Sailors lit a fire under boiler no. 6 at 5:30 a.m. on February 2, followed forty-five minutes later by boilers no. 3 and no. 5. A harbor pilot climbed aboard at 9:15 a.m., and the Hornet got underway seventeen minutes later. Winds blew out of the northwest at four miles per hour this winter morning as temperatures hovered around freezing. A light snow began to fall. Sailors lit fires under five more boilers moments before Mitscher took the conn at 9:52 a.m. An hour and a half later the 809-foot flattop glided past the floating lighthouse Chesapeake. The destroyers Ludlow and Hilary P. Jones patrolled ahead as the Hornet increased speed to twenty-two knots.
The zero hour finally arrived. The deck log shows that the Hornet went to flight quarters at 12:55 p.m. and turned into the wind twenty-three minutes later. First up was Lieutenant John Fitzgerald Jr., who had earned his wings in 1940. The Army aviator had so far logged some fifteen hundred hours in the skies with more than four hundred of those in B-25s. Fitzgerald’s current assignment as a B-25 test officer at Ohio’s Wright Field made him a perfect candidate for the afternoon’s test. “Since flying a B-25 off a carrier simply had never been done there was no kind of previous instruction available,” he recalled. “All we could do was practice extremely short takeoffs on land.”
That uncertainty was evident in the response one of the bomber pilots gave communication officer Lieutenant Commander Oscar Dodson when he wished the airman good luck. “If we go into the water, don’t run over us.”
Duncan dressed in foul-weather gear and stood on the port wing of the bridge alongside Mitscher. One deck down below, Fitzgerald throttled up his B-25. His cockpit windshield revealed five hundred feet of deck space. During the more than two dozen short-field takeoffs he had practiced, Fitzgerald had managed to get his bomber up in as little as three hundred feet. The plane’s air speed indicator revealed that the carrier’s speed combined with the wind across the deck gave him forty-five miles per hour before he even released the brakes. He needed to accelerate only twenty-three miles per hour more and he would be airborne. Fitzgerald’s biggest concern centered on the proximity of the carrier’s island as the B-25’s 67-foot wingspan left him perilously little room for error.
The launching officer flashed Fitzgerald the signal at 1:27 p.m., and he released the brakes. The bomber charged down the flight deck. Duncan watched as the B-25 stubbornly remained on deck. Just a few feet before the edge of the deck the bomber climbed into the skies. The experience felt much different for Fitzgerald in the cockpit. “When I got the signal to go, I let the brakes off and was airborne almost immediately,” Fitzgerald later recalled. “The wing of my plane rose so fast I was afraid I’d strike the ship’s ‘island’ over the flight deck. But I missed it.”
Mitscher flashed a smile at Duncan.
Lieutenant James McCarthy went next. The Army aviator throttled up the B-25’s engines, released the brakes, and the second bomber roared into the skies, this time in just 275 feet. The Hornet’s deck log shows the carrier completed the launches at 1:47 p.m. The two bombers, unable to land back on the Hornet, returned to the airfield.
Duncan had little time to celebrate. The ship’s general quarters alarm sounded at 2 p.m. The Hornet’s air patrol reported a submarine periscope. The destroyers charged through the waves, dropping depth charges as the air patrol zeroed in on the target. The Hornet changed course as the carrier’s five-inch batteries opened fire. Mitscher watched the action unfold. “Frank, it’s a nice oil slick,” he said to Commander Frank Akers, the ship’s navigator. “But I can still see a foot or so of what appears to be a periscope sticking up. This is the first blasted submarine that I’ve ever seen like that.”
The Ludlow made a closer inspection and reported the alleged submarine periscope was actually the mast of a sunken ship, news that drew a laugh from Mitscher. “Very realistic drill,” he said to Akers. “Send them a ‘well done.’”
The Hornet returned to port, anchoring at 5:27 p.m. in Berth 27 at Hampton Roads. Duncan hurried back to Washington, thrilled his calculations were correct. “There was a six foot clearance between the wing tip and the island,” he wrote in a two-page memo to Admiral King. “This did not seem to bother the pilots as both airplanes maintained perfectly straight courses on the take-off run and appeared to be under excellent control.” Duncan reported that the Hornet could carry between fifteen and twenty bombers, depending on whether the Navy wanted to leave enough deck space to operate a possible squadron of fighters. King reviewed the memo, scrawling a single word of approval across the bottom in pencil: “Excellent.”
Mitscher gathered that evening with his executive officer, air officer, and navigator to discuss the operation. Duncan had told Mitscher only that the afternoon’s operation was designed to test the B-25’s takeoff capabilities, tests the skipper knew could just as easily be performed at an airfield on shore. He likewise knew that if the Navy planned to use the Hornet to transport Army bombers to a remote base a crane would more easily facilitate the off-loading of the planes. Mitscher could draw only one conclusion: his flattop was about to go into battle, but he felt miffed that his old friend Duncan had not told him about the mission. So did his men, but the skipper counseled them to remain patient. “The less you know,” he cautioned, “the better.”
DOOLITTLE STILL NEEDED AIRCREWS—enough pilots, bombardiers, and gunners to operate two dozen planes. The B-25 was such a new bomber that only a few outfits in the country flew them. Doolittle had asked for bombers and learned that the Air Forces could spare planes most easily from the Seventeenth Bombardment Group, comprising the Thirty-Fourth, Thirty-Seventh, and Ninety-Fifth Squadrons and the associated Eighty-Ninth Reconnaissance Squadron, all based in Pendleton, Oregon. Rather than leave aircrews idle without planes, Doolittle decided to recruit his fliers from the same group. Given the danger of the mission, he wanted only volunteers. Not a single airman in Seventeenth Bombardment Group had flown in combat, and few if any of the gunners had ever fired a machine gun from a plane. The navigators likewise had little practical experience, particularly over open water. Orders rolled off the Teletype on February 3, transferring all planes, aircrews, and ground personnel to the Columbia Army Air Base in South Carolina.
The first outfit in the nation to receive the B-25, the Seventeenth’s crews had marveled at the twin-tail bomber with a tricycle landing gear. “When I saw it for the first time, I was in awe. It looked so huge. It was so sleek and powerful,” remembered pilot Edgar McElroy. “Reminded me of a big old scorpion, just ready to sting!” “I couldn’t eat until I had a crack at mine,” noted Ted Lawson, another pilot. “You just had to stand there and look at them, and breathe heavily.” Compared with the lumbering Douglas B-18s the crews had flown, the Mitchell bombers felt like a real upgrade, earning the nickname “rocket plane.” New bombers arrived every few days throughout the spring of 1941 as pilots pilgrimaged down to North American’s Los Angeles headquarters to retrieve the planes right off the line, spending several days test-flying them. “Not only did we have a good time in that area down there for a week, but it was all at North American’s expense,” recalled fellow pilot Bob Emmens. “We signed chits for everything—the bar, the dining room—and then flew our airplane back to the unit.”
The bombardment group had served as aerial guinea pigs, testing the B-25’s speed, firepower, and gas consumption, even flying the planes cross-country to Virginia’s Langley Field. Many participated that summer and fall in Army training maneuvers across the Southeast. “It was the first time that I got a good, close look at tanks, fighters and other Army bombers,” recalled pilot Jack Sims. “I’m sure that ground personnel got their first view of our B-25s.” The bomber crews simulated combat, practicing night formation flying as well as targeting infantry forces and fending off fighter attacks. Even on the ground the men slept in steel helmets. “The maneuvers were close to the real McCoy,” remembered Lawson. “We were on alert twenty-four hours a day. Other bombing squadrons would come over, night or day, and litter our hang
ars with sacks of flour, while our fighting planes buzzed around them. We tried to bomb Shreveport before the P-38’s and P-39’s could intercept us.”
The men of the Seventeenth Bombardment Group represented a cross section of American life. The airmen had come from big cities and small towns, from frigid Alaska in the north to the dusty southern plains of Texas. Some had grown up the sons of white-collar workers—doctors, dentists, engineers, and accountants—while others shared Doolittle’s blue-collar roots, the offspring of farmers and ranchers, grocers and oil field workers. A few of the men, like Captain Edward “Ski” York and Second Lieutenant Charles Ozuk Jr., came from new immigrant families, while First Lieutenant Harry McCool’s father was born on a wagon train rolling west from Missouri to California. Despite the varied backgrounds, the crews had all jelled. “It was the greatest, wildest bunch of men that I have ever been associated with. There was just something about that 17th Group, about the collection of people that were in it, that I have never experienced since,” remembered pilot Bill Bower. “We played hard, we worked hard.”
The attack on Pearl Harbor had brought the airmen back to the Pacific Northwest to fly antisubmarine patrols off the Oregon and Washington coasts, but the missions proved anticlimactic compared with the stories out of the Pacific. America was a long way from the fight, and many of the airmen felt restless and frustrated. “There was no tangible enemy. It was like being slugged with a single punch in a dark room, and having no way of knowing where to slug back,” Lawson later wrote. “There was a helpless, filled-up, want-to-do-something feeling that they weren’t coming—that we’d have to go all the way over there to punch back and get even.” That was fine by most. “Everybody was interested in getting to the scene of the action,” recalled Bower, “going to war, volunteering for some mission.” Furious over the attack on Pearl Harbor, bombardier Sergeant Robert Bourgeois captured the feelings of his fellow fliers with his daily mantra: “I sure would give anything to drop a bomb on Tokyo.”
Doolittle planned to offer the men that chance.
The pilots flew the B-25s cross-country, with some directed to divert to Minneapolis for fuel tank modifications. Others in the bomb group took the train from Oregon to South Carolina, a roughly five-day journey east through Denver. “We played poker all day and in the evening,” Sergeant Joseph Manske, an engineer-gunner, wrote in his diary. “We got some whiskey and I got sick on it.” The airmen arrived that February at the Columbia Army Air Base, camping outdoors as the winter rains soon turned the fields to mud. “We lived in tents on the field—ours leaked like a sieve,” Second Lieutenant Billy Farrow, a South Carolina native and pilot, wrote to his mother. “Sure took a ragging about the ‘sunny South’—we nearly froze getting up in the mornings. Sometimes, the temperature was below freezing. You know how that temperature numbs you down there. Oregon weather is a summer zephyr in comparison.”
Many assumed that the transfer to South Carolina meant the group would fly similar missions off the East Coast, hunting German submarines that menaced American convoys. Others speculated that the planes might soon deploy to England and execute bomber missions over Europe. Doolittle flew to Columbia soon thereafter to help organize the crews. Captain Ross Greening and Major Jack Hilger watched his bomber circle down with the nimble air of a fighter plane.
“Damn it,” Hilger exclaimed. “With all our experience none of us can fly a B-25 like that.”
The men watched the bomber taxi to the control tower and stop before the pilot climbed down.
“For God’s sake,” exclaimed Greening. “It’s Doolittle.”
“What in hell is The Little Man doing here?” Hilger asked.
Doolittle assembled group commander Lieutenant Colonel William Mills and squadron leaders Hilger and Captains Ski York, Al Rutherford, and Karl Baumeister. He told the men that he was in charge of a dangerous mission, one that would require the bombers to take off in just five hundred feet.
The officers blinked.
“That’s about all I can tell you,” Doolittle concluded. “It’s strictly a volunteer operation. And the men must volunteer in the dark. It’ll take us away about six weeks, but that’s all you can tell your men.”
Doolittle trusted Mills and his squadron leaders to select the two dozen crews. The only person Doolittle was certain he didn’t want was Mills, who would soon swap his oak leaf insignia for the silver eagle of a full-bird colonel, outranking Doolittle. “The group commander was a colonel. I was a light colonel,” he recalled. “He was the last guy I wanted because I had not yet been given permission to lead the flight.”
Doolittle would have to divide his time between Washington and Minneapolis. He asked Mills to recommend an experienced deputy, who could oversee mission training at Eglin Field, a secluded airbase Doolittle arranged in Florida, where crews could practice short-field takeoffs, gunnery, and open-ocean navigation. Mills recommended Hilger. The three captains all volunteered, but Mills would only permit York to go.
The squadron leaders put the word out, but not everyone jumped at the opportunity. “Some of you fellows are going to get killed,” one of the captains warned his men. “How many of you will volunteer?”
“Boy,” thought Corporal Jacob DeShazer, a bombardier from Oregon, “I don’t want to do that.”
“Would you go?” the captain asked the first man in the line.
“Yes.”
He moved on to the next airman.
“Would you go?”
Affirmative.
“Would you go?”
“Yes.”
The captain reached the end of the line and stood before DeShazer. He heard his fellow fliers answer affirmative. When it came to him, he muttered the same: “I was too big a coward,” he recalled, “to say no.”
For many others, there was no hesitation when asked for a show of hands.
“The entire group stood,” remembered Bob Emmens of Oregon. “Every man in every squadron volunteered for this mission.”
“Hands just kept going up,” added Charles Ozuk Jr., a Pennsylvania native. “There was no time to think about it. No second thoughts.”
Few dared miss out on the chance to fly with legendary stunt and racing pilot Jimmy Doolittle, who had inspired many to join the Army Air Forces. “The name ‘Doolittle’ meant so much to aviators that man, we just volunteered like crazy,” remembered Bobby Hite, a pilot. “He was a real leader. The men loved him and respected him.”
Edgar McElroy’s copilot was shocked to see his hand in the air. “You can’t volunteer, Mac!” he exclaimed. “You’re married, and you and Aggie are expecting a baby soon. Don’t do it!”
“I got into the Air Force to do what I can,” McElroy answered. “Aggie understands how I feel. The war won’t be easy for any of us.”
Oklahoma native Corporal Bert Jordan had been on guard duty all night. He arrived late to morning formation and found his fellow fliers with hands raised.
“What are you holding your hand up for?” he asked.
“Well,” one answered, “they want somebody to go someplace.”
Jordan was already tired of South Carolina, living in tents in the cold and mud. His feet itched; he felt eager to travel.
“I just wanted to get out of Columbia so I held up my hand,” he recalled. “I was one of the fortunate or unfortunate, whichever the case may be, to be selected.”
Bill Birch felt the same way. “It was disgusting,” he recalled of the rain and mud. “So I figured whatever came up, I’d volunteer for it.”
Herb Macia knew for sure he wanted to go when he knocked on the door of Jack Hilger’s office, unaware that the major already had plans for him.
“Herb, what do you want?” he asked.
“I’m ready to volunteer for that mission.”
“You are already a volunteer,” Hilger informed him. “You are on my mission and you are on my crew and you are going to be a navigator and bombardier.”
Most of the officers in York’s squ
adron were in Minneapolis for fuel tank installation. He phoned his deputy Captain Davy Jones, directing him to meet him at Wright Field, where the aviators climbed up into the catwalk of a hanger.
“Doolittle has been here looking for volunteers. It’s a dangerous mission,” York told him. “You go back and tell the troops that much.”
Jones returned to Minneapolis and summoned his fellow airmen to his hotel suite. Two dozen men crammed inside, some stretched out on the beds, others in chairs. Cigarette smoke clouded the air.
“There’s been a change,” Jones told them. “We’re not going to work out of Columbia. Captain York wanted me to talk to you and see how many of you would volunteer for a special mission. It’s dangerous, important and interesting.”
“Well,” one of the others prodded. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you. I don’t even know myself,” Jones said. “All I can tell you is that it’s dangerous and that it’ll take you out of the country for maybe two or three months.”
“Where?” someone asked.
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more,” Jones said. “You’ve heard all the particulars I can give you. Now, who’ll volunteer?”
All did.
Not everyone would be so lucky.
“Don’t go denuding the outfit because I have to go to Europe,” Mills warned York. “I need some good people, too.”
The flood of volunteers exceeded the two dozen crews Doolittle needed. “We had so many,” remembered York. “We had to pick and choose.”
One of those unable to go was Robert Emmens.
“You have to stay behind—you are the oldest guy in the squadron now—and run the squadron,” Hilger told him.
Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor Page 9