Posted on 01/20/2004 7:29:21 PM PST by JCG
Family, friends remember Doolittle Raider
Andy Ostmeyer
Globe Staff Writer 1/20/04
Eighty men. Every one a volunteer.
A daring raid. Beyond daring, even. Suicidal.
Yet, it changed the course of a world war, and - who knows? - perhaps the course of history.
Travis Hoover, who died Saturday, was one of 79 men who joined Lt. Col. James Doolittle on a bombing raid over Japan on April 18, 1942.
Hoover and his wife, Kay, who died in 1990, moved to Joplin in 1988. On Monday afternoon, Beverly Zerkel, Hoover's stepdaughter, spoke from her Joplin home about the man most consider a true American hero.
Zerkel was 10 when her mother and Hoover were married. She said she never really thought it intimidating to have someone like Hoover as a stepfather.
"Oh, not at all. He was wonderful," she said. "He was a good, nice person. He never thought of himself as a hero. He was just Trav."
Zerkel said Hoover and others of his generation were too respectful of the memory of the servicemen who lost their lives to ever consider themselves heroes. Most of Hoover's fellow pilots considered themselves normal men thrust into an extraordinary time, she said.
"He always thought of himself as just a kid who wanted to fly an airplane," she said.
But, military historians say Hoover and the other members of the 16 flight crews that made up the historic Doolittle raid were heroes whose actions changed the course of the war.
"This (the Doolittle raid) is the big event that turns the war around," said Chase Nielsen, who now lives in Utah. He is the president of the Doolittle Raiders Association, and, like Hoover, was one of the 80 men who pulled off the attack that the Japanese thought could never happen.
'A jab in the arm'
By early 1942, Japan had conquered Guam, Singapore and Wake Island, and had bombed the American base in Hawaii. American forces in the Philippines were about to surrender.
President Roosevelt wanted to retaliate for the Pearl Harbor raid. To do that, the military turned to a risky plan and an aviation pioneer named Jimmy Doolittle, said C.V. Glines, historian for Doolittle's Raiders. He has written several books about the raid.
Doolittle passed the word to some of the best B-25 crews in the country, asking for volunteers without ever telling them the details of the mission.
The plan was to launch 16 B-25s from the deck of an aircraft carrier 400 miles from the coast of Japan, bomb industrial targets, and then fly the planes into free China. But, after a Japanese patrol boat spotted the carrier force and notified the air defenses of Japan, Doolittle, Hoover and the others wound up launching more than 650 miles from the coast, said Glines.
Doolittle's plane took off first, Hoover's second.
Because of the unexpected takeoff, not a single plane would have enough fuel to make it to its destination: Three of the 80 men were killed during or soon after crash landings. Members of one crew made it to Russia, where they were held as virtual prisoners of war. Eight men, including Nielsen, were captured by the Japanese. Doolittle actually thought the raid was a failure, and he expected a court-martial.
One of the most famous stories of the Doolittle raid involves Hoover's crew and a young Chinese aeronautical engineer by the name of Tung Sheng Liu. After crash-landing just beyond the Japanese-occupied Chinese coastline, Hoover and his crew spent several days evading Japanese troops. Somehow the Americans made contact with Liu, who - at great risk - bravely led the airmen away from Japanese-occupied areas to safety.
Joplin businessman Jim Zerkel, Beverly's husband, said Liu and Hoover maintained a "brotherly relationship."
In March 2003, Liu visited Hoover at the Webb City Health and Rehabilitation Center. It was obvious that it quite possibly would be the men's last meeting. In an interview with the Globe during that meeting, Liu talked about his relationship with Hoover.
"I have four children, but that is all the family I have," he said. "That's why the colonel is my family. We are closer than friends. We are brothers."
Jim Zerkel said Monday that Liu was flying in from California that afternoon and was expected to arrive in Joplin in time for a family visitation service.
After being forced to ditch their planes, Hoover and the rest of the crew members were convinced that the raid had been a failure. It wasn't until much later that the importance of what they had accomplished would sink in.
The effects of the raid were many. For one, it was a dramatic morale booster for America at a time when the Japanese had known few setbacks.
"People here needed a jab in the arm," said Nielsen. "The Japanese were going through the South Pacific with a steamroller."
What it did for America, it did for Japan, but in reverse. Even though the raid did relatively little damage - Hoover's plane dropped its bomb on a Tokyo factory - it sent a message to Japan that the island nation was vulnerable. One historian wrote that the raid passed like a "shiver" through Japan.
The American public wasn't told at the time that the raid was the result of a dangerous carrier attack, and President Roosevelt said the bombers came from America's secret base at Shangri La, said Tom Casey, business manager for the surviving Doolittle Raiders.
But the Japanese knew what had happened. As a result of the raid, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto moved to expand the defensive perimeter Japan was building throughout the Pacific. The direct object of that move was Midway Island. It would give the Japanese a western base and check the ability of American carriers to reach Japan, said Glines.
At the battle of Midway, less than two months later, the Japanese lost four carriers and many of their best pilots, and their ambitions in the Pacific were thwarted. It was Midway that many historians called the turning point in the Pacific war. From then on, Japan would be on the defensive.
"The (Doolittle) attack was the major catalyst for the turnaround in the Pacific," said Casey.
'A gentleman's gentleman'
With the death of Hoover at age 86, the group of surviving raiders has dwindled even further.
"We're down to 17," said Nielsen.
He praised Hoover, saying that while he didn't know him well before the raid, he respected the man he got to know later, at reunions and other events.
"Travis was a gentleman's gentleman," said Nielsen. "He was a very fine individual."
Glines also praised Hoover.
"He was a wonderful guy," he said. "It's a loss to all of us."
Zerkel, a former military pilot himself, served under Hoover's command in the 1950s. He said his father-in-law was beloved by those who served under him, not just because of his war record but because of the type of man he was.
"He was a very good commander," Zerkel said. "He respected everyone. Everyone (in the service) has had a commander that they remember, but there was none more cordial or more fair than Colonel Hoover."
Beverly Zerkel said Hoover showed perhaps his true strength in the final years of her mother's life.
"Mom was an invalid for the last eight years of her life, and he took care of her every day," she said. "That's when we truly found out what he was made of. He was a very humble man and he had to do a lot of humble things, and he did them willingly."
Services for Hoover will be at 3 p.m. today at Parker Mortuary in Joplin. He will be buried, with full military honors, later this week in San Antonio, Texas, next to his wife at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.
Staff writer Mike Pound contributed to this report.
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
http://12thman.us/media/jihad.rm (Requires RealPlayer)
The friends I had a Chino airport continued to fly B-25 flights of airplanes past Doolittle's home on the California coast every year on his birthday until the gentleman died.
A wonderful bunch of men.
The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Doolittle Raid (4/18/1942) - Apr. 18th, 2003
Do not forget to read the autobiography:
"I Could Never Be So Lucky Again"
by: Gen. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle.
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