the fields that were out of sight.” Then he asked Hap Arnold for “the best B25 pilots.” That turned out to be the 17th bomb group—four squadrons—located at Pendleton Field in Oregon. They were told “to pack up and head to Columbia, South Carolina.” They thought they were going to do mission work there. “But eventually they got orders to go to Eglin...”
Once they arrived at Eglin, they met Doolittle for the first time. Moving up the ranks fast—he was now a lieutenant colonel—he told them, Casey said, “I’m looking for volunteers to go on a mission, a highly secretive mission that’s going to take you out of the country for three months, that is very dangerous and if you don’t want to go, raise your hand right now and leave the room.”
Nobody left the room.
Next came the training. One day, Doolittle showed up with a Navy lieutenant and said, as Casey recounted, “Gentlemen, this is Lt. Henry Miller, United States Navy. He’s going to teach you how to take a B25 off of less than 500 feet.” There was real grumbling. One of the crew members challenged Miller, asking, “Have you ever taken a B25 off of 500 feet?” to which he replied, “No, but you will.” After three weeks of intensive training, they learned how to do it—one aircraft actually taking off in 376 feet. “This crew was fantastic,” said Casey. “They took this heavy aircraft that would normally take 1500 feet to get the nose wheel up” and were now getting all three wheels up in the required distance.
At this point, none of the crew, except for Griffin, still had any idea what the mission was. Weeks later, said Casey, “when Doolittle shows up he’s there to congratulate them and tell them, ‘Gentleman you’re leaving for California’” The planes were directed to go to a depot near the south side of Sacramento where they had some maintenance done. “The next set of orders they got was to report to Alameda Air Station in northern California.” Then the pieces started coming together:
They took off and as they’re coming into San Francisco Bay, getting their orders from the ground where to land, they couldn’t help but notice this ship standing next to the wharf. The ship was an aircraft carrier and had the shortest runway they ever saw and then they started to add it up real quick.
They landed, taxied up to the wharf and 16 B25s were hoisted onto the deck of the carrier—that’s all the room Doolittle had—and the carrier went out to the mooring, after which the guys were given a night on the town. The next morning the USS Hornet left San Francisco and, Casey said, it “goes under the Golden Gate Bridge, and when she comes out on the Pacific there’s two cruisers and four destroyers and a tanker waiting for them.”
On the first day out, no one knew what was going on, which made for a tense situation. As Casey explained:
You guys who are in the Navy would appreciate this. You got a brand new carrier, you’re waiting to go to war, and overnight all of the sudden the Army shows up and puts sixteen ugly green airplanes on your deck. Your planes are on the bottom deck (along with you).
The result was predictable: “They didn’t treat (the Doolittle Raiders) very well. In fact, they didn’t treat them well at all.”
It wasn’t until the second day out at sea that “Doolittle called them in to a meeting along with the captain of the Hornet and for the first time he said ‘Gentleman, you’re going to bomb Japan.’” At this point the Navy “took over the microphone... and the loud speakers went up over the deck, explaining to the Navy the reason why the sixteen bombers were on the deck of their ship... The Navy’s attitude changed in a hurry,” said Casey.
The next few days “all the instructions went out,” said Casey. “Doolittle explained exactly how this was going to work. The Navy gave Doolittle the numbers.” The Hornet would be joined by USS Enterprise with the two cruisers, four destroyers and tanker on the 12th becoming the Task Force. The launch of the planes would take place 400 miles from Japan. It would be a night raid—shortly after midnight on April 19th—to minimize damage. Doolittle’s aircraft would carry incinerators—bombs that spread fires.
“The Hand of God”
Unfortunately on the morning of 18th of April 1942 at daybreak, things changed drastically when a perimeter of commercial trawlers around Japan, about 700 miles out, instructed to report on any shipping heading west, spotted the fleet. American intelligence was unaware of this perimeter. Their cover was blown. “Doolittle flashes back to Halsey in the USS Enterprise, ‘I’m going’” even though he was about 250 miles further out than the target launch site. “Now, fuel became the big problem,” said Casey. But he located ten five-gallon cans the Navy had and put two on each aircraft. Still it would not be enough fuel (“70 lbs. per can”) to make their run and go on to Choo Chow to refuel for the final trip to Chungking. Plus, now they would be bombing in broad daylight. Nonetheless:
... the planes were prepared, the cruisers were prepared, the bombs were loaded, the fuels were topped off, everything was done and in a little over an hour Doolittle was sitting in position, the Hornet was turned into the wind, 30 foot seas, there was a pretty good breeze blowing across the deck.
At this dramatic moment, Doolittle took off, with his men looking up, wondering if it would work. Then, Casey recounts, they “follow Doolittle one at a time and head for Japan. Then they have to go down, they’re flying under radar, they’re flying across wave tops all the way to Japan.”
All 16 aircraft did make it to Japan, #8 peeling off and making that unfortunate landing in Vladivostok. Fifteen of them found their targets and bombed them. Then, as instructed, they took the route around the southern end of the island and headed across the China Sea to China.
Up to this point, the weather was blue-skies beautiful. However, nearly halfway across the China Sea they ran into treacherous storms, with lightning, thunder and high winds and rain, which cut off communications. The navigators lost sight of land and they were all running out of fuel—fast.
The mission was heading for a disastrous end, but then “a little bit of a miracle” happened, said Casey:
... They call it the hand of God. Little did we know that there was this wonderful stream of air running east to west. The planes got caught in that little stream of air... the jet stream. That gave them a 25 knot tail wind. So now the aircraft were able to go a little bit further and all of the aircraft did meet or come close to China—some them got to the coastline, some of them went inland.
Three planes made crash landings on the ChinaCoast including the Ruptured Duck,sending three Raiders to their death. After the ditching and bailing out, SSgt. David Thatcher saved his crew by bringing them all together and protecting them until help arrived, for which he was awarded Silver Star.
The other 13 crews kept flying until their tanks ran out of gas. All of them eventually bailed out all over China, two crews landing in enemy territory.
Of the 80 Doolittle's Raiders who flew the mission, eight were taken Prisoners of War, seven died. In addition to the three who died over China, close to landfall, four of whom perished, three by execution, one beri-beri and malnutrition.
In the immediate aftermath Lt. Col. Doolittle told his men he expected a court martial upon his return to the United States, given the loss of all 16 aircraft and damage, though relatively minor, inflicted on their targets. Instead, the boost to American morale the raid accomplished prompted FDR to award him with the Medal of Honor. He was also promoted two grades to Brigadier General and, during the next three years, was given command of the 12th Air Force in North Africa, the 15th Air Force in the Mediterranean and the 8th Air Force in England.
A “great challenge” was met and surmounted, yielding great success—thanks to the “hand of God.”
God bless our fighting men and women on this Veterans Day.
For more about the raid, see Brigadier General Jimmy Doolittle talking about it in 1980, courtesy United States Air Force.
