Thanks Retain Mike.
- The Doolittle Raiders Did a Lot [04/18/2022]
Posted on 04/18/2022 11:53:45 AM PDT by Retain Mike
One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster morale became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse.
Only improbable, audacious ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska. Captain Francis Low, a submariner, first broached to Admiral Ernest King the idea of flying Army Air Corps medium bombers from an aircraft carrier. King thought Low’s “foolish idea” might have merit and ordered him to contact Captain Donald Duncan, King’s air operations officer. Duncan reviewed the specifications of all Army Air Corps bombers and decided the B-25B might do the job. King then sent Low and Duncan to General Hap Arnold who bought the idea. Arnold quickly agreed because he and Jimmy Doolittle had independently made the same assessment.
By mid-January 1942 Doolittle began assembling the planes and crews. As one of the first MIT aeronautical engineering graduates with a PhD, he agreed with Duncan’s assessment in choosing the B-25B, and he knew exactly how to turn a possibly into a reality. Few Army personnel underwent training or had experience for operations involving ocean navigation. Therefore, crews were chosen from the 17th Bombardment Group flying anti-submarine patrols from the newly build airfield at Pendleton, Oregon.
Unaware of this pending mission, the 24 crews flew to Minneapolis where Mid-Continent Airlines made significant modifications to the bombers. Installing auxiliary fuel tanks increased capacity over 70%. Range eventually increased from about 1,000 to 2,500 miles by also utilizing flying configurations and practices designed to conserve fuel. Increased fuel weight then required removing a 230-pound liaison radio. The lower twin 50cal. remote control turret was later removed at Eglin Field Valparaiso Florida saving 600 pounds. An armored 60-gallon fuel tank was then inserted. Cameras were installed to record bombing results.
While in Minneapolis Captain David M. Jones told the officers their destination was not Columbia, South Carolina for anti-submarine patrol. They were asked to volunteer for a dangerous, important, and interesting mission for which no information could be given. Nearly everyone volunteered even though most were new to their trade. Of the 16 pilots Doolittle actually took on the raid, only five had won their wings before 1941 and all but one was less than a year out of flight school.
Jimmy Doolittle, now a Lieutenant Colonel, met all 140 of them in Eglin’s operation’s office. He said, “If you men have any idea that this isn’t the most dangerous thing you’ve ever been on, don’t start this training period…..This whole thing must be kept secret. I don’t want you to tell your wives…..Don’t even talk among yourselves about this thing. Now does anyone want to drop out?” Nobody dropped out.
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.
As the mission armament officer, Captain Charles Ross Greening improvised substitutes after removal of the top secret Norden bombsight and the lower gun turret. At Elgin he and Tech Sergeant Edward Bain designed a substitute bomb sight with two pieces of aluminum. The “Mark Twain” device could be rapidly fabricated in the base metal shop and provided superior accuracy for this low altitude bombing assignment. On board the Hornet, Greening accomplished the planned installation of a pair of black-painted broom handles simulating machine guns in each aircraft's tail cone to intimidate attacking fighters.
After training twenty-two bomber crews hedgehopped across country to San Francisco. The sixteen crews who reported no problems had their planes lifted aboard ship. Those who reported problems, however minor, were devastated when Doolittle excluded them from the mission.
The Hornet left the U.S. and joined the Enterprise at sea April 13, 1942. Admiral Chester Nimitz, in charge of the Pacific Fleet had now risked two of his four aircraft carriers in this venture along with 14 escorts and 10,000 total crew members. The task force steamed towards the Japanese home islands just four and one-half months after the Pearl Harbor disaster. From radio traffic analysis, the Japanese knew the carriers that had eluded their six carrier strike force on December 7 were underway somewhere in the Western Pacific. Unbeknownst to the Americans, along with other special measures, the Japanese patrolling picket boats were 650 miles, not 300 miles, offshore to provide the intelligence needed for an overwhelming counterattack.
The Army crews shared quarters with the navy squadrons. Edgar McElroy, pilot of #13 aircraft remembers bunking with two members of Torpedo Bomber Squadron Eight. He later learned that they along with all but one member of the squadron died attacking Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway.
Once the Hornet was at sea, Doolittle told the raiders their mission was to attack Japan. When the ship’s captain passed the word, the Navy crew exploded into cheers. While underway towards Japan, the industrial targets were briefed by Lt Stephen Jurika who was naval attaché in Tokyo 1939-1941. He imparted information from not only his own travels, but from a Soviet counterpart who had spent several years researching possible bombing targets. The Soviet Union was long aware of Japan’s plans to attack the U.S.S.R. (strike north against the traditional enemy), or to attack colonial possessions of the U.S, Netherlands, and Britain (strike south for desperately needed natural resources such as oil).
On April 18 the U.S. task force encountered this new picket line 170 miles before their planned launch. The pilots rushed to their planes as the ship plowed into the wind and 30-foot seas. Each aircraft received at this last minute up to 11 extra 5gal gas cans. 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.
In his War Department report Doolittle wrote, “The damage done far exceeded our most optimistic expectations.” However, he considered the raid a failure. He saw the raid as secondary to the bombers safely arriving and providing Chiang Kai-shek and Claire Chennault an offensive capability to the Chinese air force. Every plane had been lost because they were unable to reach safe landing sites. One plane and crew was interred in the Soviet Union, but was allowed to escape in 1943. Fifteen crashed in China resulting in three crewmen deaths. The Chinese who spirited the others to friendly hands paid a terrible price. Hirohito was enraged and authorized a reprisal expedition into Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces. According to Curtis LeMay, the Japanese not only destroyed military bases and infrastructure, but turned villages into cinders and killed 250,000 civilians.
Eight crew members were captured, and all were condemned to death. Premier Hideki Tojo asked Emperor Hirohito to commute all the sentences, but the Emperor allowed three to be executed. One later starved to death in Japanese prison camps.
The raid proved a crucial psychological boost demonstrating Americans could do the impossible even if their battle fleet had been blasted to wreckage, and they were losing an army in the Philippines. The Japanese Imperial Navy suffered a devastating loss of face, because Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had guaranteed the Emperor that the Americans would never attack their home islands. The raid confirmed Yamamoto in his determination to attack Midway, and there begins another story.
I Could Never Be So Lucky Again by James H. Doolittle with Carroll V. Glines
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Ted Lawson
Hirohito: Behind the Myth by Edward Behr
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini
Charles Ross Greening, Colonel United States Air Force
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/crgreening.htm
Greening, Colonel Charles Ross (1914-1957), HistoryLink.org Essay 10320
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10320
The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo–One Family’s Untold Story
https://timothyblotz.com/tag/minnesota-doolittle-raid
Captain David M. Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Jones
The Navy Targets Tokyo
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2015-04/navy-targets-tokyo
Letters from the Precipice of War (Steven Jurika)
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2014-01/letters-precipice-war
Sorge: A Chronology (Excerpts 1942)
http://richardsorge.com/excerpts/1942/index.html
The Official Website of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders
http://doolittleraider.com/
Doolittle Raiders 70th Anniversary
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&qpvt=doolittle+raiders+70th+anniversary&FORM=IGRE http://doolittlereunion.com/
GENERAL DOOLITTLE's REPORT ON JAPANESE RAID
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/rep/Doolittle/Report.html
North American B-25 Mitchell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Mitchell
Pendleton Field
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=C9A94F93-E10A-57A0-B694B0AFFE69184C
A final toast for the Doolittle Raiders
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/opinion/greene-doolittle-raiders
80 Brave Men the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Roster
http://www.doolittleraider.com/80_brave_men.htm
Jonna Doolittle Hoppes "Jimmy Doolittle Raid" presentation at Historic Flight Foundation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgt8PMoRGG8
Doolittle Raiders: The Last Reunion (VIDEO)
http://salem-news.com/articles/may302013/doolittle-raiders-rn.php
Doolittle Raider forum, etc.
http://www.doolittleraider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=128&t=579 http://www.dontow.com/2012/03/the-doolittle-raid-mission-impossible-and-its-impact-on-the-u-s-and-china/ http://www.historynet.com/countdown-to-the-doolittle-raid.htm
A VETERAN’S STORY: Interview with The Last Raider
http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/veterans-story-interview-raider.html
Now like Richard Cole all the men I knew have passed as well. I do not plan to forget them and will post this story annually to help others remember.
I vividly remember (I was a 9-year-old) the elation and celebration when the American public was made aware of this attack on those stinking japs...
Thanks for the post.
I read “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” when I was a young and it left a lasting impression.
Thank you for the reminder of this historic mission. I remember hearing stories of how the Doolittle raid lifted the morale of the country, so soon after Pearl Harbor.
Remember this happened in April 1942. History tells us that the Axis powers had reached their maximum territory occupied in November and December of 1942. The outcome of the war was far from certain then.
While history tells us that we won World War II, it was not at all certain in those dark days of 1942 that we would emerge victorious.
Thanks for posting.
If the American public knew the whole story about that raid (and about the approximately 250,000 Chinese lives lost to the Japanese response), the celebrations would almost certainly have been much less sanguine.
(In terms of innocent blood lost, that raid was arguably the most expensive morale-building exercise in U.S. military history.)
Doolittle’s autobiography is here:
Man did much, much more than just lead a raid on Tokyo.
“...(In terms of innocent blood lost, that raid was arguably the most expensive morale-building exercise in U.S. military history.)”
Although I’m sure you didn’t mean it, your post sounds like we had some culpability for the subsequent Japanese butchery, we did not. The horrors and atrocities committed by the Japanese in response to that raid and for the help the Chinese gave our downed American pilots is solely the responsibility of Japan.
That raid was brilliant and audacious, and that raid had a profound effect on the Japanese psyche and war strategy going forward. Their new fear of an attack on the Emperor and their home islands caused them to tie down many more resources than they had ever planned.
The Doolittle Raid was one of the best examples of why those Americans are truly in the running for the moniker, the Greatest (American) Generation.
Even as the US anticipated a vicious response against China by Japan, I agree that the crimes committed by the Japanese are solely the responsibility of the Japanese that committed them; I am in no way implying any guilt by association.
I would only point out whatever we gained by that raid was overwhelmed by the Chinese blood lost in response to it; had the prediction of 250,000 dead Chinese ever come up before the raid, it would have been immoral to carry it out, as it would have failed the proportionality test.
BTTP
Awesome work, Retain Mike !
Three or so keywords, sorted, duplicates out, non-WWII topics (I think) edited out:
Bttt.
5.56mm
It is sort of along the lines of, "because you told Jane her job performance sucked she went home and beat her kids".
Jane has been beating her kids since they were born and will continue to do so until she is dead, they are dead or she is in jail.
Evil people do evil things.
The actions taken by the Japanese in the aftermath of the Doolittle Raid were specifically against those parts of China where they knew the Americans would have had to land the bombers (or bail out of them); the Japanese actions here were done purely out of retaliation against the Chinese for their (presumed) assistance to the American airmen.
That the Japanese were barbaric to the Chinese before and after the Doolittle Raid is, I think, obvious to us all. But if you're suggesting that the Japanese military would have mobilized a week after the Doolittle Raid and gone on a tear for a month to destroy some 20,000 square miles of China and murder an estimated 250,000 people over something else, I don't buy it.
This was the price paid for the Doolittle Raid; while we may not have intended it, we stuck an ally with the bill.
Would they have done it at some point?
Absolutely.
It was sort of like the Warsaw uprising. Did the Nazi's kill everyone involved they could get their hands on? Yes. Were they planning on killing them at some point anyway? Yep.
You would be on far firmer ground in the case of Reinhard Heydrich's assassination as the Czechs were not slated for whole scale extermination in any case.
And if the Japanese threatened to kill a million Chinese for every island we retook from them, should we have sued for peace and let them keep what they murdered to take?
We were attacked, our possessions taken, and our people killed. We were at war, and letting them subjugate the world because of what we were afraid they might do, would have been, in my mind, a greater immorality.
If we knew that 250,000 Chinese would die as a result of what was largely a morale-building exercise, should we have asked China for that country's input?
My father met him several times. Gen. Doolittle was on the board at Mutual of Omaha. Nothing but good things to say about the man.
In contrast to the completely immoral losers making up the boards of major corporations today.
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