Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (10 page)

Doolittle had in the past promised to give up racing, but kept returning to the sport. “Air racing is like hay fever,” he liked to say. “It crops up when the season is ripe.” When Doolittle learned that newspaper photographers had shadowed Joe and his
two sons during the Thompson race, hoping to record their horror if he was killed, he finally decided to quit. A wiser Doolittle acknowledged the danger in a speech the next year: “I have yet to hear of the first case of anyone engaged in this work dying of old age.” Racing had helped advance aviation, arousing public interest, sparking new ideas for wing and fuselage designs as well as increased engine power and improved fuels, but it had come at a great cost in the lives of pilots. Doolittle went on to shock many in aviation circles when he emerged as a vocal critic of the sport. “Aviation has become a necessity in our daily lives,” he told reporters in 1934. “It has long since passed the point where it can, or should be, used as a spectacle or as an entertaining medium.”

Doolittle instead focused his energy again on how best to advance aviation. He had grown alarmed as the air forces of other nations surpassed that of America, his beloved Army air service reduced to flying the mail. To remain strong, Doolittle believed, the United States needed to develop more powerful engines so that future warplanes could carry heavier loads. The only way to build a more powerful engine, he knew, was to develop a better fuel—and he worked for a fuel company. Aviation gas at the time varied widely, with some eighteen different leaded and unleaded fuels. Those ranged from the 65-octane gasoline used by the Army up to the 95-octane needed for special test work by the Wright Corporation. Doolittle felt the time had arrived to standardize and reduce fuel specifications. He pitched the idea to Shell to develop a 100-octane fuel, persuading the company to invest millions in a product that at that time had no market. Many of his colleagues dubbed the venture “Doolittle’s folly.”

But Doolittle had to do more than persuade just Shell; he had to convince the Army. He knew from his contacts in the military that the future fighters and bombers then on the design boards would never fly without stronger engines, but he was up against a reluctant brass that failed to grasp that motorcycles and fighters demanded different fuels. Shell delivered the first 1,000 gallons of the new fuel to the Army in 1934. Tests immediately confirmed Doolittle’s predictions, showing that even existing engines could produce as much as 30 percent more power with it than with regular fuel. Officials at Wright Field leaked the test results to the press, triggering a wave of interest from engine manufacturers. The Army held hearings and eventually
ordered all planes manufactured to use 100-octane fuel after January 1, 1938. “Shell had taken a big commercial gamble,” Doolittle later wrote. “The venture paid off handsomely when the company was later asked to supply 20 million gallons of 100-octane fuel to the military services
daily
.”

Doolittle traveled extensively with Shell over the years and grew alarmed at the increased militarization he found in the Far East and Germany. He had developed a close friendship with German World War I flying ace Ernst Udet, visiting his home, where the two men drank French champagne and shot pistols into a steel box filled with sand atop the fireplace mantel. Doolittle’s friendship with the German aviator served as a barometer for the worsening relations between the two countries. As Germany marched down the path to war, Doolittle noted that Udet grew increasingly distant, even though he abhorred Adolf Hitler. Doolittle returned to Germany in 1939. This time his old friend seemed embarrassed to be seen with Doolittle. War was coming. Doolittle spotted great piles of wood and timber, which he recognized as potential fortifications, despite German protestations that the materials were bound for pulp mills. “On the streets, uniforms were everywhere,” he observed. “People went about their daily business with a grimness that was distressing.”

Doolittle returned home and sought out General Arnold. The two men had grown close over the years; Doolittle even asked Arnold in 1941 to write a recommendation letter for his youngest son to attend West Point. “This thing is very close to my heart,” Doolittle wrote, “or I should not take the liberty of inviting it to your attention.” Arnold was glad to help—and his muscle worked. “Don’t think for a moment that your commendation of John Doolittle wasn’t a real factor,” Senator Prentiss Brown of Michigan wrote Arnold. “While I cannot always oblige, the views of the Service officers on these appointments mean much to me.” Even though many in the air service felt Arnold favored Doolittle, the latter said he never sensed any special treatment. “General Arnold supported me in everything I did where he felt I was right,” Doolittle once said. “And he chewed my ears off whenever he felt I was wrong. The thought that personal friendship entered into his military decisions is contrary to his nature.”

Doolittle relayed to Arnold what he had seen in Germany, warning his boss that war was inevitable and that the United States would no doubt have to fight. Doolittle
still felt bitter at having had to sit out World War I. He didn’t plan to let that happen again. He told Arnold he wanted to go back on active duty. “I am entirely and immediately at the disposal of the Air Corps for whatever use they care to make of me,” he wrote in 1940. “The only suggestion that I would like to make is to recommend that I be given such duty or duties as will best take advantage of my particular experience, associations and abilities.” Shell granted Doolittle indefinite leave, and Arnold was thrilled to see him again in uniform. “When he resigned from the Air Corps in 1931 to become aviation director of the Shell Petroleum Corporation, the Air Corps lost a real pilot and a real man. But not for long, because we have him back now,” Arnold wrote in a 1941 letter. “Jim Doolittle is a spectacular person, without meaning to be one.”

Arnold dispatched Doolittle to Indianapolis and later Detroit to help prep American businesses for the increased demands of war. “My job was to marry the aviation industry and the automobile industry,” Doolittle later said, “neither of whom wanted to get married.” He suffered a restless night after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As long as the United States had remained on the war’s sidelines, he had felt content to solve the problems of production. Not anymore. He fired off a one-page letter to Arnold, noting that he had 7,730 hours of flying time, much of it in fighters. “I respectfully request that I be relieved of my present duties and re-assigned to a tactical unit,” Doolittle wrote on December 8. “The reason for making this request is a sincere belief that, due to recent developments, production problems will in future be simplified and operational problems aggravated. I consequently feel that my training and experience will be of greater value in operations than production.”

Arnold read the letter and picked up the phone.

“How quickly can you be here?” he asked. “I want you on my immediate staff.”

“Will tomorrow be all right?” Doolittle answered.

Doolittle landed in Washington with a promotion to lieutenant colonel. His unique background as an aeronautical engineer, stunt pilot, and businessman made him a perfect candidate to serve as Arnold’s troubleshooter. His first job was to examine the Martin B-26, an unforgiving medium bomber involved in a series of fatal training flights. Pilots quipped that the plane’s name Marauder should be changed to Murderer. Arnold wanted Doolittle to
investigate the problem and determine whether the Army Air Forces should cancel contracts for future B-26s. He visited the factory near Baltimore and spent hours in the skies testing the bomber, even demonstrating it before skeptical pilots. Doolittle realized that the problem was not the bomber but inadequate pilot training. He recommended continued production and devised an amended training program. “The B-26 was a good airplane, but it had some tricks,” Doolittle later said. “There wasn’t anything about its flying characteristics that good piloting skill couldn’t overcome.”

Doolittle was ready in late January for his next project.

That’s when Arnold summoned him for what Doolittle later described as “the most important military assignment of my life thus far.”

CHAPTER 4

If you have one plane available use it to bomb Tokio.

—ALLAN JOHNSON, CONSTITUENT TELEGRAM TO ROOSEVELT

DOOLITTLE
IMMEDIATELY
STARTED
to plan what he dubbed “Special Aviation Project No. 1.” To meet the tentative April departure date, he knew he would have to hustle to map out logistics, modify bombers, and pick and train his aircrews. But Arnold had given him what he needed most: top priority. If anyone gives you flak, Arnold instructed Doolittle, tell him to call the general. That fear would motivate others. “Anything that I wanted I got,” Doolittle recalled, “ahead of every one else.” The first task was to map out basic logistics of the operation. The veteran aviator envisioned that his bombers would take off as much as 500 miles east of Tokyo. The flight to China would add at least another 1,200 miles. Doolittle estimated that the greatest nonstop flight would be 2,000 miles, though to be safe he set a necessary cruising range of 2,400 miles with a bomb load of 2,000 pounds. He knew those demands would require engineers to modify the twin-engine B-25s, whose maximum range topped out at just 1,300 miles.

Named for airpower pioneer General William “Billy” Mitchell, the B-25 was one of the newest planes in America’s arsenal. It was developed by the North American Aviation Company in 1939 in response to
the needs in Europe. The initial design proposal took just forty days. The Mitchell bomber made its first test flight in August 1940, forgoing the luxury of prototypes or even wind tunnel tests. The 53-foot-long bomber consisted of no fewer than 165,000 parts, excluding the engines, instrumentation, and some 150,000 rivets. Powered by twin 1,700-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines, the B-25 could fly at 300 miles per hour and up to 23,500 feet. The Army’s initial order of 184 bombers—made just nineteen days after Hitler’s forces marched into Poland—would prove only a fraction of the 9,816 planes workers would manufacture over the course of the war, hitting a peak rate of almost 10 a day. “It is a good, stable ship,” proclaimed the
New York Times
in 1941, “not spectacular but reliable.”

The $180,031 bomber was far from perfect. It lacked the power and speed of Martin’s rival B-26 Marauder, and its three machine guns fell short of the thirteen that guarded Boeing’s larger, four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress. The B-25’s 3,500-pound payload likewise could not compete with the ten tons that Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress would deliver later in the war. But the Mitchell bomber was chosen for the Tokyo raid for one reason—its sixty-seven-foot wingspan would clear the superstructure of an aircraft carrier. The size and versatility that made the B-25 a natural fit for Doolittle’s mission would propel the rugged bomber into combat in every major theater of the war, from Europe and North Africa to the remote islands of the Pacific. Engineers along the way would improve the bomber’s firepower and armor, increase the fuel capacity, and add torpedo and wing bomb racks, allowing this aerial workhorse to tackle missions ranging from reconnaissance to antisubmarine patrols.

Another feature that made the B-25 an optimal plane for Doolittle’s mission was that it required a small crew of just five airmen to operate, half of those needed to fly a B-17. The pilot and copilot sat shoulder to shoulder in the tight cockpit, while the navigator occupied a tiny compartment just behind the flight deck. The bombardier reached the bubbled nose via a crawlway beneath the navigator’s compartment. A similar passage above the bomb bay connected the fore and aft sections where the gunner sat. The austere aircraft offered few frills, though regulations at least allowed airmen to smoke above one thousand feet. “The B-26 was a Lincoln Town Car,” joked one former navigator. “The B-25 was a Model-A Ford.” What the Mitchell bomber lacked in comfort, it made up
for in ease of flying, a fact aircrews loved. “It is so much more than an inanimate mass of material, intricately geared and wired and riveted into a tight package,” recalled Ted Lawson, one of the mission’s pilots. “It’s a good, trustworthy friend.”

To help modify the B-25s for the mission, Doolittle turned to the engineers at Ohio’s Wright Field, the main experimental and development center for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Opened in 1927 on more than five thousand acres near Dayton, Wright Field held a special significance for Doolittle, who performed in the aerial circus before fifteen thousand awed spectators at the center’s dedication that October. Wright Field had since developed into one of the world’s top aeronautical research hubs, with a staggering $150 million in laboratories and scientific equipment. Engineers labored each day in various workshops, wind tunnels, and pressure chambers designed to simulate high altitudes and subzero temperatures. Others tested new parachutes and body armor and pushed airplanes to the breaking point to determine structural strength. A reporter with the
Milwaukee Sentinel
described it all best: “Wright Field is the place where miracles are performed so that American airmen can kill their enemies and stay alive themselves.”