Doolittle Raid

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Doolittle Raid
Part of World War II, Pacific War
Image:Army B-25 (Doolittle Raid).jpg A B-25 taking off from Hornet for the raid
Date 18 April 1942 Location Tokyo, Japan Result First attack on Japanese Home Islands Tactically Indecisive
Combatants
Image:US flag 48 stars.svg United States	Image:Flag of Japan.svg Japan
Commanders
James H. Doolittle	Hideki Tojo
Strength
16 B-25 Mitchells, 80 airmen	Unknown number of troops and homeland defense
Casualties
3 dead, 8 POWs (4 died in captivity); 5 interned in USSR all 16 B-25s	About 50 dead, 400 injured

v • d • e Pacific campaigns 1940-42
French Indochina – Thailand – Malaya – Pearl Harbor – Hong Kong – Philippines – Guam – Wake – Dutch East Indies – New Guinea – Singapore – Australia – Indian Ocean – Doolittle Raid – Solomons – Coral Sea – Midway

The Doolittle Raid, 18 April 1942 was the first air raid by the United States to strike the Japanese home island of Honshū during World War II. The mission was notable since it was the only time in U.S. military history that United States Army Air Forces bombers were launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on a combat mission. The Doolittle Raid demonstrated that the Japanese home islands were vulnerable to Allied air attack, and it provided an expedient means for U.S. retaliation for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, already a famous civilian aviator and aeronautical engineer before the war. The raid, however, had its roots in the mind of Navy Captain Francis Low, who early in the war predicted that, under the right conditions, twin-engined Army bombers could be successfully launched from an aircraft carrier.

Requirements for the aircraft for a cruising range of 2,400 miles (3,900 km) with a 2,000 pound (900 kg) bomb load resulted in the selection of the North American B-25B Mitchell to carry out the mission. The B-26 Marauder and B-23 Dragon were also considered, but the B-26 had questionable takeoff characteristics from a carrier deck, and the B-23's wingspan was nearly 50% greater than the B-25's, reducing the number that could be taken aboard a carrier and posing risks to the ship's island. Subsequent tests with three B-25s at Norfolk indicated it could be launched from a carrier, hit military targets in Japan, and fly on to land in China. Negotiations with the Soviet Union to land in Siberia, shortening the flight by 600 miles (970 km), were fruitless.^[1]

All 16 aircraft were lost on the mission, and 11 crewmen were either killed or captured. The crews of 13 aircraft, however, were recovered and returned to the United States, and a 14th crew interned by the Soviet Union eventually made its way home in 1943.

Contents 1 Training 2 Flying the Raid 3 Aftermath 4 B-25 aircraft of the Doolittle Raid 5 Postwar 6 Impact 7 Legacy 8 Popular culture 9 Doolittle Raiders exhibit 10 References 11 External links

[edit] Training

After the raid was approved, 24 operational B-25B medium bombers were detached from the 17th Bomb Group (Medium), based at Lexington County Army Air Base, Columbia, South Carolina, and sent to the Mid-Continent Airlines modification center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for installation of additional fuel tanks. The aircraft were modified by:

• Removal of the lower gun turret
• Installation of de-icers and anti-icers
• Steel blast plates mounted on the fuselage around the upper turret
• Removal of the liaison radio set
• Installation of three additional fuel tanks and support mounts in the bomb bay, crawl way and lower turret area to increase fuel capacity from 646 to 1,141 U.S. gallons (2,445 to 4,319 litres)
• Mock gun barrels installed in the tail cone, and
• Replacement of their Norden bombsight with a makeshift aiming sight.

Two bombers also had cameras mounted to record the results of bombing.^[1]

Volunteer crews for an unspecified "extremely hazardous" mission were also solicited from the 17th BG. The 24 crews selected picked up the modified bombers in Minneapolis and flew them to Eglin Field, Florida, beginning 1 March 1942. There the crews received intensive training for three weeks in carrier deck takeoffs, low-level and night flying, low altitude bombing, and over water navigation. Lt. Col Doolittle stated in his after action report that an operational level of training was reached despite several days when flying was not possible because of rain and fog. One aircraft was heavily damaged in a takeoff accident and another taken off the mission because of a nose wheel shimmy that could not be repaired in time.^[1]

On 25 March, the remaining 22 B-25s took off from Eglin for McClellan Field, California. They arrived on 27 March for final modifications at the Sacramento Air Depot. A total of 16 B-25s were subsequently flown to Alameda, California, on 31 March. Fifteen raiders would be the mission force and a 16th aircraft, by last minute agreement with the Navy, would be squeezed onto the deck to be flown off shortly after departure from San Francisco to provide feedback to the Army pilots about takeoff characteristics. (The 16th bomber was made part of the mission force instead.)

[edit] Flying the Raid

On 1 April, the 16 modified bombers, their five-man crews and Army maintenance personnel were loaded onto the USS Hornet at Alameda. Each aircraft carried four specially-constructed 500-pound (225 kg) bombs. Three of these were high-explosive munitions, while the other was a bundle of incendiaries. The incendiaries were long tubes, wrapped together in order to be carried in the bomb bay, but designed to separate and scatter over a wide area after release. To decrease weight (and thus increase range), the bombers' armament was reduced. Each bomber launched with two .50-calibre (12.7 mm) machine guns in an upper turret and a .30-caliber (7.6 mm) machine gun in the nose. Two wooden, simulated gun barrels mounted in the tail cones were intended to discourage Japanese air attacks from that direction, and were cited afterward by Doolittle as being particularly effective.^[1] The aircraft were clustered closely and tied down on the Hornet's flight deck in the order of their expected launch.

The Hornet and Task Force 18 left the port of Alameda at 10:00 on 2 April in a thick fog and a few days later rendezvoused with Task Force 16, the carrier USS Enterprise and its escort of cruisers and destroyers in the mid-Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii. The Enterprise's fighters and scout planes would provide protection for the entire task force in the event of a Japanese air attack, since the Hornet's fighters were stowed below decks to allow the B-25s to use the flight deck. The combined force, two carriers, three heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, eight destroyers, and two fleet oilers, then proceeded in radio silence towards their intended launch point in enemy-controlled waters east of Japan.

On the morning of 18 April, at a distance of about 650 miles (1,050 km) from Japan, the task force was sighted by a Japanese picket boat No. 23 Nitto Maru which radioed an attack warning to Japan. Although the boat was destroyed by gunfire from the cruiser USS Nashville, Doolittle and Hornet skipper Captain Marc Mitscher decided to launch the B-25s immediately—ten hours early and 170 miles (275 km) farther from Japan than planned. After respotting to allow for engine start and run-ups, Doolittle's aircraft had 467 feet (142 metres) of takeoff distance. Despite the fact that none of the B-25 pilots, including Doolittle, had ever taken off from a carrier before, all 16 aircraft launched safely between 08:20 and 09:19. (Originally the mission was planned for 15 aircraft with the 16th B-25 held partly in reserve, and initially intended to fly along as an observation and photographic platform but when the mission was compromised, Doolittle made a command decision to utilize the reserve aircraft.^[2])

They then flew towards Japan in sections of three-four aircraft before changing to single-file at wavetop level to avoid detection.^[3] The aircraft began arriving over Japan about noon (Tokyo time; six hours after launch) and bombed ten military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama, and one each in Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka. Although some B-25s encountered light anti-aircraft fire and a few enemy fighters over Japan, no bomber was shot down or severely damaged. Fifteen of the 16 aircraft then proceeded southwest along the southern coast of Japan and across the East China Sea towards eastern China, where recovery bases supposedly awaited them. One B-25, extremely low on fuel, headed instead for the closer land mass of Russia.

The raiders faced several unforeseen challenges during their flight to China: night was approaching, the aircraft were running low on fuel, and the weather was rapidly deteriorating. As a result of these problems, the crews realized they would probably not be able to reach their intended bases in China, leaving them the option of either bailing out over eastern China or crash landing along the Chinese coast. Fifteen aircraft reached the China coast after 13 hours of flight and crash landed or bailed out; the crew who flew to Russia landed 40 miles (65 km) beyond Vladivostok, where their B-25 was confiscated and the crew interned until they managed to escape through Iran in 1943. It was the longest combat mission ever flown by the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, averaging approximately 2,250 miles (3,600 km).

Doolittle and his crew, after safely parachuting into China, received assistance from Chinese soldiers and civilians as well as John Birch, an American missionary in China. As did the others who participated in the mission, Doolittle had to bail out but fortunately landed in a heap of dung (saving a previously injured ankle from breaking) in a rice paddy in China near Chuchow (Quzhou). Doolittle thought that the raid had been a terrible failure because the aircraft were lost, and that he would be court-martialed upon his return. Doolittle subsequently recommended Birch for intelligence work with General Chennault's Flying Tigers.

[edit] Aftermath

Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. The Chinese people that helped them, however, paid dearly for sheltering the Americans. The Japanese military began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese from helping downed American airmen. The Japanese killed an estimated 250,000 civilians while searching for Doolittle’s men ^[4]. The crews of two aircraft (ten men in total) were unaccounted for; Hallmark's crew (sixth off) and Farrow's crew (last off). On 15 August 1942, the United States learned from the Swiss Consulate General in Shanghai that eight of the missing crew members were prisoners of the Japanese at Police Headquarters in that city (two crewmen had died in the crash landing of their aircraft). On 19 October 1942, the Japanese announced that they had tried the eight men and sentenced them to death, but that several of them had received commutation of their sentences to life imprisonment. No names or details were included in the broadcast. Japanese propaganda ridiculed the raid, calling it the "Do-nothing Raid", and boasted that several B-25s had been shot down. In fact, none had been lost to enemy action.

After the war, the complete story of the two missing crews was uncovered in a war crimes trial held in Shanghai. The trial opened in February 1946 to try four Japanese officers for mistreatment of the eight captured crewmen. Two of the missing crewmen, Sgt. William J. Dieter and Cpl. Donald E. Fitzmaurice, had died when their B-25 crashed off the coast of China. The other eight, Lieutenants Dean E. Hallmark, Robert J. Meder, Chase J. Nielsen, William G. Farrow, Robert L. Hite, and George Barr; and Corporals Harold A. Spatz and Jacob DeShazer were captured. In addition to being tortured and starved, these men contracted dysentery and beriberi as a result of the poor conditions under which they were confined. On 28 August 1942, pilot Hallmark, pilot Farrow, and gunner Spatz were given a mock trial by the Japanese, although the airmen were never told the charges against them. On 14 October 1942, these three crewmen were advised that they were to be executed the next day. At 16:30 on 15 October 1942, the three were taken by truck to Public Cemetery Number 1 outside of Shanghai and put before a firing squad.

The other five captured airmen remained in military confinement on a starvation diet, their health rapidly deteriorating. In April 1943, they were moved to Nanking where, on 1 December 1943, Meder died. The remaining four men (Nielsen, Hite, Barr and DeShazer) eventually began receiving slightly better treatment from their captors and were even given a copy of the Bible and a few other books. They survived until they were freed by American troops in August 1945. The four Japanese officers who were tried for war crimes against the eight Doolittle Raiders were all found guilty. Three of them were sentenced to hard labor for five years and the fourth to a nine-year sentence. Survivor DeShazer eventually became a missionary and returned to Japan in 1948, where he served in that capacity for over 30 years. As of 2007, both DeShazer and Hite are still living.

One other Doolittle Raid crewman was lost on the mission. Corporal Leland D. Faktor was killed during his bailout attempt over China, the only man on his crew to be lost.

Immediately following the raid, Doolittle told his crew that he believed the loss of all 16 aircraft, coupled with the relatively minor damage the aircraft had inflicted on their targets, had rendered the attack a failure, and that he expected a court martial upon his return to the United States. Instead, the raid bolstered American morale to such an extent that Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt, and was promoted two grades to Brigadier General, skipping the rank of colonel. He went on to command the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa, the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean, and the Eighth Air Force in England during the next three years.

In addition to Doolittle's award of the Medal of Honor, Corporal Dave Thatcher (an engineer-gunner) and Lieutenant Thomas White (flight surgeon/gunner) each received the Silver Star for their brave efforts in helping several wounded crew members evade Japanese troops in China. All the remaining Raiders (including Thatcher and White) were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and those who were killed, wounded or injured as a result of the raid also received the Purple Heart. In addition, every Doolittle Raider received a decoration from the Chinese government.

[edit] B-25 aircraft of the Doolittle Raid

In order of launching:

AAF serial #	Nickname	Sqdn	Target	Pilot	Disposition
40-2344		34th BS	Tokyo	Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle	crashed Chuchow, China
40-2292		37th BS	Tokyo	Lt. Travis Hoover	crashed Ningpo, China
40-2270	Whiskey Pete	95th BS	Tokyo	Lt. Robert M. Gray	crashed Chuchow, China
40-2282		95th BS	Tokyo	Lt. Everett W. Holstom	crashed Shangjao, China
40-2283		95th B	Tokyo	Capt. David M. Jones	crashed Chuchow, China
40-2298	Green Hornet	95th BS	Tokyo	Lt. Dean E. Hallmark	crashed Nanchang, China
40-2261	Ruptured Duck	95th B	Tokyo	Lt. Ted W. Lawson	ditched Shangchow, China
40-2242		95th BS	Tokyo	Capt. Edward J. York	interned Vladivostok, Russia
40-2303	Whirling Dervish	34th BS	Tokyo	Lt. Harold F. Watson	crashed Nanchang, China
40-2250		89th RS	Tokyo	Lt. Richard O. Joyce	crashed Chuchow, China
40-2249	Hari Kari-er	89th RS	Yokohama	Capt. C. Ross Greening	crashed Chuchow, China
40-2278	Fickle Finger	37th BS	Yokohama	Lt. William M. Bower	crashed Chuchow, China
40-2247		37th BS	Yokosuka	Lt. Edgar E. McElroy	crashed Nanchang, China
40-2297		89th RS	Nagoya	Maj. John A. Hilger	crashed Shangjao, China
40-2267		89th R	Kobe	Lt. Donald G. Smith	ditched Shangchow, China
40-2268	Bat Out of Hell	34th BS	Nagoya	Lt. William G. Farrow	crashed Ningpo, China

[edit] Postwar

The Doolittle Raiders have held an annual reunion almost every year since the late 1940s. The high point of each reunion is a solemn, private ceremony in which the surviving Raiders perform a roll call, then toast their fellow Raiders who passed away during the previous year. Specially-engraved silver goblets, one for each of the 80 Raiders, are used for this toast. The goblets of those who have died are inverted. When only two Raiders remain alive, they will drink a final toast using the vintage 1896 bottle of Hennessy cognac which has accompanied the goblets to each Raider reunion since 1960. Only 12 Raiders are still alive, and only eight were able to attend the 64th anniversary reunion held in Dayton, Ohio, in April 2006. Seven were able to attend the 65th anniversary in April 2007 in San Antonio, Texas. The oldest Raider is now 95, and the youngest is 85. The bottle of cognac and the goblets had been maintained by the United States Air Force Academy on display in Arnold Hall, the cadet social center. On 19 April 2006, the memorabilia were transferred to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.^[5]

[edit] Impact

Compared to the devastating B-29 Superfortress attacks against Japan later in the war, the Doolittle raid did little material damage. Nevertheless, when the news of the raid was released, American morale soared from the depths to which it had plunged following the Pearl Harbor attack and Japan's subsequent territorial gains. It was important for Americans to know that a military response had been undertaken.

The raid also had a strategic impact, though it was not understood at the time, in that it caused the Japanese to recall some fighter units back to the home islands for defense. They did not understand how American aircraft could attack from such a distance and assumed that America had developed a new, extremely long-range aircraft, when in reality, American forces knew it would essentially be a one-way trip. This assumption strengthened Admiral Yamamoto's resolve to carry out military action against Midway Island. These reassignments subsequently weakened Japan's air capabilities against the Allies at the Battle of Midway and later Pacific Theater campaigns.

[edit] Legacy

The United States Navy named one of its aircraft carriers after the fictional location, USS Shangri-La, as an obvious reference to the Doolittle Raid. The name referred to the recently lost USS Hornet. President Roosevelt had answered a reporter's question by saying that the raid had come from "Shangri-La"[1], which was the name of the place of perpetual youth in the Himalayas in the popular book and movie of the time, Lost Horizon.

[edit] Popular culture

The Doolittle Raid was the subject of two 1944 feature films. Thirty Seconds over Tokyo was based on a book of the same title by Doolittle Raider pilot Captain Ted W. Lawson, who lost a leg and suffered other serious injuries as a result of his crash landing off the coast of China. Spencer Tracy played Doolittle and Van Johnson portrayed Lawson in an accurate and unsensationalized depiction of the mission. The Purple Heart, starring Dana Andrews, was a largely fictional depiction of the trial of the captured Doolittle Raiders.

The 2001 film Pearl Harbor presented a heavily fictionalized version of the raid, with the attack portrayed as having destroyed an entire industrial area against withering antiaircraft gunfire and with many other major technical inaccuracies.

A highly fictionalized film in 1943, Destination Tokyo starring Cary Grant, tangentially involved the raid, concentrating on the fictional submarine USS Copperfin. The submarine's mission is to enter Tokyo Bay undetected and place a landing party ashore to obtain weather information vital to the upcoming Doolittle raid. The film suggests the raid did not launch until up-to-the-minute data was received. However, all the after-action reports indicated the raid launched without time for weather briefings because of the encounter with the picket ships.^[1]

Many books were written about the Doolittle Raid after the war. Doolittle's Tokyo Raiders, by C.V. Glines, tells the complete story of the raid, including the unique experiences of each B-25 crew. Guests of the Kremlin, written by copilot Bob Emmens, describes his crew's adventures as internees in Russia after their landing in that country following the raid. Four Came Home, also by C.V. Glines, tells the story of Nielsen, Hite, Barr, and DeShazer, the Raiders who were held in POW camps for over three years. The First Heroes, by Craig Nelson, goes into great detail of the events leading up to the raid and the aftermath for all the pilots and their families.

A related VHS video with some excellent old clips of Doolittle and the flight preparations, along with the B-25s launching, is DeShazer, the story of missionary Sergeant Jake DeShazer of B-25 #16 (the last to launch from the Hornet). The video is based on "The Amazing Story of Sergeant Jacob De Shazer: The Doolittle Raider Who Turned Missionary by C. Hoyt Watson. At the end of both the video and the book, DeShazer after the war meets Mitsuo Fuchida, the commander and lead pilot of the Pearl Harbor attack.

[edit] Doolittle Raiders exhibit

The most complete display of Doolittle Raid memorabilia can be seen at the National Museum of the United States Air Force (on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio. The centerpiece is a like-new B-25, which is painted and marked as Doolittle's aircraft (although it is actually a B-25D). The bomber, which North American Aviation presented to the Raiders in 1958, rests on a reproduction of the USS Hornet's flight deck. The scene is made even more realistic through the use of several authentically-dressed mannequins surrounding the aircraft; these include representations of Doolittle, USS Hornet skipper Captain Marc Mitscher, and groups of Army and Navy personnel loading the aircraft's bombs and ammunition. Other highlights of the exhibit are the silver goblets used by the Raiders at each of their annual reunions; pieces of flight clothing and personal equipment; a parachute used by one of the Raiders in his bailout over China; and group photographs of all 16 crews. Many other interesting items are also included in this unique collection.

A fragment of the wreckage of one of the aircraft as well as the medals awarded to Doolittle are on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

[edit] References

Notes

Bibliography

[edit] External links

• Profile image of Doolittle's aircraft
• Official Doolittle Raiders site
• Wright Patterson site
• "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" The Halsey-Doolittle Raid
• "Animated History of Doolittle Raid"
• Naval Historical Center site
• After action report of Col. Doolittle
• doolittleraider.com
• MaritimeQuest Doolittle Raid Photo Gallery
• American Heritage article on the Doolittle Raid
• www.doolittleraid.com - A reference, research, and news page on things related to the Doolittle Raid and the Raiders
• Jimmy Doolittle and the Tokyo Raiders Strike Japan During World War II article by Edward Oxfordcs:Doolittlův nálet

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