Valor
First Over Tokyo
Hap Arnold picked
Jimmy Doolittle, "a man
who could impart his
spirit to others," for a
seemingly impossible
mission.
BY JOHN L. FRISBEE
mmy Doolittle, first President
of AFA, instrument-flying pioneer, winner of many major aviation
awards, World War II commander
of the Eighth and Twelfth Air
Forces, is perhaps best remembered as architect and leader of the
Tokyo Raid of April 18, 1942. Adm.
William Halsey, commander of the
task force that launched Doolittle's
sixteen B-25 bombers from the aircraft carrier Hornet, called that historic mission "one of the most courageous deeds in military history."
For his brilliant planning and inspiring leadership of the raid, General Doolittle, then a Reserve lieutenant colonel (he had resigned his
Regular commission in 1930), was
awarded the nation's highest decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor.
Why this extraordinary mission
that challenged military orthodoxy
and the logic of aircraft design?
After a series of military disasters in
the Pacific following Pearl Harbor,
President Roosevelt believed a
badly shaken America needed some
symbol of ultimate victory, one that
also would explode the Japanese
myth of their islands' invulnerability. He directed his military leaders
to bomb Japan at the earliest time.
But there were no bases in China
available for a heavy bomber attack,
and Navy carrier aircraft lacked
both range and bomb load. Then
Navy Capt. Francis Low came up
with the fantastic idea of flying AAF
bombers from a carrier.
Lt. Gen. Hap Arnold greeted the
idea enthusiastically. He called on
Jimmy Doolittle, who had voluntarily left an executive position with
J
AIR FORCE Magazine / April 1989
Shell Oil, to organize and train a
force for the task. Arnold had no
thought of allowing his indispensable forty-five-year-old troubleshooter to actually lead the mission.
Doolittle thought otherwise and, as
usual, won.
Jimmy Doolittle had ten weeks to
work out the myriad details of an
operation that had never before
been considered and would not be
repeated. Crews were volunteers
from the 17th Bombardment Group
and the 89th Reconnaissance
Squadron—two early B-25 outfits.
Many experts thought that flying
medium bombers at above gross
takeoff weight from 500 feet of carrier deck was sheer madness. But if
anyone could do it, it was Jimmy
Doolittle, supreme pilot and doctor
of aeronautical engineering, whose
biographer, C. V. Glines, called him
"master of the calculated risk."
The plan was to launch from the
carrier 400 miles off Japan's coast at
dusk on April 19. Crews would
bomb independently at night and recover early the next morning at
Chuchow, China. Doolittle calculated they could make it to China if
launched on plan, possibly from 500
miles off Japan, but definitely not
from 650 miles.
Early on the morning of April 18,
patrol planes from the accompanying carrier Enterprise sighted Japanese picket ships ahead. Admiral
Halsey ordered the B-25s to launch
immediately, thirty hours ahead of
schedule and 620 miles from the
coast. First off the rolling, pitching
deck into a thirty-knot wind, rain,
and low clouds was Colonel Doolittle, proving to his crews that it could
be done. All knew that Japanese defenses, including an estimated 500
fighters, had been alerted. They
also knew that they probably would
have to ditch at night, short of the
China coast, with no hope of rescue.
Despite warning from a picket
ship, the Japanese were taken by
surprise, expecting a strike by carrier planes the following day. There
Aboard the Hornet, Jimmy Doolittle
wires a Japanese medal to the fin of a
500-pounder destined for Tokyo.
little opposition from fighters
and flak. With Jimmy Doolittle first
over Tokyo, all but one B-25
bombed its target, then all headed
for China, except Capt. Ed York's
crew, which, low on fuel, landed
near Vladivostok and was interned
by the Soviets.
The fifteen China-bound bombers picked up an unexpected tailwind that helped them reach the
coast in darkness, rain, and low
clouds. They were unable to contact
Chuchow, which had not been informed of their early launch. Lost
and running out of fuel, all fifteen
bailed out, ditched near the shore,
or crash-landed. Eleven crewmen
were injured, three lost their lives,
and eight who landed in Japaneseoccupied territory were captured,
three of them subsequently executed.
As reports of the crews' fates filtered in, the usually ebullient
Doolittle was overwhelmed by the
thought that, although they had hit
their targets, he had failed the men
who trusted his leadership. He
didn't know that when word of the
raid reached home, it was greeted
wildly as the first American victory
in the Pacific. The raid had achieved
President Roosevelt's objective, a
fact that Jimmy Doolittle had still
not fully accepted when, on May 20,
the President presented newly promoted Brigadier General Doolittle
with the Medal of Honor, the first
awarded to an airman in World War
II.
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