Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (25 page)

Doolittle told them of his visit
to Britain in 1940 when the Germans bombed Buckingham Palace, which he described as a useless attack that only rallied the British people. The same applied for the Imperial Palace. The mission was to sow disunity and spread doubts about the ability of the Japanese military to protect the people. That would be lost in the nationalistic uproar that would surely follow an attack on the emperor. “Even though I could have designated it a specific target, I unilaterally made the decision that we would not bomb it,” Doolittle later wrote. “I consider this admonition one of the most serious I ever made to bombardment crews throughout the war.”

The men learned about the ordnance that would be used in the mission. Each plane would carry four bombs for a total of 2,000 pounds. Most would carry a mix of 500-pound M-43 demolition bombs and M-43 incendiary clusters made up of 128 four-pound bomblets designed to scatter over an area 200 feet by 600 feet.

“You will drop the demolition bombs in the shortest space of time, preferably in a straight line, where they will do the most damage,” Doolittle advised. “Avoid hitting stone, concrete, and steel targets because you can’t do enough damage to them.”

A pilot popped up and asked about targeting residential areas.

“Definitely not!” Doolittle warned. “You are to look for and aim at military targets only, such as war industries, shipbuilding facilities, power plants, and the like. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by attacking residential areas.”

He reiterated his admonition not to bomb the emperor’s palace. “It’s not worth a plane factory, a shipyard, or an oil refinery, so leave it alone.”

One of the pilots asked what Doolittle would do if his plane were hit.

“Each pilot must decide for himself what he will do and what he’ll tell his crew to do if that happens,” he answered. “I know what I’m going to do.”

A silence hung over the men before the pilot asked the logical follow-up.

“I don’t intend to be taken prisoner,” Doolittle replied. “I’m 45 years old and have lived a full life. If my plane is crippled beyond any possibility of fighting or escape, I’m going to have my crew bail out and then I’m going to dive my B-25 into the best military target I can find. You fellows are all younger and have a long life
ahead of you. I don’t expect any of the rest of you to do what I intend to do.”

The gravity of the raid sunk in for many. “We figured there was only a 50-50 chance we would get off the
Hornet
,” Nielsen remembered. “If we got off, there was a 50-50 chance we’d get shot down over Japan. And, if we got that far, there was a 50-50 chance we’d make it to China. And, if we got to China, there was a 50-50 chance we’d be captured. We figured the odds were really stacked against us.”

Each combat crew member received a pistol, a parachute knife, an extra clip of ammunition, one day’s type C field ration, a flashlight, a full canteen of water, a Navy gas mask, and a hand ax. Not all of the gear passed muster. “I went through that box of 1911 pistols,” remembered pilot Edgar McElroy of his .45. “They were in such bad condition that I took several of them apart, using the good parts from several useless guns until I built a serviceable weapon. Several other pilots did the same.”

The airmen sat through myriad other classes and lectures. Jurika drilled into them the important Chinese phrase “
Lusau hoo metwa fugi
,” or “I’m American.” He furthermore taught them that the easiest way to distinguish a Japanese soldier from a Chinese one was to look at the toes. “The Japanese wore
tabi
, which separates the big toe from the other four toes,” he recalled. “The Chinese have all their toes together.”

Greening continued to hammer the airmen on gunnery, firing on kites from the stern of the
Hornet
. One of the airmen who worked the hardest was Staff Sergeant Edwin Bain, tapped to join Jack Hilger’s crew just before the
Hornet
left port after the original gunner was hospitalized.

“Know anything about a tail gun?” Doolittle asked him.

“Nossir,” Bain replied. “I’m a radioman.”

“That’s what you
were
!” Doolittle told him. “You’re a tail-gunner now.”

Other times the fliers studied meteorology and practiced celestial navigation with the help of
Hornet
navigator Commander Frank Akers by shooting star shots with a sextant from the deck and from the bomber’s navigator compartment. Mission adjutant Major Harry Johnson was impressed by the diligence of the aircrews, as evidenced by his report: “Pilots plotted and replotted courses with their navigators until I feel most of them could have almost discarded their maps.”

Along those lines Doolittle cautioned crews
on how best to dump the extra fuel tins. “I don’t want you to throw them out as they’re used,” he instructed. “If you do, it will leave a perfect trail for the Japanese to follow back to the carrier. Use up the stuff in the cans first, of course, but save them and dump them all together. The Navy has been great to us. Let’s show our appreciation in whatever way we can.”

Mission doctor Thomas White administered the final vaccinations against the plague, weathering another round of teasing from the airmen. “One chap swore he’d bleed serum if he were ever wounded, since he was certain there was no room for blood in his veins. Another wanted to know when I was going to give him his latex shots,” White wrote. “He wanted to be self-sealing like the gas tanks!” White reviewed sanitation dangers the crew would face in China, hammering into them the importance of avoiding cuts and of drinking only boiled water and eating cooked foods. “The way the Doc talked,” Joseph Manske noted in his diary, “all disease must of started in China.”

With the help of the
Hornet
’s medical department, White even rustled up a pint of whiskey for each member of the crew, ostensibly for snakebites.

“Are there snakes in China?” Knobloch asked.

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied. “But if there are, this’ll sure help you.”

CHAPTER 9

Four months today since Pearl Harbor—and the situation has deteriorated every minute since.

—BRECKINRIDGE LONG, APRIL 7, 1942, DIARY ENTRY

ROOSEVELT WATCHED THE NEWS
in the Pacific worsen as winter gave way to spring. Japan had seized the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, captured Rangoon, and severed the Burma Road, the vital lifeline of aid into China. Japanese forces reached as far south as Australia, pummeling the coastal city of Darwin in a raid that put every ship in the harbor on the bottom. Powerless to stop Japan’s advance, Roosevelt commiserated with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who sulked for weeks over the loss of Singapore. “I do not like these days of personal stress and I have found it difficult to keep my eye on the ball,” Churchill confessed, later adding, “The weight of the war is very heavy now and I must expect it to get steadily worse for some time to come.”

The pragmatic president urged Churchill to focus on the future. “No matter how serious our setbacks have been, and I do not for a moment underrate them, we must constantly look forward to the next moves that need to be made to hit the enemy.” Roosevelt pressed that theme again in other correspondence. “There is no use giving a single further thought to Singapore or the Dutch Indies,” he advised. “They are gone.” In a softer
exchange he encouraged Churchill to find a way to relax. “Once a month I go to Hyde Park for four days, crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me,” he wrote. “I am called on the telephone only if something of really great importance occurs. I wish you would try it, and I wish you would lay a few bricks or paint another picture.”

Roosevelt struggled at times to take his own advice, letting the war’s setbacks and continued attacks by isolationist rivals upset him. That was evident when he lashed out in a March 6 letter to prominent New York banker Fred Kent. “You wax positively gruesome when you declare solemnly that had it not been for the thirty million man-days lost by strikes since the defense program began, the Philippines, the Dutch Indies and Singapore would all have been saved. You sound like Alice in Wonderland,” the president wrote. “Let me tell you something more fantastic than that. If, since the defense program started, we in the United States had not lost sixty million man-days through that scourge of Satan, called the common cold, we could undoubtedly have had enough planes and guns and tanks to overrun Europe, Africa and the whole of Asia.”

The pressures on the president only increased as the struggle for the Philippines neared its tragic end. Under orders from Roosevelt, MacArthur had escaped in March, leaving Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright in command of 110,000 American and Filipino forces on the Bataan Peninsula and the fortified island of Corregidor. Cut off from reinforcements by a Japanese blockade, Wainwright’s troops battled malaria and starvation, forced to slaughter and eat the cavalry’s horses. “Our troops have been subsisted [
sic
] on one half to one third ration for so long a period,” Wainwright radioed on April 8, “that they do not possess the physical strength to endure the strain placed upon the individual in an attack.” MacArthur warned General Marshall to prepare for the worst. “In view of my intimate knowledge of the situation there, I regard the situation as extremely critical and feel you should anticipate the possibility of disaster.”

The situation was hopeless. Roosevelt instructed Wainwright to do what he felt best. “I have nothing but admiration for your soldierly conduct and your performance of your most difficult mission,” he messaged. “You should be assured of complete freedom of action and of my full confidence in the wisdom of whatever decision you may be forced to make.” The Japanese overran Bataan on April 9—one week after the
Hornet
left San Francisco—setting
the stage for the infamous Death March that would kill thousands. Holed up on Corregidor with the last of the Philippines’ fourteen thousand defenders, Wainwright listened that night as a “terrible silence” settled over Bataan. “If there is anything worse than a battlefield that shakes with explosions and the cries of men,” he later wrote, “it is one that becomes mute and dead.” He tried to sound optimistic in a message to the president. “Our flag still flies on this island fortress.”

But it would not for long.

Wainwright knew it; so did the Japanese.

And so did Roosevelt.

The fall of Bataan exacerbated the pressure on Roosevelt. Americans had grown tired of retreat and defeat. “Bataan is a bugle call to tell us that only attack will win,” argued the
San Francisco Chronicle
. “Attack is not only suited to our temperament,” echoed the
New York Times
. “It is also the life-sparing road to a victorious peace.” The Doolittle mission promised a potent tonic to the frustration brought on by Pearl Harbor, Wake, Guam, and now Bataan. But the recent disaster in the Philippines only magnified the enormous political risk of a mission grounded in the promise not of tactical gains but of positive headlines. How would the country react if Japan destroyed America’s precious few carriers, cruisers, and destroyers? Was Roosevelt in his quest to boost the nation’s morale pushing his Navy to commit suicide? That question would be answered soon enough.

THE ARMY AVIATORS SETTLED
into life on board the
Hornet
as the task force cut through the swells west toward Japan. In addition to attending classes and lectures, the men worried about the bombers, which were exposed to everything from corrosive salt air and sea spray to gale-force winds and pounding rains. Crews paid careful attention to the auxiliary gas tanks, which were prone to leak. “Deck lashings had to be inspected and secured daily,” wrote pilot Jack Sims. “Batteries ran down requiring regular recharging, spark plugs fouled, brakes failed, hydraulic component and system leaks occurred and generators sometimes broke down. It was a constant, never-ending battle against the elements.”

On one of those inspections, Edward Saylor discovered a problem. He drained the oil sump on
the right engine and pulled out the magnetic plug, which is designed to pick up any metal shavings or particles that might have come loose. Attached to the plug he found two horseshoe-shaped keys that held the engine’s five planetary reduction gears in place on the shaft. The loss of those two keys signaled the breakdown of the engine’s gear system, a catastrophic failure. Saylor reported the news to Doolittle.

“Can you fix it?” Doolittle asked.

Saylor knew this was no easy job; it would require the removal and disassembly of the engine—on an aircraft carrier at sea.

“Probably,” Saylor replied. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Doolittle was blunt.

“You’ve either got to fix it or push it over the side.”

Saylor set to work. The bomber with its tail dangling over the carrier’s stern could not be transported below, forcing Saylor to remove the engine on the flight deck even as the winds at times reached thirty-five miles per hour. Navy sailors helped, constructing a tripod over the plane complete with a chain hoist to support the more than 2,000-pound Wright Cyclone engine. As he unfastened the bomber’s engine, Saylor carefully packed each nut and bolt inside the aircraft so as not to lose them overboard.