Doolittle Raid Success Gave America Her Brightest Hour During Early Months of WWII

Written by Elbert L. Watson

Apr 23, 2008 at 12:00 AM

Moments before take-off, Doolittle (center, left) and his gutsy raiders strike a brief pose for the camera. HORNET Skipper Marc Mitscher stands at Doolittle's left. Writer’s Note: In the early months of 1942 Americans were demanding retaliation against Japan for her infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. That opportunity came when noted aviator, Lieutenant Colonel "Jimmie" Doolittle, took command of a gutsy bunch of guys who manned the B-25 medium bombers, the only plane capable of striking the heart of Japan from the deck of a carrier. Today’s article enshrines that mission as "America’s Shining Hour." –––––––– Ted W. Lawson, pilot of RUPTURED DUCK, lost a leg as a result of his crash landing. In 1943 he authored the best seller book THIRTY SECOND OVER TOKYO. On March 25, 1942, after completing only three weeks of intensive training, the crews of 22 B-25 Mitchells hopped aboard their planes at Eglin Field, revved up the engines, and  flew out to the west coast. After a brief stop at McClellan Field near Sacramento for a final checkup, they continued on up to Alameda Naval Air Station, on San Francisco Bay, landing there, ironically, on April Fool’s Day. Cranes then hoisted 16 of the planes aboard the sleek carrier Hornet (CV-8). With a displacement weight of 19,800 tons and a length just slightly under 810 feet, the  big new carrier had already proven her mettle. On February 2, under tight security, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, she successfully launched two Mitchell medium bombers from her deck. The visionary Captain Low was proven right!  No question about it, Japan was now in America’s crosshairs. Getting the job done was all that remained. Jacob DeShazer survived Japanese imprisonment and retured to that country after the war as a Christian missionary. Late that afternoon (April 1) Hornet was tugged from her anchorage to the middle of San Francisco Bay. The next morning the great carrier was joined with several smaller ships and headed out to the high seas. As San Francisco faded beyond the distant horizon, Doolittle called his men together and tersely described the mission for the first time. Mincing no words, he warned the fellows that their chances of getting back were quite slim, and offered them one final opportunity to back out. Both excitement and apprehension rippled through the veins of each man who looked into the eyes of  their leader that morning. Sure, these fellows were anxious to take the fight to the Japanese, but they were also pragmatists who fully understood  the heavy odds facing them. To a man they stood by their word. They would carry out the mission----successfully! Hornet was skippered by the no nonsense Admiral Marc Mitscher, a chain-smoking, crusty old naval veteran whose heavily creased face made him appear older than his age of 54. Back in 1919 he had made a trans-Atlantic flight in a navy plane, the first person to do so. Tall, spare in appearance, the sun-burned Mitscher had painted REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR on the carrier’s stack. He meant business, to be sure. Two days out to sea, Mitscher announced to the various crews the nature of the mission over Hornet’s loud speakers and semaphored (signaled visually by two flags) to the other ships. "The target of this task force is Tokyo," he bellowed. "The army is going to bomb Japan, and we’re going to get them as close to the enemy as we can. This is a chance for all of us to give the Japs a dose of their own medicine." Mitscher’s electrifying words were like magic. Cries of excitement arose from the various ships, as leather tough marines and sailors alike jumped up and down, crying like babies. God be praised!  They were on their way to avenge Pearl Harbor. Some wag even came up with a little ditty straight out of "Snow White:" "Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! We’re off to Tokyo! We’ll bomb and blast and come back fast. Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho!" Raiders launch despite poor weather conditions On April 10 Hornet joined another great carrier Enterprise to form Task Force 16, a giant armada of carriers, cruisers, oilers, and destroyers, the greatest naval force America had ever put together. Headed by Admiral William A. "Bull" Halsey, the fleet’s goal was to get within 400 miles of Japan before launching the bombers. If spotted, the planes must be launched immediately and the ships withdrawn to safer waters. Japan’s naval force at that time was entirely too strong for America to engage it in an open water fight. On the morning of April 18 the armada was spotted by a Japanese patrol boat, which was immediately sunk. Unfortunately, Halsey was still 300 miles short of his intended launching point. Though the planes could still make it to their target sites, it was doubtful they could reach their landing strips in China. There was an additional problem: the ocean’s waters, had become increasingly choppy, causing Hornet to rise and fall on giant waves that cascaded about and over the ship’s flight deck. Though the conditions were far from satisfactory, those concerns were moot at this point: launching could not be delayed another moment. To no one’s surprise, Doolittle himself  took the controls of bomber number one, just as a drenching rain and bitter crosswinds further complicated the already intolerable conditions. Gale like winds blew directly into the plane’s windshield. Time seemed to stand still. Finally, the checkered flag went down, Doolittle’s feet came up from the brakes, and the heavily loaded Mitchell began its short trip down the 467 foot  runway. The pilots of the 15 remaining planes watched closely, breathlessly, prayerfully as Doolittle inched forward. In the second plane, pilot Dick Cole thought if the Boss didn’t make it, no one else would: they would simply drop into the water and that would be that. Pilot Ted Lawson, with his hawk like gaze, wondered if the strong wind would cause the mission to be scrapped. Not surprisingly, Doolittle was quite up to the task. Gently accelerating his speed, he held to the white line down the center of the deck, and just as a powerful wave raised Hornet’s bow up on top of it, lifted off with yards to spare. He hung the B-25 straight up for a few moments, leveled off, then circled around and flew directly over the carrier to loud cheers resounding from down below. Thus emboldened, the other pilots followed suit and were all safely airborne within an hour. Their training, short though it was, had paid off. This was a first: they had flown a bomber off a carrier deck out on the high seas. Once aloft, the planes split up and headed toward their respective targets. Four cities were attacked from altitudes of approximately 1500 feet. Ten sites were hit in Tokyo; two in Yokohama; and one in Kobe, Yokosuka, Osaka, and Nagoya. Struck were steelworks, warehouses, oil refineries, docks, powder and manufacturing plants, and aircraft, truck, and tank factories. Once their work was over, 15 of the planes flew southwest along the southern coast of Japan and across the East China Sea, hoping to reach a  safe haven in China. One aircraft that was extremely low on fuel veered off toward nearby Russia. Having launched early and from a range far beyond the acceptable safe distance necessary for them to reach their landing strips, each plane ran low on fuel as night approached. Too, a strong head-wind dramatically impeded their progress. Could any man survive against these mounting odds? Eleven of the crews had to bail out; four Mitchells crash landed (three men died); and one plane limped into Russia. All 16 planes were lost. Seven men were captured by the Japanese, and three of them were subsequently executed. The crew that got into Russia was taken into custody. Though allied with the United States, Russia still maintained a peace treaty with Japan. Eighty extraordinary men had put their young lives on the line for their country. Miraculously 64 of them survived and fought again in the war. Solid accomplishments resulted from the raid Though the actual damage done to Japan was quite minimal, the psychological effect on America’s home front and military forces was indescribable. Yankee ingenuity had made a loud statement to Japan that her ultimate day of reckoning lay ahead. The impact on the Empire is also worth noting. Confused over the point of origin of the bombers, Japanese military brass withheld sending fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns from the homeland to forward positions in the Pacific, in case of another attack. One humorous aspect about the raid resulted from President Roosevelt’s clever remark that the raider’s base was an island called "Shangri-La," the mythical paradise in the mountains of Tibet written about by author James Hilton in his popular 1931 novel Lost Horizon. The Japanese couldn’t figure that one out, so ended up sending out search parties to find the elusive "Shangri-La." Jimmie Doolittle returned home to a well-deserved hero’s welcome. At the White House, the President pinned the Medal of Honor on him. During the course of his World War II career, he received  two Distinguished Service Medals, the Silver Star, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, Bronze Star, and four Air Medals. Decorations were also bestowed on him from China, Great Britain, Belgium, France, Poland, and Ecuador. He continued to rise in rank: as brigadier-general, he commanded the 12th Air Force in North Africa, and as major-general, the North African Strategic Air Forces. By the end of the war he was a lieutenant-general. Admired and respected throughout his long life, Doolittle held important posts in the post-war period: vice-president of Shell Oil Company; served as special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff, thus making him a key player in the early missile and space programs; and chairman of the Board of Space Technology. An icing on his cake of honors came in 1989 when President George H. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Doolittle flew his final mission on September 27, 1993, at the ripe old age of 93. "Joe," his beloved wife of 71 years, preceded him in death in1988. Fittingly, they are buried side by side in Section 7-A of Arlington National Cemetery. Ted Lawson, pilot of The Ruptured Duck, was badly injured when he crash landed off the coast of the small island of Nantien. It was necessary to amputate his left leg in the field due to massive infection. One year later Lawson turned his near tragedy into a triumph, when he and the noted newspaper columnist Bob Considine, collaborated together to write the 1943 best seller book, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, giving a dramatic and personal account of the mission. Hollywood quickly got into the act and produced a major film in 1944 by the same title. The noted actor Spencer Tracy played Doolittle and Van Johnson starred as Lawson. Lawson died at his home in Chico, California, on January 19, 1992. He is interred at the Chico Cemetery Mausoleum. Perhaps the most amazing story to emerge from the raid is that of Staff Sergeant Jacob (Jake)  DeShazer, bombardier of Bat Out of Hell. With the plane out of fuel, the crew was forced to parachute into Japanese occupied territory over Ningpo, China, where they were quickly captured. During 40 months of imprisonment, DeShazer spent 34 months in solitary confinement. Incredibly, a Japanese guard took a liking to the downed airman and loaned him a Bible. Through intensive study and prayer, DeShazer gained an understanding of Christian conversion and surrendered himself to God‘s will. Old things passed away and all things (except his confinement) became new. Despite occasional beatings by some ruthless guards, he was able to accept them as fellow human beings, who, like him, needed salvation. His new attitude enabled him to hold steady despite the dire conditions facing him. Eventually the greatest miracle of call came when none other than Emperor Hirohito himself commuted DeShazer’s death sentence to life imprisonment. After his rescue by American soldiers on August 20, 1945, DeShazer enrolled in Seattle Pacific College to prepare for missionary service. Accompanied by his wife Florence, he returned to Japan in 1948 to begin full time missionary service under the auspices of the Free Methodist Church. He would spend 30 years in the land of his former enemy. DeShazer lived a long and full life, dying in Salem, Oregon, just one month ago, March 15, 2008, at age 95. But the story does not end there. In 1949 DeShazer met Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese pilot who led the fateful air strike on Pearl Harbor. The two men immediately bonded with each other. Hard times had fallen on the former Japanese airman, and DeShazer’s personal witness to his own spiritual conversion offered Fuchida a bright hope that life, through Christ, would bring him personal peace and serenity. Consequently, Fuchida converted to Christianity and devoted himself to missionary service. In 1952 he toured the United States as a member of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. And what else happened as a result of the Doolittle Raid? Well, for one thing Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto, the master-mind behind Pearl Harbor, had long envisioned making another bold, perhaps knock-out, strike, against the United States, this time at the small island of Midway. Only by destroying America’s Pacific Fleet, he reasoned (perhaps rightly), could Japan ultimately prevail in the war. Simply stated, he would lure the weaker American Navy out to battle against the much stronger Japanese force. The outcome was predictable: Japan would prevail and the death knell sounded for America in the Pacific. Doolittle’s Raid had convinced Yamamoto that Japan was obviously vulnerable to attack by land based bombers. When would they strike again? Wasting no time, he paid a personal call on Emperor Hirohito, offered his apologies, and briefly laid out his "Midway Operation" plan. The emperor liked what he saw and heard. Yamamoto could proceed full speed ahead. Midway, thus, would be the next jewel in the Empire’s crown. There was only one hitch which both men failed to see. By rushing headlong into action Yamamoto would find a rude awakening awaiting him when he again directly engaged the Americans. But that’s another story, one that will stand on its own merit when we salute the great heroes of Midway on the 66th anniversary of that epic battle, June 4-6, 1942. -------------------------------------------- Elbert L. Watson, military historian, writes extensively on World War II and the War Between the States. Contact him at (864)442-1773 or e-mail