Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (27 page)

“Out here? Which land base?”

“I’ll bet we’re going through the Aleutians and deliver them to a secret Siberian base.”

“Are they using army pilots on carriers? If so, our careers are over. Let’s join the marines.”

The two task forces merged. The
Hornet
took over as the guide and fleet center, with the oilers
Sabine
and
Cimarron
a thousand yards astern followed by the
Enterprise
. The cruisers
North Hampton
and
Vincennes
steamed in one column and the
Nashville
and
Salt Lake City
in another. The eight destroyers formed an inner and outer antisubmarine screen with a circular spacing of one mile as the force steamed due west. Weather permitting, pilots flew continuous daylight air patrols coupled with dawn and dusk search flights out to two hundred miles, sixty degrees off each bow.

On April 13 the
Enterprise
’s loudspeaker crackled as Halsey prepared to alert his men of the mission
. “This force,” he announced, “is bound for Tokyo.”

“Never have I heard such a shout as burst from the
Enterprise
’s company!” the admiral later wrote. “Part of their eagerness came, I think, from the fact that Bataan had fallen four days earlier.”

The admiral then messaged to the other ships in his task force details of the plan. “Intention fuel heavy ships about one thousand miles to westward,” Halsey instructed. “Thence carriers cruisers to point five hundred miles east of Tokyo then launch army bombers on
Hornet
for attack. DDS and tankers remain vicinity fueling rejoin on retirement. Further operations as developments dictate.”

Casey heard the news of the mission directly from the
Salt Lake City
’s skipper. This was no attack on Wake or Marcus Island, but an assault on the enemy’s homeland. Casey surveyed the muscular task force of carriers, cruisers, and destroyers that cut through the swells. His earlier disappointment vanished. “This is a big force now,” he wrote in his diary, “a force that the Japs would hardly dare take on without twice the number of ships and at least an even break of airplanes.”

The skipper of the
Salt Lake City
came over the loudspeaker at 11 a.m. to warn his men to remain vigilant against enemy submarines.

“You are about to take part in a very historic event,” he announced. “For the first time in the history of Japan, the home territory is about to be attacked. This attack will be in force and will undoubtedly have great effect.”

The same day the task force crossed the 180th meridian, which serves as the international date line, skipping ahead one day to April 15. Casey noted the day’s demise in his diary with a tombstone inscription:

Here lies

April 14, a Tuesday,

sacrificed to the west-bound crossing of the

international date line.

Each new day carried the task force another four hundred miles closer to Japan and at a cost to the
Hornet
of as much as fifty thousand gallons of fuel. Radiomen hunched over receivers twenty-four hours a day, monitoring Tokyo’s commercial stations to decipher news and broadcast routines, while officers and
crew manned battle stations at dawn and dusk. Mitscher ran his sailors through countless drills to prepare them for combat, from gunnery and damage control to abandon-ship exercises. The Navy’s rigorous practice at times irked some of Doolittle’s men. “It seemed to me,” griped Robert Bourgeois, “that every time I started to sleep or eat that damn General Quarters would sound off.”

The danger was reflected in
Cimarron
skipper Russell Ihrig’s battle instructions, demanding that sailors toss all magazines overboard and use wet rags to wipe down bulkheads, light fixtures, furniture, overhead pipes, and wiring to eliminate flammable dust. He ordered officer staterooms readied as battle dressing stations—complete with scissors or knives to cut off clothes—and instructed sailors to shave off beards and cut their hair to no longer than two inches. “Throw overboard
tonight all shoe polish
, hair oils and hair tonic. Wash your head and do not put on any hair-tonic or oils of any kind,” he ordered. “Keep all unnecessary lights turned off throughout the ships at all times. Light takes electricity, electricity takes steam and steam takes oil.
We need that oil!
”

Bad weather continued to plague the mission, forcing the
Cimarron
to slow amid forty-two-knot winds to prevent structural damage. The
Vincennes
lost a man overboard on April 6—he was recovered from the fifty-one-degree seas by the destroyer
Meredith
—and the
Cimarron
lost another a few days later trying to refuel the
Hornet
, forcing a second rescue by the destroyer. Heavy seas one night cost the
Vincennes
a paravane along with a sixty-man lifeboat, including two oars and five gallons of water, while
Hornet
sailors had to rescue the raider Joseph Manske, trapped topside in a storm as he checked to make sure that his bomber was secure.

The hellacious seas, which caused the
Ruptured Duck
’s altimeter to vary by as much as two hundred feet, amazed even veteran sailors. “We ran into the God damnedest weather I’ve ever seen,” recalled Lieutenant j.g. Robin Lindsey, a landing signal officer on the
Enterprise
. “For three days the waves were so high the deck was pitching so much that I had to have a person stand behind me to hold me on the landing signal platform so that I wouldn’t fall down. Several times I did, and you can imagine the amazement on the pilot’s face as he passed over with no signal officer there.”

Tension mounted on board the ships
as the task force closed in on Japan. “You could feel it in the wardroom, in the crew’s mess, in the lookouts, and on the bridge,”
Life
magazine editor John Field wrote. “How close to Tokyo could we get without being spotted? Nobody knew for certain.”

Anxious for distractions, sailors listened over a shortwave radio to a San Francisco dance band. Others swapped jokes in the wardroom.

“Anybody seen the Staten Island ferry go by?” someone quipped.

The joke broke the tension, but all eyes soon drifted to the map that adorned the wardroom bulkhead, confirming what each sailor knew.

The task force was now on the enemy’s home turf.

Even the
Hornet
’s chaplain, Edward Harp, harbored doubts.

“How are we going to make out on this deal?” he asked Mitscher.

“The mission has to be successful,” the skipper replied. “The whole war does.”

No one knew that more than Doolittle, whom Harp encountered one night after dinner up on deck near the bridge. “In the dusk I saw a lone figure there,” the chaplain later wrote. “I stopped and watched a minute. It was Doolittle, walking up and down, his head bent characteristically. I could almost see him thinking, as he moved slowly from one rail to the other. In that moment I glimpsed the enormous responsibility resting on him. I left him there without speaking and retraced my steps.”

Doolittle held a final inspection of each bomber several days before the mission’s scheduled takeoff, passing out to every pilot a twenty-four-point checklist that included items ranging from guaranteeing that guns and bombs were properly loaded to stowing maps, charts, and first aid kits along with thermoses of fresh water and bagged lunches. Doolittle hoped the
Hornet
would deliver the raiders to within 450 miles of Japan. Even if crews had to launch from a distance of 550 miles, he predicted, the mission would in all likelihood prove successful. Doolittle set an outside limit of 650 miles. Beyond that, and he doubted his crews would have the fuel to reach China. Some of the raiders found the news unsettling. “It sure didn’t sound very inviting,” Joseph Manske wrote in his diary, “but it’s too late now to start worrying about anything.”

The Army airmen made personal preparations for the mission. Shorty Manch packed his portable phonograph, while Ken Reddy used his poker earnings to pay his mess bill, lending ten dollars apiece to William Birch, James Parker, and Harold
Watson before packing up and mailing his watch home, careful to insure it for fifty dollars. Robert Emmens penned a final letter to his mother on
Hornet
stationery. “It may be quite some time before any of us can send anyone any word,” he wrote, “so just don’t worry, and feel that I’m doing something at last to help in this damnable mess.”

The airmen received a shock a few days before takeoff when operators picked up an English propaganda broadcast from Radio Tokyo. “Reuters, British news agency, has announced that three American bombers have dropped bombs on Tokyo,” the broadcast stated. “This is a most laughable story. They know it is absolutely impossible for enemy bombers to get within 500 miles of Tokyo. Instead of worrying about such foolish things, the Japanese people are enjoying the fine spring sunshine and the fragrance of cherry blossoms.” The news alarmed Halsey and sickened the raiders, who had hoped to be the first to attack the enemy’s capital. Doolittle in contrast doubted the report’s veracity, which proved so fantastic that it made headlines in the United States. “The Japanese radio strangely denied today that three American planes had bombed Tokyo,” the
New York Times
reported. “It was strange, because the Tokyo radio went to great lengths to deny something that apparently nobody reported.”

The
Cimarron
came along the port side of the
Hornet
at 6:20 a.m. on April 17, topping the carrier off with 200,634 gallons. The oiler next refueled the
Northampton
and then the
Salt Lake City
, while the
Sabine
topped off the
Nashville
,
Enterprise
, and
Vincennes
. The seas crashed over the bows as gale-force winds blew out of the southeast at forty-one knots. A thousand miles east of Tokyo, visibility dropped to as little as one mile.

At 2:44 p.m. the
Hornet
and
Enterprise
accompanied by the four cruisers pulled ahead of the oilers and destroyers for the final run toward Tokyo. The
Hornet
guided the reduced force at twenty-five knots, trailed by the
Enterprise
at a distance of just fifteen hundred yards. The
Northampton
and
Vincennes
formed a column off the
Hornet
’s starboard bow, while the
Nashville
and
Salt Lake City
took up a similar position off the carrier’s port bow. “I had left the destroyers behind so we wouldn’t be hampered if we had to get out of there in a hurry as we approached Japan,” Halsey recalled. “I was like the country soldier who wanted no part of the cavalry because
he didn’t want to be bothered with a horse in case of retreat. We didn’t know what might happen.”

Sailors brought the incendiary bombs up to the flight deck via the no. 3 elevator, while the demolition bombs rode up in the regular elevators. Others helped load the ammunition for the nose and turret guns, a mixture of armor-piercing, incendiary, and tracer rounds. Two freshly painted white lines on the flight deck served as guides—one for the nosewheel, the other for the left wheel—promising pilots six feet of clearance with the carrier’s island. Airplane handlers spotted the bombers for takeoff half an hour before sunset. Even with the sixteenth bomber’s tail dangling precariously over the carrier’s stern, Doolittle in the lead plane would have just 467 feet to take off.

Mitscher summoned Doolittle to the bridge.

“Jim, we’re in the enemy’s backyard now,” the skipper told him. “Anything could happen from here on in. I think it’s time for that little ceremony we talked about.”

The airmen assembled on the flight deck, joined by a Navy photographer. The U.S. Battle Fleet had in October 1908 visited Yokohama, where commemoration medals were presented by a representative of the emperor. Two Brooklyn Navy Yard employees, master rigger Henry Vormstein and shipwright John Laurey, who had received such medals as seamen on the battleship
Connecticut
, returned them to Navy Secretary Frank Knox after the attack on Pearl Harbor. “May we request,” Vormstein wrote, “you to attach it to a bomb and return it to Japan in that manner.”

Daniel Quigley, a former sailor on the battleship
Kearsarge
who now lived in Pennsylvania, wrote a similar letter to Knox, enclosing his medal. “Following the lead of my former Fleet mates,” he wrote, “I herewith enclose the one issued to me and trust that it will eventually find its way back in company with a bomb that will rock the throne of the ‘Son of Heaven’ in the Kojimachi Ku district of Tokyo.”

Jurika contributed his own medal, one he had received in the name of the emperor from his time as an attaché.

The reserved Mitscher gave a brief speech to the airmen and read aloud the messages from Admiral King, General Marshall, and General Arnold. Doolittle and his men then tied the medals to the bombs. Thatcher grinned as he attached one.

“I don’t want to set the world on fire—just Tokyo,” someone scrawled in chalk on one bomb. Other inscriptions
read, “You’ll get a BANG out of this!” and “Bombs Made in America and Laid in Japan.” Marine Corporal Larry Bogart, the skipper’s orderly, honored his girlfriend and his parents. “This one is from Peggy,” he wrote on one, and on another, “This is from Mom and Pop Bogart.” “We painted them all up with slogans and almost everybody autographed them,” recalled Robert Noone, a signal officer on the
Hornet
. “We were proud to take part in the venture.”

Men from the extra bomber crews pleaded to get on a flight, waving fistfuls of cash. “One of the most vivid memories I have of the Tokyo raid is of a group of men who were willing to pay $150 apiece to die,” Thad Blanton later wrote. “These men tried every way they knew how to beg, borrow or steal a seat on the raid.” None of the sixteen crews would give up a spot, a feeling well captured by Reddy in his diary. “It would take more than money could buy to secure my place on this trip.”

Doolittle held a final meeting with his men in the wardroom. He kept his instructions brief, warning that takeoff could happen at any moment. Under no circumstances were the men to fly to Vladivostok. He reiterated his demand that no one target the emperor’s palace or any other nonmilitary target. “If all goes well,” Doolittle told his men, “I’ll take off so as to arrive over Tokyo at dusk. The rest of you will take off two or three hours later and can use my fires as a homing beacon.”