Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Roscoe Turner bumped into his old buddy, Jimmy Doolittle. In years past, when aviation was new and exciting, both men had been stunt fliers.“Jimmy,” Turner said, “you know we should try to do something to get even with the Japanese.”Doolittle poked his friend in the ribs.“Look,” he said, “that kind of stuff is for the young kids, not old geezers like us.”Turner agreed with Doolittle, who was then 45 years old.
Several months later, after the story broke that Doolittle had planned and led a surprise raid on Tokyo and other Japanese cities, the raid leader received this wire: “Dear Jimmy. You son of a bitch. Roscoe.”
An Adventurous Spirit
From one point of view, Doolittle’s raid could have been considered a disaster. The planes ran short of fuel and crashed. Damage to Japanese industry appeared to be relatively light. Three American fliers who had been captured by the Japanese were executed. Even Doolittle thought it was a failure—until his commander in chief presented him with the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The raid had accomplished a great deal: It boosted American morale at possibly the lowest point of the war. It shook the morale of the Japanese, who had felt that their home islands were invulnerable to any enemy attack. Most important of all, it forced the Japanese high command to pull planes and ships back from the war front to protect the Japanese mainland. Those weapons would not be available in critical battle areas of the Pacific.
Jimmy Doolittle had a distinguished career during the remainder of the war, but he is included here for this one deed. He and 80 other American airmen, flying 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers, completely turned the tables on the Japanese. There would still be defeats after this, but the Japanese dream of a quick victory vanished in the 30 seconds Doolittle flew across Tokyo.
What enables a man to possess such courage and assume such risk? Doolittle had been a former prizefighter and a daredevil stunt flier. Some of that adventurous spirit and willingness to gamble for big stakes against great odds may have come from his dad, who panned for gold in Alaska when Doolittle was a little boy.
Doolittle’s Early Career
Doolittle was born in Alameda, California, in 1896. A year before the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the army and became a pilot. He saw no combat duty during the war. After the war he was cited for distinguished flying, studied aeronautical engineering, and went into private industry for a while. However, he remained in the reserves. Doolittle was recalled to duty in 1940. In January 1942, following Pearl Harbor, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned to Washington.
A Bold Plan
Doolittle approached his superiors with an idea. Why not give the Japanese a taste of their own medicine? Send carrier-based planes to the Japanese mainland itself and get even for Pearl Harbor. Of course there were obvious differences. There would be only one carrier instead of six, and there would be no massive fleet to escort it. There would be only 16 planes instead of 350. Most importantly, the attack would take place many months after war had been declared.
The plan was bold, but it was also dangerous. First, there were few ships left in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific. Most of the Pacific fleet was being repaired. Only a handful of carriers was available, and only one could be risked. Army pilots would have to be trained to take off on a minimum of ground space, comparable to the length of a carrier’s deck. Airfields in China would have to be prepared to receive the planes after they had carried out their mission.
Doolittle began by asking for volunteers to take part in a perilous secret mission.Many more responded than were needed. The training went well.A small naval task force under William F. Halsey, Jr. (Number 26) accompanied the carrier Hornet on its journey to Japan. The mission was uneventful until the task force was about 650 miles from Japan. Then a Japanese vessel suddenly appeared. It was sunk immediately. Though it was not known if the ship had radioed a warning to Tokyo, the planes had to launch at once because Japanese planes and ships might be steaming toward the Hornet.
A Surprise Attack
On the morning of April 18, 1942, Doolittle and his raiders took off. They flew just above the water to avoid Japanese radar. When they reached Japan, the raiders headed for targets in Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, and Osaka. The fliers dropped bombs on factories, a ship under construction, and an aviation school. The Japanese reported that only schools and hospitals were bombed.
Because they had launched the mission early, the planes ran out of fuel. Most of the airmen bailed out over China, where they were hidden by the Chinese. One crew ended up in neutral Siberia and were interned for the remainder of the war.
The Japanese military was humiliated by the daring raid. One senior officer committed suicide. The High Command insisted steps had to be taken so Japan would not be caught off guard again. Certain resources intended for the battlefronts were now set aside for home defense.
When Roosevelt (Number 2) was asked by reporters where the planes had come from, he quipped, “Shangri-la,” the fictionalcity in Tibet immortalized in the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
Tokyo radio warned that any American pilots who would try it again would get “a one-way ticket to hell.” It failed to deter anyone. The saturation bombings, the fire bombings, and the atomic bombings would come, following the flight path initiated by Jimmy Doolittle and his raiders.
In the war years that followed, Doolittle rose to the rank of lieutenant general. He commanded forces in both the European and Pacific theaters, including the 15th Air Force in Tunisia and Sicily and the 8th Air Force, first in Europe and later in Okinawa.Nothing he did would ever be as important to the war effort as the raid. For Americans, it restored morale; for the Japanese, it was a portent of what was to come.
After the war, Doolittle became an executive with the Shell Oil Company. He died in 1993.
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