Doolittle Raid
President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a meeting at the White House on the 21st of December 1941 and said that Japan should be bombed as soon as possible to boost public morale after Pearl Harbor. The concept for the attack came from Navy Captain Francis S. Low, Assistant Chief of Staff for antisubmarine warfare. He reported to Admiral Ernest J. King on the 10th of January 1942 that he thought twin-engined Army bombers could be launched from an aircraft carrier. Low had observed several B-25s at Naval Station Norfolk Chambers Field in Norfolk, where the runway was painted with the outline of a carrier deck for landing practice. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, a famous military test pilot and aeronautical engineer before the war, was assigned to Army Air Forces Headquarters to plan the raid. The aircraft to be used would need a cruising range of 800 miles with a 2,000-pound bomb load. Doolittle considered the B-25B Mitchell, Martin B-26 Marauder, Douglas B-18 Bolo, and Douglas B-23 Dragon. The B-26 had questionable takeoff characteristics from a carrier deck. The wingspans of the B-18 and B-23 were larger than 70 feet that of the B-25, reducing the number that could be taken aboard a carrier and posing risks to the ship's superstructure. The B-25 had yet to see combat and had a range of about 1,300 miles, but tests indicated that it could fulfill the mission's requirements if it were modified to hold nearly twice as much fuel. Doolittle's first report on the plan suggested that the bombers fly to Vladivostok after their attack, where they could be handed to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. This stratagem was intended to circumvent Moscow's April 1941 neutrality pact with Japan, but Soviet officials refused. Instead, planners looked to China, adding some 600 nautical miles (1,100 km) to the flight. Despite concerns about Japanese reprisals, Chiang Kai-shek agreed to provide five refueling sites and a final destination: Chongqing.
After planning indicated that the B-25 best met the mission's requirements, two were loaded aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet at Norfolk and were flown off the deck without difficulty on the 3rd of February 1942. The raid was immediately approved. The crews would be drawn from the 17th Bombardment Group (Medium), which had been the first group to receive B-25s and had become the most experienced B-25 unit in the service. Its first assignment after the United States entered the war was to the U.S. Eighth Air Force. The 17th BG, then flying antisubmarine patrols from Pendleton, Oregon, was immediately moved cross-country to Columbia Army Air Base at West Columbia, South Carolina. On the 19th of February, the group was detached from the Eighth Air Force and assigned to III Bomber Command. Initial planning called for 20 aircraft to fly the mission, and 24 of the group's B-25B Mitchell bombers were diverted to the Mid-Continent Airlines modification center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. With support provided by two senior airline managers, Wold-Chamberlain Field's maintenance hangar was the first modification center to become operational. From nearby Fort Snelling, the 710th Military Police Battalion provided tight security around this hangar. B-25B aircraft modifications included removal of the lower gun turret, installation of de-icers and anti-icers, mounting of steel blast plates on the fuselage around the upper turret, and removal of the liaison radio set to save weight. Installation of a collapsible neoprene auxiliary fuel tank fixed to the top of the bomb bay increased fuel capacity from 646 to 1,141 U.S. gallons (538 to 950 imperial gallons). Installation of broomsticks as mock gun barrels in the tail cone replaced the Norden bombsight with a makeshift aiming sight devised by pilot Capt. C. Ross Greening. Dubbed the Mark Twain, its materials cost just 20 cents. Two bombers also had cameras mounted to record the results of the bombing. The 24 crews were selected and picked up the modified bombers in Minneapolis and flew them to Eglin Field, Florida, beginning the 1st of March 1942. There, the crews received concentrated training for three weeks in simulated carrier deck takeoffs, low-level and night flying, low-altitude bombing, and over-water navigation. Lieutenant Henry L. Miller, a U.S. Navy flight instructor from nearby Naval Air Station Pensacola, supervised their takeoff training and accompanied the crews to the launch.
On the 1st of April 1942, the 16 modified bombers, their five-man crews, and Army maintenance personnel, totaling 71 officers and 130 enlisted men, were loaded onto Hornet at Naval Air Station Alameda in California. Each aircraft carried four specially constructed 500-pound bombs. Three of these were high-explosive munitions and one was a bundle of incendiaries. Five bombs had Japanese friendship medals wired to them. The bombers' armament was reduced to increase range by decreasing weight. Each bomber launched with two .50-caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns in an upper turret and a .30-caliber (7.62 mm) machine gun in the nose. The ships proceeded in radio silence. At 07:38 on the morning of the 18th of April, while the task force was still about 650 miles from Japan, it was sighted by the Japanese picket boat No. 23 Nittō Maru, a 70-ton patrol craft, which radioed an attack warning to Japan. Doolittle and Hornet skipper Captain Marc Mitscher decided to launch the B-25s immediately, 10 hours early and 100 miles farther from Japan than planned. Although none of the B-25 pilots, including Doolittle, had ever taken off from a carrier before, all 16 aircraft launched safely between 08:20 and 09:19. The B-25s then flew toward Japan, most in groups of two to four aircraft, before flying singly at wave-top level to avoid detection. The aircraft began arriving over Japan about noon Tokyo time, six hours after launch, climbed to 10,000 feet and bombed 10 military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama, and one each in Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka. Although some B-25s encountered light antiaircraft fire and a few enemy fighters, no bomber was shot down. Only the B-25 of 1st Lt. Richard O. Joyce received any battle damage, minor hits from antiaircraft fire. B-25 No. 4, piloted by 1st Lt. Everett W. Holstrom, jettisoned its bombs before reaching its target when it came under attack by fighters after its gun turret malfunctioned.
Fifteen of the 16 aircraft then proceeded southwest off the southeastern coast of Japan and across the East China Sea toward eastern China. One B-25, piloted by Captain Edward J. York, was extremely low on fuel, and headed instead for the Soviet Union rather than be forced to ditch in the middle of the East China Sea. Several fields in Zhejiang province were supposed to be ready to guide them in using homing beacons, then recover and refuel them for continuing on to Chongqing, the wartime Kuomintang capital. The primary base was at Zhuzhou, toward which all the aircraft navigated, but Halsey never sent the planned signal to alert them. All 15 aircraft reached the Chinese coast after 13 hours of flight and crash-landed or the crews bailed out. One crewman, 20-year-old Corporal Leland D. Faktor, flight engineer/gunner with 1st Lt. Robert M. Gray, was killed during his bailout attempt over China, the only man in that crew to be lost. Two crews (10 men) were missing. The 16th aircraft, commanded by Capt. Edward York (eighth off , AC #40-2242), flew to the Soviet Union and landed 70 miles beyond Vladivostok at Vozdvizhenka. As the USSR was not at war with Japan, and the Soviet, Japanese Neutrality Pact was officially in force, the Soviet government was officially unable to immediately repatriate any Allied personnel involved in hostilities who entered Soviet territory. Consequently, in accordance with international law, the crew members were interned, despite official US requests for their release, and the B-25 was impounded. York would later report that he and his crew had been treated well by the Soviet authorities. Several months later, they were moved to Ashgabat (Ashkhabad), in what was then the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, 1,300 miles from the Soviet-Iranian border. In mid-1943, they were allowed to cross the border into Allied-occupied Iran. The Americans presented themselves to a British consulate on the 11th of May 1943.
After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign (also known as Operation Sei-go) to prevent these eastern coastal provinces of China from being used again for an attack on Japan and to take revenge on the Chinese people. An area of some 80,000 square kilometers was laid waste. Like a swarm of locusts, they left behind nothing but destruction and chaos, eyewitness Father Wendelin Dunker wrote. The Japanese killed an estimated 10,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle's men. People who aided the airmen were tortured before they were killed. Father Dunker wrote of the destruction of the town of Ihwang: They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10, 65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it... None of the humans shot were buried either. The Japanese entered Nancheng (Jiangxi), population 50,000 on June 11, beginning a reign of terror so horrendous that missionaries would later dub it the Rape of Nancheng, evoking memories of the infamous Rape of Nanjing five years before. Less than a month later, the Japanese forces put what remained of the city to the torch. When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. Chinese estimates put the civilian death toll at 250,000. The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, typhoid, plague infected fleas and dysentery pathogens. The Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 brought almost 40 tons of paratyphoid and anthrax to be left in contaminated food and contaminated wells with the withdrawal of the army from areas around Yushan, Kinhwa and Futsin.
Eight Raiders were captured by Japanese forces in eastern China. Two of the missing crewmen, bombardier S/Sgt. William J. Dieter and flight engineer Sgt. Donald E. Fitzmaurice of Hallmark's crew, were found to have drowned when their B-25 crashed into the sea. Both of their remains were recovered after the war and were buried with military honors at Golden Gate National Cemetery. The other eight were captured: 1st Lt. Dean E. Hallmark, 1st Lt. William G. Farrow, 1st Lt. Robert J. Meder, 1st Lt. Chase Nielsen, 1st Lt. Robert L. Hite, 2nd Lt. George Barr, Cpl. Harold A. Spatz, and Cpl. Jacob DeShazer. All eight captured in Jiangxi were tried and sentenced to death at a military trial in China, and then transported to Tokyo. There the Army Ministry reviewed their case, with five of the sentences being commuted and the other three being executed. Out of the 80 crewmen, three were killed in action, eight were captured, and three were killed in captivity by the Japanese. The surviving captured airmen remained in military confinement on a starvation diet, their health rapidly deteriorating. In April 1943, they were moved to Nanjing, where Meder died on the 1st of December 1943. The remaining men, Nielsen, Hite, Barr and DeShazer, eventually began receiving slightly better treatment and were given a copy of the Bible and a few other books. They were freed by American troops in August 1945. Four Japanese officers were tried for war crimes against the captured Doolittle Raiders, found guilty, and sentenced to hard labor, three for five years and one for nine years. When their remains were recovered after the war, Farrow, Hallmark, and Meder were buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Doolittle Raiders held an annual reunion almost every year from the late 1940s to 2013. The high point of each reunion was a solemn, private ceremony in which the surviving Raiders performed a roll call, then toasted their fellow Raiders who had died during the previous year. Specially engraved silver goblets, one for each of the 80 Raiders, were used for this toast; the goblets of those who had died were inverted. Each Raider's name was engraved on his goblet both right side up and upside down. On the 18th of April 2013, a final reunion for the surviving Raiders was held at Eglin Air Force Base, with Robert Hite the only survivor unable to attend. The last B-25 to be retired from the U.S. Air Force inventory is displayed at the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin AFB, also in the markings of Gen. Doolittle's aircraft. A fragment of the wreckage of one of the aircraft, and the medals awarded to Doolittle, are on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. In China, a memorial hall honoring the Doolittle Raiders and the Chinese who provided them with assistance in aftermath of the raid is located at the city of Jiangshan in Quzhou, Zhejiang. On the 19th of May 2014, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 1209, to award the Doolittle Raiders a Congressional Gold Medal for outstanding heroism, valor, skill, and service to the United States in conducting the bombings of Tokyo. The award ceremony took place at the Capitol Building on the 15th of April 2015. In September 2016, the Northrop Grumman B-21 was formally named Raider in honor of the Doolittle Raiders.
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Common questions
Who planned the Doolittle Raid and when was it approved?
Navy Captain Francis S. Low proposed the concept to Admiral Ernest J. King on the 10th of January 1942, and Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was assigned to plan the raid. The attack received immediate approval after tests showed two B-25 bombers could launch from an aircraft carrier on the 3rd of February 1942.
When did the Doolittle Raid take place and how many planes were used?
The Doolittle Raid occurred on the 18th of April 1942 with sixteen modified B-25B Mitchell bombers launching from the aircraft carrier Hornet. All sixteen aircraft successfully took off between 08:20 and 09:19 to strike targets in Tokyo, Yokohama, and other Japanese cities.
Where did the Doolittle Raiders land after bombing Japan and what happened to them?
Fifteen of the sixteen aircraft proceeded toward eastern China where they crash-landed or bailed out over Zhejiang province. One crew led by Edward J. York flew to the Soviet Union and landed at Vozdvizhenka beyond Vladivostok before being interned until mid-1943.
How many people died during the Doolittle Raid and its aftermath?
Three American crewmen were killed in action or captivity while eight others were captured and later executed or died in prison. The subsequent Japanese Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign resulted in an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilian deaths according to Chinese estimates.
When was the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to the Doolittle Raiders?
The United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 1209 on the 19th of May 2014 to award the Doolittle Raiders a Congressional Gold Medal. The official ceremony took place at the Capitol Building on the 15th of April 2015.