“The pilots who flew from WW II light carriers were fond of saying “which runway do you want me to use’ when landing on one of the CV’s.”
Too funny! I tell you, those guys had some ice water in their veins.
So did the US Army crews who flew the B-25s off the Hornet in Doolittle’s raid on Japan in April, 1942. To me, that was one of the ballsiest operations of WWII. Heroes, each and every one of them.
I’m with you on that. And every single one of them, when they realized they probably wouldn’t make it to land, still went anyway.
God bless and keep those men.
"The crews began training with Lieutenant Henry L. Miller, USN (who later became an “Honorary Tokyo Raider”) on Elgin Field 48 days before the raid. The crews used a remote runway flagged to mark available carrier deck length. In three weeks, the crews learned to take off in just over a football field length at near stalling speeds of 50-60 miles per hour, overloaded, and practically hanging on their props. At Pendleton pilots had used a mile long runway to build up speed to 80-90 miles per hour."
A Navy officer twirled a flag, listened for the right tone from the revving engines, and felt for the precise moment to release them on the pitching deck. The pilots, who had never flown from a carrier, saw the ship’s bow reaching into a grey sky, and then plunging into a dark angry ocean sending salt spray across the deck. When released, they quivered down a bucking flight deck keeping the left wheel on a white line to just miss the superstructure by six feet. Every plane and 80 crewmen lifted safely from a rising deck into the stormy sky; even Ted Lawson who discovered he had launched with flaps up and initially fell towards the ocean. The bombers proceeded independently to Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, and Kobe. They carried three 500 pound demolition bombs and one 500 pound incendiary cluster.