William G. “Billy” Farrow September 24, 1918-October 15, 1942
William G. Farrow was born on September 24, 1918 in Darlington. Those who knew him recall a young man who lived an exemplary life, a leader in youth activities at First Baptist Church, an Eagle Scout at 16, an excellent student and a 1935 graduate of St. John’s High. Farrow was one of three USC students selected to begin pilot training at the Hawthorne Aviation School in Orangeburg in the fall of 1939. He then received his commission and the silver wings of an Army Aviator in 1941. He was then transferred to his duty station, the 17 Bomb Group in Pendleton, Oregon, and he transitioned to the B-25 Mitchell Bomber, the newest weapon in the Air Corps. In January 1942, the 17 Bombardment Group had just moved from Oregon to the new Columbia Army Air Field when Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle asked for volunteers for a “secret,” highly hazardous mission. Training over Lake Murray and flying cross-country to Bush and Daniel Fields in Augusta, was soon replaced with puzzling short field take-off training in Columbia, and then Eglin Field, Florida. On April 1, 1942, the crews and the B-25s were loaded aboard the USS Hornet and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, destination unknown, for a mission that would become part of the Doolittle Raid story: Lt. Billy Farrow’s plane — the “Bat out of Hell,” Crew #16 — launched toward Nagoya, Japan’s fourth largest city. There, the plane’s bombs dropped from 500 feet, destroying an oil storage tank and inflicting damage with incendiary cluster on the Mitsubishi Aircraft Factory. On April 19, 1942, 16 hours after leaving the USS Hornet, the B-25s engines sputtered out of gas. Lt. Farrow and his crew were forced to bail out shortly after crossing the south coast of Hanchung, China, which was Japanese held territory. The crew was captured, interrogated and tortured by the Japanese, who tried to force them to sign guilty confessions of war crimes. In October, the Emperor commuted the death sentence of five airmen, but executions of Bill Farrow and two others would be carried out as scheduled. Farrow was permitted to write a letter to his mother, and he wrote a selfless letter of encouragement to his family, in which he said “…don’t let this get you down. Just remember that God will make everything right and that I will see you again in the hereafter.” Farrow thanked his family for their entire help group in Darlington and closed with “So let me implore you to keep your chin up. Be brave and strong for my sake. P.S. My insurance policy is in my bag in a small tent in Columbia. Read: Thanatopsis by Brant if you want to know how I am taking this. My faith in God is complete, so I am unafraid.” (The letter was never mailed. Instead, it was discovered after the war in a secret Japanese archive in the War Ministry Building in Tokyo.) The next morning at dawn, on October 15, Farrow and the other two airmen were tied to three crosses in a public cemetery near Shanghai, and a Japanese firing squad fired a single bullet into the forehead of each American. Their bodies were cremated and the ashes hidden in a Japanese mortuary until American investigators found them in 1945. Farrow finally came home in 1946, and his remains were buried with honor in Arlington National Cemetery. He was awarded decorations posthumously, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart and Chinese Breast Order of Pao Ting.
Timeline for Billy Farrow (last 5 months)
April 18--At 8am aboard the USS Hornet, the Klaxon horns sounded, and Captain Marc Mitscher gave the order to Lt. Farrow and the other Doolittle Raiders: “Army pilots--man your planes. Army pilots--man your planes.” The mission wasn’t scheduled to launch for another eight hours, but a Japanese patrol vessel had been sighted just six miles ahead of the Hornet.
In a rush to board the Bat out of Hell, Lt. Farrow’s assigned B-25 medium bomber, Farrow and his co-pilot Lt. Robert Hite visited the commissary and loaded up on Baby Ruth candy bars. From Lt. Bill Farrow: Doolittle Raider: “Later, Bob Hite would remember that long after their emergency rations had been consumed, those Baby Ruths would become lifesavers for the hungry men of the Bat Out of Hell.”
April 18--At 9:15am, with gale-force winds and waves thirty feet high whipping against the USS Hornet, Lt. Farrow throttled the Bat Out of Hell forward into takeoff position. His objective: bomb the Mitisubishi Aircraft Factory in Nagoya, Japan. From Lt. Bill Farrow: Doolittle Raider: “Just before revving up his engines for takeoff, Farrow called over the interphone: “‘Okay, anybody wanna resign? Last chance!’” His comments were met with laughter. . .The flagman gave them the GO signal at 9:15am, and Bill Farrow yelled to his crewmen, “Everybody hold on. Here we go.”
April 18--At 2pm, after about five hours in the air, Lt. Farrow saw the white beaches of Japan dead ahead. The Bat Out of Hell was some three hundred miles away (or around ninety minutes of flying time) from Nagoya, the crew’s bombing site. At that point Lt. George Barr, the navigator, informed Lt. Farrow that they were about fifteen hundred miles (or eight to nine hours of flying time) from Chuchow Air Field in China, the friendly port where they would land after the mission was completed.
April 18--At around 3:30pm, Lt. Farrow and the crew of the Bat Out of Hell approached their target, and Cpl. Jacob DeShazer, the bombardier, released five five-hundred bombs on the Mitsubishi Aircraft Factory in Nagoya. The bombs hit their target.
April 18--At around 7pm, after almost thirteen hours of flying time, Lt. Barr spotted a lighthouse on the coast of China, and Lt. Farrow flew to 11,000 feet to avoid the mountains. It was dark and Lt. Farrow, unable to locate Chuchow Air Field, had to fly west to avoid the bad weather and being spotted by Japanese, who held territory in China.
April 19--At around midnight, after having unintentionally flown well past Chuchow Air Field, Lt. Farrow spotted city lights, but Lt. Barr informed the crew that the city down below was Nanchang, which was occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army. Not long after, the Bat Out of Hell’s engines began to sputter. Out of gas, Lt. Farrow and his crew parachuted out.
April 19--Early morning, Lt. Farrow and Cpl. Jacob DeShazer came across some Chinese villagers and offered them two-hundred dollars for a safe way to get to Chungking. The villagers took Lt. Farrow and Cpl. DeShazer to a hut and fed them. Not long after, officers with the Japanese Imperial Army arrived and took both men prisoner, but not before slaughtering the villagers who’d helped Lt. Farrow and Cpl. Deshazer.
April 20--Lt. Farrow and Cpl. DeShazer were driven to a military prison, where they were reunited with the rest of the crew from the Bat Out of Hell: Lt. George Barr, navigator; Cpl. Harold Spatz, engineer-gunner; Lt. Robert Hite, co-pilot. The Japanese Imperial Army, blatantly ignoring the Geneva Convention’s rules for prisoners of war, tortured and beat Lt. Farrow and his crew in various prisons for the next six months.
October 10--After being put on trial for erroneous “war crimes,” Col. Toyama Nakajo, the chief judge, signed a document stating that Lt. Farrow and his crew “have been found guilty as charged, and are hereby sentenced to death.” But later, the chief of the Imperial General Staff overruled the decision and proclaimed that “with the exception of both pilots and the gunner Spaz, the death sentence should be commuted.” The executions of Lt. Farrow, Cpl. Spatz, and Lt. Hallmark, another Doolittle Raid pilot who was also captured, were to be carried out on October 15, 1942.
October 14--On the night before his execution, Lt. Farrow was allowed to write final letters back home. He wrote four letters to the following people: Ivan Ferguson, an old friend; his Aunt Margaret; Lib Sims, his fiancee; and his mother, Jessie Stem Farrow. To his mother, Lt. Farrow wrote this: “Read ‘Thanatopsis’ by Bryant if you want to know how I’m taking this. My faith in God is complete, so I am unafraid.” To Lib Sims, Lt. Farrow wrote: “Find yourself the good man you deserve, Lib, because you have so much to give the right one.” Despite promises that the letters would be turned over to the Red Cross and delivered, it was American authorities who discovered the letters in September 1945 in a file at the Japanese War Ministry Building. The letters were stamped TOP SECRET.
October 15--Early that morning, Lt. Farrow, Cpl. Spatz, and Lt. Hallmark were executed by firing squad at Public Cemetery No. 1 in Shanghai, China.
March 18, 1946--The War Crimes Trial for the men responsible for ordering the execution of Lt. Farrow began. Lt. Gen. Sawada, Cpt. Okada, Lt. Wako, and Cpt.Tatsuta. Unfortunately, Sawada, Okada, and Tatsuta received minimum sentences of five years, while Wako, a trained lawyer, was sentenced to nine.
January 19, 1949--Four long years after the war was over, the remains of Lt. Farrow, Cpl. Spatz, and Lt. Hallmark were finally returned to the United States. Last rites for Lt. Farrow and Lt. Hallmark were performed at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
1998--A farmer named Michael Buckmaster found Billy Farrow’s driver’s license with keys hanging from a tree in Suffolk County, England. The driver’s license expiration date was July 1941. How this artifact wound up in England is one of the great mysteries of WWII.