SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, 80 AIRMEN DELIVERED A MUCH-NEEDED THE STRIKE AGAINST JAPAN. DOOLITTLE

RAIDBy Robert B. Kane

n April 18, 1942, at approxi- Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the Chiefs At Low’s direction, troops loaded mately 8:20 a.m., 16 B-25 of the Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces two Army B-25s onto Hornet, the under the command (AAF) to plan a retaliatory strike on Navy’s newest carrier, at Norfolk. The of Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Japan to boost American morale. He carrier sailed about 100 miles into the ODoolittle began taking off from USS repeated that request over the following Atlantic and launched the two aircraft Hornet, about 750 miles east of Japan. weeks. Since the bulk of the US Pacific from its deck without difficulty. About noon, local time, they struck Fleet’s battleships lay on the bottom of Meanwhile, Doolittle, a military factories and other industrial targets and American aircraft of test pilot, famed civilian aviator, and in six Japanese cities. the time could not reach Japan from the aeronautical engineer of the interwar The attack had minimal effect on closest American land base, the service years, was now special assistant to Lt. Japan’s military or industrial capa- Chiefs wondered how they could carry Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, Chief bilities and was carried out at the cost out the President’s request. of the Army Air Forces. Doolittle was of all the bombers in the raid. Seven On Jan. 10, 1942, Navy Capt. Fran- already trying to figure out which airmen died or were killed after being cis S. Low, assistant chief of staff for bombers could carry out an attack captured. Four spent the duration of anti-submarine warfare on the staff on Japan. the war as POWs. of Adm. Ernest J. King—head of the The needed aircraft had to have Still, the mission had a profound US Fleet and soon to become Chief a 2,400-mile cruising range, a effect on Americans, Japanese military of Naval Operations—watched two 2,000-pound bomb load, and be small leaders, and the Japanese people dur- Army pilots conducting mock bomb- enough that a reasonable number would ing the ensuing months. Seventy-five ing passes on an outline of a carrier fit on an deck. Doolittle years later, the still has deck painted on the airfield at Norfolk decided on the B-25B, then the Army’s important lessons to teach. Naval Base, Va. The drill gave him the newest aircraft. It would be modified Two weeks after Japan’s Dec. 7, idea to launch Army bombers from an to carry double its normal fuel load 1941, , President aircraft carrier. and, thus, extend its range.

A B-25, piloted by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, takes off from the deck of USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, for a daring raid against mainland Japan. US Navy photo

78 APRIL / MAY 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM DOOLITTLE

RAIDBy Robert B. Kane

Once Roosevelt and the service Chiefs approved the concept for the retaliatory raid, Doolittle chose the 17th Bomb Group (Medium), assigned to Pendleton AAF, Ore., to provide aircraft and crews. He picked the unit because it was the first group to fly B-25s. On Feb. 3, the War Department or- dered the 17th BG to Columbia Army Air Base, near Columbia, S.C., osten- sibly to conduct anti-submarine patrols off the American East Coast. Doolittle diverted 24 of the group’s aircraft to Mid-Continent Airlines of Minneapolis, where they would get additional fuel tanks and other modifications. The 17th Bomb Group began arriv- ing at Columbia on Feb. 9, followed by Doolittle himself a few days later. He informed only Lt. Col. William C. Mills, the group commander, about the upcoming mission. Addressing the crews, Doolittle said he was looking for volunteers for a highly dangerous and

US Navy photo

APRIL / MAY 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM 79 THE RAID CRACKED THE SENSE OF INVULNERABILITY THAT JAPANESE LEADERS HAD ENCOURAGED AMONG THE JAPANESE PEOPLE SINCE THE 13TH CENTURY.

Top: Doolittle’s aircraft launches from USS secret mission that would contribute to “The Raiders at Eglin,” April 2015, p. 71.) Hornet’s . America’s war effort, but he gave no Between training missions, the bomb other details. When the entire group group’s enlisted men and Eglin techni- Below: The deck of Hornet lined with B-25 volunteered, Doolittle and the group’s cians made additional changes to the bombers on the way to the mission’s launching point. In the distance is USS squadron commanders selected the best aircraft. They installed a collapsible Vincennes. The bombers were modified for 24 crews for the mission. fuel tank and more fuel cells in the the special mission, including the removal The chosen men picked up the modi- fuselage, de-icers and anti-icers in the of the belly turret and a tactical radio and the addition of a collapsible fuel tank. fied B-25s at Minneapolis and flew them wings, steel blast plates around the to Eglin Field, Fla., arriving between upper turret, and mock gun barrels in Feb. 27 and March 1. With them came the tail. They removed the belly turret 60 enlisted personnel. During the next and a heavy tactical radio. The mechan- three weeks, the crews practiced carrier ics also fine-tuned new carburetors takeoffs, low-level and night flying, for the aircraft engines to obtain the over-water navigation, and low-altitude best possible engine performance and bombing at various Eglin auxiliary fields fuel consumption rate for low-altitude and over the Gulf of Mexico. The Navy cruising. provided Lt. Henry L. Miller, a flight Doolittle had the top-secret Norden instructor from nearby NAS Pensacola, to bombsights on the aircraft removed. supervise the short-takeoff training. (See They wouldn’t be of much value at the medium altitudes from which the raiders would strike, and it was too great a risk that they would fall into enemy hands. US Naval History and Heritage Command photo Command Heritage and History Naval US

80 APRIL / MAY 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM US Navy photo Navy US

Instead, Capt. Charles R. Greening, the combined task force was about 750 The pilot of the 16th aircraft, Capt. pilot and armament officer, created an miles east of Japan. Edward J. York, realized within hours of aiming sight dubbed the “Mark Twain.” At about that moment, Navy scout launching from Hornet that his engines The sights were built in Eglin’s sheet- planes detected a Japanese picket boat, were burning fuel at an unexpectedly metal workshops for about 20 cents each, and USS Nashville sank it by gunfire. high rate. (Civilian technicians at Mc- and Doolittle later said that they were The picket boat had sent Japan a mes- Clellan Field had incorrectly changed relatively accurate in the actual attack. sage of the sighting but didn’t confirm the settings of his aircraft’s carburetors.) Early on March 23, Arnold called the message before it was sunk. Faced York, realizing that his aircraft would Doolittle at Eglin Field and informed with the potential loss of surprise, Doo- not reach China, turned northwesterly him that it was time to move the secret little and Mitscher decided to launch toward Vladivostok, in the Soviet Union. operation to McClellan Field, Calif., the B-25s immediately, fully 10 hours The Soviet Union, allied with the US for final inspections and modifications and some 250 miles farther east than against Nazi Germany, was not at war to the aircraft. They would then fly to they had planned. All 16 aircraft took with Japan, however, and it imprisoned NAS Alameda for loading onto Hornet. to the air safely, but a sailor lost an arm the crew and confiscated the aircraft. It Though bad weather and installation when he stepped back into the prop took 13 months of persistent US gov- of the modifications had reduced the wash of an aircraft. ernment efforts and three relocations planned training time (about 50 hours Wave-hopping as they approached to get the crew to Ashgabat, 20 miles total) by 50 percent, Doolittle said in his the coast, the planes were seen by north of the Iranian border. There, the postraid report to Arnold that the crews Japanese fishing boats. Six hours after Soviet secret police arranged to smuggle had attained a “safely operational” level. takeoff, the B-25s arrived over Japan. York’s crew into Iran. Between March 31 and April 1 Climbing to 1,500 feet, the American Back in China, Chinese soldiers at Alameda, the Navy loaded 16 of bombers started their runs on targets in and guerrillas—and Japanese sol- Doolittle’s B-25s onto Hornet’s flight Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, diers—searched for the Americans. deck. This left about 450 feet of deck Kobe, and Osaka. Two Doolittle Raiders drowned when for the aircraft to make their takeoffs. None of the B-25s were lost to enemy their aircraft crashed off the Chinese Commanded by Navy Capt. Marc A. anti-aircraft fire or fighters, and two of coast, and one died after bailing out. Mitscher, Hornet left San Francisco on the crews shot down three Japanese Most of the raiders found their way into the morning of April 1, with 71 Army aircraft between them. friendly hands, but the Japanese army Air Forces officers and 130 enlisted- After dropping their bombs, 15 B-25s captured eight of them and executed men aboard, escorted by supply ships. turned southwesterly across the East three as war criminals. One of the re- A few days later, the task force met up China Sea toward friendly airfields in maining five died as a prisoner of war, with the carrier USS Enterprise and eastern China. Unfortunately, the early and in August 1945, Office of Strategic its escorts, commanded by Vice Adm. launch took its toll and all of the raider Services agents rescued the remaining William F. Halsey Jr., north of . aircraft were running low on fuel as four from a Shanghai military prison. Because Hornet’s fighters were below they approached the Chinese coast. In retaliation for Chinese help in on the hangar deck, Enterprise’s aircraft It was now night and 15 crews were rescuing 69 raiders, the Japanese army would protect the task force in case of forced to ditch along the coast or bail destroyed numerous villages and killed a Japanese attack. By early April 18, out over eastern China. up to 250,000 Chinese.

APRIL / MAY 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM 81 the fictional land of James Hilton’s ventional plan to answer Roosevelt’s novel, Lost Horizon, but the Japanese request for a retaliatory strike. Arnold leadership figured out that the bomb- also demonstrated his leadership by ers had come from an aircraft carrier. giving the go-ahead for an unusual idea. The raid cracked the sense of in- During the three weeks at Eglin vulnerability that Japanese leaders Field, weather and aircraft rework cut had encouraged among the Japanese Doolittle’s training time by half, but he people since the 13th century, when judged the crews adequately prepared. Mongol fleets foundered in the last On launch day, Doolittle and attempt by outsiders to invade Japan. Mitscher both knew that launching The Allied victories in the Southwest the bombers early would mean they’d Pacific and Central Pacific after mid- be nearly out of fuel by the time they 1942 served to widen this growing reached the China coast, but they took sense of insecurity. The Japanese the risk to accomplish the mission. military felt compelled to withdraw Finally, the raid, known as Special some fighter squadrons to the home Aviation Project No. 1, was the first islands for home defense. major joint operation since the Civil The attack confirmed the decision of War, when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the Japanese military leaders to shift using Army and the Navy units, cap- their strategy away from an advance tured Vicksburg, Miss., in 1863 after Doolittle (left foreground) and Hornet toward India and instead toward Hawaii a two-week siege. commander Capt. Marc Mitscher (right and the seizure of Midway Island. They Throughout the concept development foreground) with some of the raiders on the deck of the carrier during the mission. hoped such an operation would draw to the launch off Hornet, Navy and Army

Courtesy of US Navy US of Courtesy out the US carriers—absent at Pearl Air Forces members worked together Surveying his own wrecked aircraft, Harbor on Dec. 7—and give them a to achieve something unprecedented. Doolittle mused to SSgt. Paul J. Leon- chance to destroy America’s remaining The Doolittle raid showed the value ard, his engineer-gunner, that he would offensive power in the Pacific. of approaching threats with new think- probably be court-martialed. The raid, The ensuing , June ing when the conventional approach he said, had caused little actual damage 5-7, 1942, was a resounding American won’t work. It demonstrated that to Japan’s ability to make war, he’d lost naval victory. It cost the Japanese navy military leaders must be willing to all 16 aircraft, and at the time, didn’t four carriers, 275 aircraft, and 2,400 accept innovative solutions to modern know where the other aviators from the men. Worse, the casualties included problems—by creating an atmosphere mission were. Japan’s most experienced naval pilots that will produce such ideas and people Rather, unbeknownst to Doolittle, and aircraft mechanics. The US Navy, willing to provide them—and accept Roosevelt promoted him to brigadier meanwhile, lost much less: one carrier, a degree of calculated risk. J general and awarded him the Medal 150 aircraft, and 307 men. The Battle of of Honor. All 80 raiders received the Midway stopped Japan’s advance to the Distinguished Flying Cross and other east and soon put it on the defensive. Robert B. Kane retired from the US Air decorations from the Chinese govern- The Doolittle Raid is a lesson Force as a colonel in July ment. Those killed or wounded received for officers and enlisted alike about 2014 and serves as director of history for Air University, Maxwell AFB, Ala. the Purple Heart. decision-making, innovative thinking, His most recent article for Air Force Despite Doolittle’s pessimism about and risk-taking. Low and Doolittle Magazine was “The Raiders at Eglin” the effects of the raid, it did have sig- independently developed an uncon- in the April 2015 issue. nificant and long-term implications. First, it provided a tremendous boost to American morale. Newspaper head- lines and radio journalists proclaimed “Tokyo Bombed”—the first bit of good war news after a litany of evil tidings from the Pacific. There had been four months of American defeats since Pearl Harbor, including the surrender of about 12,000 Americans and 65,000 Filipino soldiers in the Bataan Pen- insula—the worst defeat in American history. The raid gave Americans hope for eventual victory. Roosevelt told reporters the Ameri- Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. This photograph is one of only a few taken during the raid that made it through the aircraft crashes.

can aircraft had come from Shangri-La, Air Army US Forces photo

82 APRIL / MAY 2017 H WWW.AIRFORCEMAG.COM