The Doolittle Raid: Part 1

Within weeks of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was privately calling for an attack on the heart of Japan in order to restore America's confidence and boost its morale. Planning and execution of this secret mission were placed in the hands of Lt. Col. James Doolittle. The mission was to attack military sites in Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka, and to land at friendly airfields in China.

After months of covert planning and training, Doolittle, his crew of 80 raiders and their 16 fully loaded B-25 Mitchell bombers were aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. None of the pilots, including Doolittle, had ever taken off from a carrier before. On the morning of April 18, 1942, the Hornet was spotted by the Japanese. Doolittle and his crew were forced to launch their raid 10 hours early which shortened their maximum flying distance, dashed their hopes of reaching their intended havens, and necessitated a daylight rather than an evening raid.

For the next several weeks, we'll be looking at the raid and its aftermath from a variety of perspectives, as told in period newspapers. And for those not interested in WWII history, I've interspersed pieces that illustrate some of the domestic travails faced back on the home front. Enjoy!

-- J .S.

 

U. S. TAKES CREDIT FOR TOKYO RAID

Planes Flew Low to Pound Vital Objectives

WASHINGTON—United States army bombers made that sensational raid on Japan April 18, the war department disclosed last night, confirming at long last what millions of Americans ardently hoped was true.

Thundering in low and fast in broad daylight, the mighty bombers, loaded with both demolition and incendiary bombs, blasted selected military targets near Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and other cities, a communiqué said. Big fires were started, some of which burned for two days.

And that was all the department had to say as to how the raid was carried out. But it was enough for Americans who had been hoping eagerly that the news of the raid, which previously had come only from the Japanese themselves, was true. It was enough to prove that “somebody” did in fact bomb Tokyo, as President Roosevelt archly hinted in his fireside chat April RAID 28—“the first time in history that Japan has suffered such indignities.”

DETAILS VEILED

As for whether the planes took off from a carrier at sea in a joint army-navy operation or from a land base somewhere, how many there were, and all the other details at which the Japanese have been desperately guessing ever since—they will just have to keep on guessing.

The communiqué was the first direct official acknowledgement here that American planes had carried out the raid which apparently threw the Japanese into panic as well as doing great damage.

LOSSES CITED

Partially lifting the official veil of secrecy thrown about the spectacular attack, the communiqué quoted enemy radio announcements that three Japanese interceptor planes had been lost and between three and four thousand casualties inflicted, but failed to disclose from what bases the American planes operated or whether any were lost.

One bomber landed after the raid in a Russian maritime province and its crew was interned by the Soviet authorities. Duluth News Tribune— May 11, 1942

 

We, the Women

Wartime version of a lucky family—

They live on a bus or street car line.

Their home is heated with a gas or a coal furnace.

Their back yard is large enough for a Victory garden and maybe a flock of fryers.

There is an adult in the family who doesn’t drink coffee and one (probably Dad) who hasn’t bought more than two pairs of shoes a year for the last ten years.

One member owns a bicycle.

The electric ice box and washing machine look as though they will last for the duration.

The basement is well stocked with home-canned goods.

Pop has a “B” card.

There are relatives who live on a nearby farm.

There is a high school girl in the neighborhood who will stay with the kids at night.

The neighborhood itself is congenial.

No Help Needed

The house is not large enough so that the “servant problem” is a nightmare.

Mom has always been a good manager.

Pop’s salary has kept pace with the rising cost of living.

The family has always had fun together.

The family lives in a town that is still normal size.

That is pure luck in 1943. And just think how little most of those things would have meant a couple of years ago.

Now when we mention any of them we add, “Of course, we’re lucky.”

Virginia Daily Enterprise—Fri., April 23, 1943

 

 

REMEMBER DARING AMERICAN RAID ON TOKYO?

It happened year ago; greater attacks now promised

WASHINGTON—A thrill ran down your spine a year ago today—remember?

It was barely four months after Pearl Harbor, and things seemed pretty dark. That day’s war department communiqué told of fighting at Corregidor, Cebu, Panay, and said “there is nothing to report from other areas.”

But there was something to report.

That day American fliers bombed Tokyo.

The United States had carried the war to Japan’s home grounds.

First reports of the raid came from Tokyo radio, and did not say immediately that the planes were American— but there was a widespread belief a year ago that the aircraft must have been ours, and an inclination to accept, for once, part of a Japanese broadcast.

And Americans, saddened by the dark days of Philippine warfare, felt a thrilling surge of “now we’re giving some of their own medicine.”

Not until May 10 did the war department confirm that American planes made the raid. Nine days later Brig. General James H. Doolittle was disclosed as the leader of the venture. Even today many of the facts are not known—the Office of War Information planned to make the full story public this weekend or shortly thereafter, but Director Elmer Davis announced Friday: “After consultation with the war department this office finds that clearance of the Tokyo raid story has not been completed.”

The biggest question yet unanswered is the bombers’ takeoff place. President Roosevelt smiled and said it was Shangri-La. The Japanese expressed belief the planes came fro the United States aircraft carrier Hornet—extraordinary if true, since the planes were B-25 bombers.

Doolittle, famed speed flier of the ‘20’s, is now a major general and commands the strategic air force, Mediterranean air command.

“A year ago when American bombers thundered in Tokyo the Japanese people were undoubtedly badly shaken,” he said in an anniversary statement to the Associated Press.

“Today as the United Nations air might roars in an ever heightening crescendo, the specter of crushing vengeance must weigh like a sentence of death on the entire Axis.

“Here (in Africa), far from home and facing a supply problem of incomparable dimensions, the Twelfth air force (now part of the northwest African air forces) has demonstrated the heartening growth of the United States army air forces since last April 18, when the Jap first felt our air strength on his home ground.

“Our might must grow even more than that of the phenomenal growth of the last 12 months, until we can strike crushingly anywhere on the globe.” Duluth News-Tribune, Sunday, April 18, 1943

 

Flirting With Married Men Will Kill Romance

Poor Wife Can Just Sit Back, Wait for Husband to ‘Recover’

By Dorothy Dix

DEAR MISS DIX: Why don’t young girls let married men alone? My husband and I have been married ten years and have three small children. We have been very happy and congenial. He has been a good husband and father, interested in his home and devoted to his children. But now this girl has come into his life, as the movies say, and he doesn’t see a thing good about me or his children. He is faultfinding and cross and is out with her to places of amusement every night.

Let alone we would have gone on happily, but the minute this girl saw him she began pursuing him and boasted that she was going to take him away from me, and I guess she has done it. If a girl wants to marry, why doesn’t she go after some single man instead of wrecking a home to get one? What shall I do about it? Shall I give him a divorce and make him happy, even if it will break my heart?                                                            DESPERATE WIFE

Answer: A lot of girls boast that they can get any married man that they desire. They think that that shows that they have an almost hypnotic power of fascination, but, in reality, it is a sure sign that they are lacking in feminine charm and wiles and cannot get a single man, for the difference between capturing a husband and a bachelor is the difference between shooting a barn-yard fowl and a wild duck on the wing.

After a man has been married for a number of years there are times when he gets fed up with domesticity, no matter how happily married he is. He is a little tired of the routine of home life. There is nothing particularly thrilling about his wife’s bread and butter kisses, or punching the home clock every evening on the dot. Still and all, he is reasonably satisfied. He has gotten to thinking of himself as middle-aged and that he has done with romance, and he looks upon the young girls pretty much as he does upon the display in a jeweler’s windows, pretty and attractive, but not for him.

Then often when one of these ornamental objects steps out of the jeweler’s window and throws herself at his head, she knocks him out in the very first round. It is as easy as taking candy from a baby. He hadn’t dreamed he was so attractive. He had thought he was an old, settled married man and here, by George, he is a Clark Gable without even suspecting it, and he is flattered out of his wits. And when the girl makes love to him in the violent modern manner, and tells him that he is more attractive than any of the young boys, and that she is determined to have him, and that he is too young for his wife, anyway, and all the rest of it, why, he just falls for it like a ton of bricks.

And all that poor wife can do is just to possess her soul in patience and wait for the girl to get tired of him, or for him to wake up from his dream and see what a fool he has been making of himself, and come back to mother and the kids. Which, 99 times out of 100, he will do, unless he happens to be so rich that the girl considers him good pickings.

The girls who specialize in married men are the cruelest of their sex, because they deliberately set themselves to work to break a sister woman’s heart, and wreck her home, and half-orphan her little children just to gratify their own vanities. They are the girls who would have had a perfectly wonderful time in the old Roman amphitheaters watching wild beasts tear men to pieces.

But these sadistic young girls pay the price of their heartlessness by wasting their youth in affairs with men who cannot marry them, while all the eligible men pass them by, and their own sex hate them like poison. Duluth News-Tribune—April 21, 1943

 

Secrecy Lifted On Tokyo Raid; Japan Warned

Attack of year ago carried out with complete success by Yanks

WASHINGTON—The war department, in a 4,000 word report lifting secrecy of the army’s thrilling raid on Japan last April, warned the enemy last night that “attacks still lie ahead” and disclosed the details of the action which first carried the war to the Japanese homeland:

Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle bailed out of his plane over China, 13 hours after the first takeoff from the aircraft carrier Hornet.

The 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers “car- ried out with accuracy and complete success” their objective of attacking armament plants, dock yards, railroad yards and oil refineries at Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Nagoya and Osaka, the report said.

Most of the 80 fliers landed in unoccupied China and made their way to Chungking. But eight are presumed prisoners of the Japanese, five are interned in Russia, two are missing and one—Corp. Leland D. Faktor of Plymouth, Iowa—is known dead.

PLANS WERE CHANGED

The takeoff from the aircraft carrier—the first known instance in which such heavy planes have hopped off from a “flat top”—was first planned for just before dark, so that Japan could be bombed at night and the planes could reach safety at Chinese airfields in the morning.

When the Hornet was 800 miles from Tokyo “it met complications”—a Japanese ship was sunk and it was feared word would reach Tokyo. So the planes took off 10 hours ahead of schedule and “the added distance to be flown naturally added greatly to the hazards of the mission.”

Japanese pursuit planes made some attempt to halt the raid over Tokyo and the Nagoya raiders encountered inaccurate anti-aircraft fire, but “one by one, each objective of each plane was checked off.”

The war department’s statement on the raid follows:

The raid on Japan, April 18, 1942.

Additional details regarding the raid of April 18, 1942, now may be disclosed.

The USS Hornet was the “Shangri-La” from which the American planes took off to bomb military objectives in Tokyo and four other Japanese cities. This aircraft carrier, which carried the fliers of the army air forces to within 800 miles of Tokyo on their mission, subsequently was announced as lost in the battle of Santa Cruz on Oct. 26, 1942.

The objective of the 16 North American B-25 medium bombers was to attack definite selected points—armament plants, dock yards, railroad yards and oil refineries—in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe and Osake. This objective was carried out with accuracy and complete success. At the same time, the raid resulted in freezing within Japan, Nipponese airplanes and other forces which might have been used in offensive operations elsewhere.

SOUGHT LANDING FIELDS IN CHINA

The American planes were to have sought specified landing fields in China. Because of a combination of circumstances the planes were unable to reach their assigned landing fields. One came down in Soviet Russian territory. The others made forced or crash landings in China—some in Japanese occupied territory—or in water off the Chinese coast. All these planes were wrecked.

Five of the 80 American participants in the historic raid are interned in Russia. Eight are prisoners, or are presumed to be prisoners of the Japanese government. Two are missing. One was killed. Although several were long delayed, the other 64 participants made their way to the camps of Chinese allies and then back to American authority. Seven of those who escaped in this manner were injured but survived.

The preparation for the raid on Japan, first conceived in January, 1942, was carried out in the utmost secrecy with thoroughness extending to the most minute details. Maj. Gen. James H. Doolittle, who was then a lieutenant colonel and a celebrated flier, combining the reputations of a daredevil and a most proficient, painstaking technician, chose the men to accompany him on the venture. All were volunteers who first knew only that they were going on a mission whose importance was equaled only by the hazards involved.

THREE MONTHS SPENT IN PREPARATIONS

About three months were spent in preparations. General Doolittle and his men finished their training at Elgin Field, Fla. It was the first time the medium bombers of the army were to take off in numbers from an aircraft carrier of the navy. Special experience was required.

Using white lines on the field to measure, the fliers concentrated on taking off in the shortest possible distance. Patiently the members of each airplane crew pored over maps, and by pictures and silhouettes learned to recognize instantly the features of the course they were to travel over Japan and the particular objectives they were to bomb. The Norden bombsight was replaced with a simple 20-cent sight devised by Capt. (now major) C. R. Greening in order to preserve the secret of the Nordeen sight should any aircraft be forced down in Japan.

Each plane was given the particular factory or shipyard, or arsenal, or oil works which it was to destroy—all military targets. At the outset of the training period it was decided that the planes should come in over Japan flying extremely low to escape observation and anti-aircraft fire and to make even more sure of the accuracy of their bombing. In practice for the great venture ahead, the planes in training swept in over the American coast and fanned out as they would have to do over Japan to attack their military objectives in or near the five cities which were involved. Exactly similar geographic distances were traveled over American territory toward objectives resembling the goals in Japan.

PLANES WERE LOADED ON HORNET

At a rendezvous port, the fliers and their planes were loaded on the aircraft carrier Hornet to start the voyage which was to take them within range of Tokyo. The commander of the task force was Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., who had already achieved fame as a skillful and bold leader of naval raids upon Japanese bases in the Pacific. Admiral Halsey is now commander of all American naval and army forces in the South Pacific area.

Aboard the Hornet training was continued. There were lectures on Japan and talks on navigation, gunnery and meteorology. The gunners practiced with shots at kites which were flown above the aircraft carrier.

The original plan was to proceed through hazardous waters to a point within 400 miles of Tokyo. There the planes were to be launched and their fate left to the hands of their crews and to Providence, while the naval task force made its own precarious escape.

It had been planned to take off just before dark, to make the attack on Japan at night and to arrive at Chinese airfields in the early morning. But when the aircraft carrier was still 800 miles from Tokyo, it met complications. Having avoided one enemy patrol vessel and while trying to steer clear of another, it ran into a third Japanese ship. This ship was sunk, but it was feared at the time that the Japanese aboard it might have been able to use their radio to warn Tokyo. (It later appeared that this was not the case.)

PLANES’ TAKEOFFS WERE ADVANCED

Therefore, instead of waiting until evening and drawing much closer to Japan in the meantime, the planes took off on the morning of April 18. That was 10 hours ahead of the planned departure time. The added distance to be flown naturally added greatly to the hazards of the mission. But there was not the slightest hesitation. General Doolittle and his men were eager to take off. Whatever the chance of arriving at the airfields in China, they had at least reached a point where Tokyo and the other Japanese cities were within bombing distance.

It was agreed that if the planes could not reach the Chinese coast, the men would try the dangerous feat of landing on the water, there to take to the rubber boats.

It was rough weather as General Doolittle bade good-bye to Admiral Halsey and undertook the great adventure. One by one the big army bombers roared from the aircraft carrier. The takeoffs were difficult on a bobbing and slanting deck. Water slapped over the bow of the carrier and planes had to take off on the upbeat. The plane piloted by Lt. Travis Hoover was thrown in such a way that it threatened to fall off on a wing, but Hoover’s good piloting saved it.

The first takeoff was at 8:20 a.m., ship time, with General Doolittle piloting the lead plane. It was at 9:20 p.m. that the general was to bail out over China, the last to leave his plane. Much happened in the interval.

[To be continued next week...]

Celebrate his Birthday 

It's April 20th. Let's give him a rousing party - with gunpowder made from the used cooking fats American women have saved. And let's keep on saving them for more gunpowder to come! Rationing needn't stop you because only used fats are wanted, after you got the cooking good from them. But when the cooking good is gone, remember - every drop is desperately wanted. Save at least a tablespoon a day. Rush each canful to your meat dealer.

Approved by the War Production Board. Paid for by Industry.