The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (19 page)

From the very day of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt had envisioned conducting a retaliatory strike on Japan’s home islands. He urged such a raid not as part of a grand strategy but to give the American public something to cheer. To conduct a carrier raid against Japan, however, would subject the Navy’s scarce and valuable carriers to unacceptable danger. They would have to steam to within two hundred miles of the enemy coast and then wait there for the strike planes to return. It was simply too risky. American land-based bombers, with their greater range, could reach Japan from China. However, getting them to the airfields in China “over the hump” of the Himalayas from India would take months, and FDR was eager to strike while the pain of Pearl Harbor was still palpable. The notion that it might be possible to fly long-range, land-based bombers off a carrier deck originated with Navy captain Seth Low, Ernie King’s operations officer, who thought it up while watching them lift off from airfields in Florida on which the outline of a carrier deck had been painted for practice landings. He pitched the idea to King, who told him to talk to Duncan, and soon afterward, Duncan went out to the
Hornet
to conduct the test that proved it could be done.
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The problem was that while B-25s might take off from the
Hornet
, they could not land there. They would have to fly off the carrier some five hundred miles out from Japan, drop their bombs, then find someplace else to land. One option was to land them at Russian airfields near Vladivostok. But Stalin, who had his hands full with the Germans, did not want to add the Japanese to his list of enemies and refused permission. The other option was China, though to make it all the way to airfields in the part of China that had not yet been overrun by the Japanese meant that the B-25s would have to be significantly modified to carry extra fuel, which would limit their bomb load. Another problem was that because the B-25s were much too large to fit on the carrier’s elevators, they would have to remain on the flight deck throughout the Pacific crossing, which meant the carrier could not conduct normal air operations. In other words, the
Hornet
would be unable to defend herself. In consequence of that, a second carrier would have to be assigned to accompany her. Indeed, King even wondered if it might not require three carriers—two for the heavy bombers and one to defend the task force.
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Many wondered whether it was an intelligent use of rare American carriers to use most or all of them simply to conduct an air raid whose purpose was mainly to boost morale. In any event, the plan required cooperation from what in 1942 was still called the Army Air Forces, and in March of 1942 the U.S. Army and Navy were very much at odds about future strategy. It was not the kind of dysfunctional hostility that characterized relations between the Japanese Army and Navy but a far more subtle competition over resources and priorities. The U.S. Army continued to adhere to the Germany First strategy that had been laid down in ABC-1 and Rainbow 5 in November 1941, whereas King was already pushing hard for an early Pacific offensive. After the collapse of the ABDA coalition, the British agreed to allow the United States to assume full responsibility for the conduct of the war in the Pacific, and at a March 5 strategy meeting in the White House, King presented a memorandum he had prepared for the president that emphasized the importance of holding Hawaii and defending the lines of communication to Australia, but which also called for a “drive northward from the New Hebrides into the Solomons and the Bismarck archipelago,” which meant attacking Rabaul. To make sure that a busy FDR didn’t miss the central point of his argument, King summed it up in three bulleted items at the end: “Hold Hawaii, Support Australasia, Drive northwestward from New Hebrides.”
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The problem was that, as King readily admitted, “Such a line of operations will be offensive rather than passive,” and this ran up against the Army’s determination to remain strictly on the defensive in the Pacific until Germany was beaten. George Marshall, the soft-spoken but strong-minded Army chief of staff, noted that the strategic principle of Germany First was still in place, and that even though an invasion of occupied Europe now seemed unlikely for 1942, it was essential to continue the buildup of forces for the invasion when it did come, presumably in 1943. Marshall was backed up by the head of the Army Air Forces, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, who had earned his nickname for his perennially cheerful expression. Despite these basic disagreements about strategy, however, when Low and Duncan went to see Arnold to propose a raid on Tokyo that combined Army bombers with Navy carriers, Arnold was immediately enthusiastic. In fact, Arnold had been thinking about how to hit back at Japan with his bombers, and only weeks before had confided in his diary, “We will have to try bomber take-offs from carriers.” He told Low and Duncan to go down the hall to talk to his plans officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle.
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Jimmy Doolittle was already something of a national celebrity in 1942. During the 1930s he had earned a reputation within the flying community by winning virtually every speed racing trophy there was. He shared a number of personal qualities with Pete Mitscher. Born in Alameda, California, Doolittle had grown up in Nome, Alaska. Like Mitscher, he had been the smallest boy in his class at school and the object of bullying. (Even as an adult he stood only five foot four.) He was regularly involved in fights, many of which he started. He even boxed professionally as a bantamweight, mauling enough of his opponents to earn a modest reputation and some spending money. He was an indifferent student, earning mostly C’s until he entered junior college, where his grades improved. He attended the California School of Mines, but he did not graduate because he enlisted in the Signal Corps when America went to war in 1917. The Army taught him to fly. He discovered that he was a natural pilot and was soon made an instructor. Like many pilots of his era (including Pete Mitscher), he was also a daredevil and was regularly grounded for dangerous stunts such as buzzing civilians or flying under bridges, wrecking several airplanes in the process.
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Like Mitscher, Doolittle missed seeing active service in World War I because the Army kept him stateside as an instructor. But in 1922, three years after Mitscher won the Navy Cross for participating in the world’s first transatlantic flight, Doolittle won the Distinguished Flying Cross for setting a transcontinental speed record, crossing the country (with one stop) in less than twenty-four hours. A few years later he broke his own record, crossing the country (with no stops) in twelve hours. Though officially a test pilot, Doolittle was in effect a public relations exhibit for the Army, part of a team that put on flight demonstrations in order to enhance the Army’s image. He was being paid to perform the kind of stunts that had got him grounded ten years earlier, and his utter fearlessness encouraged him to take personal risks. Like Yamamoto, he was willing to perform dangerous feats on a bet, and he once broke both of his ankles after falling from a second-story balcony, trying to perform a handstand on the railing while drunk. Despite the broken ankles, he flew in an air show the next day with his feet in heavy casts, strapped to the pedals. But he was more than a daredevil. The California School of Mines decided to give him academic credit for his flight time and awarded him a degree, and that allowed him to apply to graduate school. He went to MIT, where in two years he earned both a master’s and a Ph.D. in aeronautical science. Doolittle left the Army and spent the 1930s as a stunt pilot for the Shell Oil Company demonstration team, earning three times the money the Army had paid him for doing essentially the same job. In the process he won a reputation as the country’s fastest pilot, winning race after race and becoming nearly as well known as NASCAR drivers such Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. became several generations later. Doolittle reentered the Army in 1940 as war loomed and by 1942 was on the staff of General Hap Arnold. His office was just down the hall from Arnold’s, and he was there in February 1942 when Low and Duncan came to see him with their idea of flying B-25s off Navy carriers. He of course loved the idea.
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Initially, Doolittle was supposed to be the administrator of the program, coordinating the logistics from the Army side. But from the beginning he worked to ensure that he would lead the flight personally, though he had never flown a B-25. He first checked to see which B-25 squadron had the most experience, found that it was the 17th Bomb Group at Pendleton Field near Columbia, South Carolina, and ordered the planes of that squadron to fly to Eglin Field in Florida. Then he flew down to Florida himself to address the pilots and their crews. He told them he was looking for men for an important mission—volunteers only. He couldn’t tell them what the mission was, he said, only that it was important, and probably dangerous. Everyone volunteered. Doolittle picked out twenty-four crews—in case of accidents or washouts—and began training.
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For this training, he called on the Navy at Pensacola, asking for a flight instructor who was familiar with carrier operations. The Navy sent him Lieutenant Henry Miller. Miller flew to Eglin Field with no idea why. When he presented his orders to the commanding officer there, Miller asked him why he had been summoned. Saying nothing in reply, the CO drove him over to the isolated hangar Doolittle was using as a temporary headquarters. Doolittle and Miller hit it off immediately. Both were from Alaska, both loved to fly, and both had been boxers.
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At Eglin Field, Miller showed the Army pilots how to lift off with only about 65 to 70 knots of airspeed. They understood the concept, though it violated everything they had learned in flight school, where the rule was to build up to about 110 knots before attempting to lift off. Taking off from a carrier would mean getting off the deck at near stalling speed and building up speed only after they were in the air. The Army pilots had to fight their instincts at every step. Nonetheless Miller soon had them lifting off within as little as 250 feet of runway.
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Doolittle trained with them, delighted to be flying again. He called the other pilots by their first names and joked around with them between flights. “He was very congenial,” one of the other pilots recalled. The experience confirmed his determination to lead the flight personally, a notion he put to Hap Arnold. Arnold replied that he needed Doolittle in Washington to plan future operations. Doolittle protested vociferously, claiming that he had been in charge of the training, and that “the boys” deserved to have their leader with them. Eventually Arnold relented, though he told Doolittle that he would need approval from Millard F. Harmon, Arnold’s chief of staff.
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Doolittle saluted and sprinted down the hall to Harmon’s office. “Miff, I’ve just been to see Hap about that project I’ve been working on and said I wanted to lead the mission. Hap said it was okay with him if it’s okay with you.” Harmon replied that as long as Arnold approved, it was all right with him. As Doolittle was leaving, he heard Harmon’s intercom buzz and then, after a moment, Harmon’s voice. “But Hap, I just told him he could go.”
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As the pilots trained in Florida and the
Hornet
proceeded from Norfolk to San Diego via the Panama Canal, Wu Duncan was putting together the other pieces of the puzzle. He flew to Pearl Harbor to brief Nimitz on the project. Nimitz was dubious. To him, the commitment of two carriers to what amounted to a public relations stunt was a misuse of scarce resources. The
Lexington
was in dry dock, which meant that if both the
Enterprise
and
Hornet
were sent off to Tokyo, the
Yorktown
would be the only available carrier left. On the other hand, Nimitz knew better than to get in the way of a project that emanated from Washington, especially since he suspected that he was no longer held in great favor there. To his wife, Nimitz wrote, “Am afraid he [Knox] is not so keen for me now as he was when I left,” and speculated that he would be “lucky to last six months.” He called Halsey into the meeting. After Duncan again explained the objective, Nimitz turned to Halsey, asking him if thought it would work. Halsey replied that it would take considerable luck. Nimitz then asked if he would be willing to take them there. He was. “Good,” Nimitz responded. “It’s all yours!”
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