Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (29 page)

Dawn revealed how much the weather had continued to deteriorate as the task force closed in on the enemy’s homeland. Low broken clouds swept across the empty horizon, peppered by frequent rainsqualls. Winds of as much as thirty knots whipped up white caps that broke across the bows of Halsey’s force. Journalist Robert Casey on board the
Salt Lake City
captured the scene best in his diary. “Went on deck at 5 o’clock to face a howling wind. Sky gray. Sea pitching,” the
Chicago Daily News
reporter wrote. “Water is rolling down the decks, sometimes a couple of feet deep. It’s hard keeping upright.” Doolittle raider Ken Reddy ventured up top of the
Hornet
, recording a similar scene that morning in his diary. “The sea was rough and the airplanes were pulling against their ropes like circus elephants against their chains.”

Lieutenant j.g. Osborne Wiseman was patrolling the skies ahead of the task force at 5:58 a.m., when he spotted a small fishing boat bobbing atop the dark waters. The naval aviator, following orders, did not attack, but attempted to avoid detection. He circled back and buzzed the carrier, alerting Halsey via message drop of the boat forty-two miles ahead. Wiseman noted that he believed enemy lookouts had spotted him. Halsey again chose not to engage, but ordered the task force to swing southwest, a move that gave him only a brief reprieve as
Hornet
lookouts spotted another patrol at 7:38 a.m. at a range of more than eight miles. Radio operators on the ninety-ton
Nitto Maru No. 23
, part of Admiral Yamamoto’s defensive net, fired off a message to Tokyo: “Three enemy carriers sighted. Position, 600 nautical miles east of Inubosaki.”

The time to fight had arrived.

The
Nashville
sounded general quarters and via flag hoist requested permission to fire. Halsey gave the order at 7:52 a.m. The cruiser opened fire one minute later with its main battery at a range of nine thousand yards, or about five miles.
The fifteen six-inch guns—mounted three to a turret—thundered across the open sea, each capable of hurling a 130-pound projectile almost fifteen miles. The guns barked again and again. Armor-piercing projectiles pounded into the waves around the target at 2,500-feet per second, throwing up so much spray that the
Nitto Maru
appeared to vanish.

The
Nashville
ceased fire at 7:55 a.m. to allow the spray to settle and then resumed the assault one minute later. Even firing at a rate of almost 150 rounds per minute, the hail of projectiles continued to miss. Heavy swells with a height from crest to trough of twenty feet obscured the trawler, leaving only the mast tops visible. Furthermore, many of the wave tops shielded the
Nitto Maru
, intercepting the cruiser’s fire. The
Nashville
increased speed to twenty-five knots and closed to 4,500 yards, swinging to port in order to shoot straight down the wave troughs.

The cruiser’s heavy gunfire sparked excitement throughout the task force as anxious sailors, airmen, and journalists all struggled for a glimpse of the battle. “Terrific barrage with 15 six-inch guns. Shells are tossed like machine-gun bullets—eight salvos in the air at once,” Casey wrote in his diary. “Flashes run around ship like lights on an electric sign.” The scene likewise amazed
Life
magazine editor John Field. “Her guns blazed big and red,” he wrote, “and rolled like thunder.”

Hornet
fighter pilot John Sutherland found the experience surreal. “I remember thinking that it was a very curious way to watch my first active engagement,” he recalled. “We stood out on the flight deck watching the fire between our ships and the meager return from the Japanese, much in the manner of tennis players that you see in the newsreels with their heads going back and forth watching the action.”

“Well, if it’s all like this,” Sutherland thought to himself, “this will be fine.”

Jurika climbed from the flight deck up to the bridge for a better view. “I could see the salvos from the
Nashville
,” he remembered. “There were heavy swells and the picket boat was going up, it would be on top of a swell and then it would be seen, then it would be down, and you couldn’t see a thing except perhaps the top of its mast. The splashes were all around it, but it was still there.”

The gunfire startled many of Doolittle’s men.

Brick Holstrom grabbed a Navy
ensign in one of the
Hornet
’s passageways. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” the officer replied. “I think they’re firing at a submarine.”

The
Nashville
’s thunderclap nearly took the hat off mission doctor Thomas White, while bombardier Jacob DeShazer stood in awe on the carrier’s deck. “The whole side of that Navy ship looked like it was on fire,” he recalled, “booming away.”

Eight
Enterprise
fighters circled five thousand feet overhead as the
Nashville
blasted the
Nitto Maru
. The aviators dove to attack, only to spot a second patrol, the eighty-eight-ton
Nanshin Maru No. 21
. The pilots diverted to strafe the smaller boat, raking the tiny trawler from stem to stern with .50-caliber machine-gun fire. One of the pilots made eleven passes, burning through at least twelve hundred rounds. The obliterated boat began to settle, prompting the pilots to join the attack on the
Nitto Maru
.

Enterprise
bomber pilot Ensign John Roberts hungered for action. He pushed his bomber over at 7,500 feet and dove on the
Nitto Maru
, but pulled out of the attack at 3,500 feet to avoid one of the fighters. Roberts returned with a glide-bomb attack, dropping one 500-pound bomb, which missed by about 100 feet. He joined the fighters to strafe the dogged
Nitto Maru
until most ran out of ammunition. Lieutenant Roger Mehle summed up the attack in his report: “Liquidation of enemy personnel. Vessel placed out of operation. When left it was wallowing in a trough of the waves.” Another pilot was more succinct, describing his fellow fliers as “a bloodthirsty bunch of bastards.”

The
Nitto Maru
erupted in flames at 8:21 a.m. and finally slipped beneath the waves two minutes later, exactly half an hour after the assault began. Two survivors bobbed in the water, neither of whom could be recovered; the skipper watched one of the injured sailors drown. The
Nashville
had hoped to silence the
Nitto Maru
, but radiomen picked up continual transmissions for twenty-seven minutes after the cruiser fired the first shot. There was no doubt Japan now knew of the approaching armada.

The ninety-ton fishing boat had robbed the Nashville of 928 rounds of six-inch ammunition, including 13 rounds needed to clear the guns after the battle ended. The
skipper was mortified, blaming the poor shooting on his inexperienced gun crews and the churning seas that helped shield the
Nitto Maru
. “Expenditure of 915 rounds to sink a sampan appears ridiculous, and obviously was excessive,” he wrote in his report, “but in this instance was not wholly inexcusable.”

DOOLITTLE HAD WATCHED
the battle alongside Mitscher on the
Hornet
’s bridge.

“It looks like you’re going to have to be on your way soon,” the skipper told him. “They know we’re here.”

Halsey flashed a message about that time to the
Hornet
. “Launch planes,” the admiral ordered. “To Col. Doolittle and gallant command, good luck and God bless you.”

Doolittle shook hands with Mitscher and then darted below to his cabin to grab his bag, yelling at his men he encountered to load up. Many of the raiders had just sat down to breakfast in the wardroom when the carrier’s loudspeaker crackled to life. “Now hear this! Now hear this! Army pilots, man your planes!”

Others proved equally ill prepared. Ross Greening had just finished a letter to his wife, while Edgar McElroy relaxed with a copy of the
Hornet
’s Plan of the Day. News of the aircrew’s imminent departure caught Jack Sims in the most precarious position. “I happened to be in the ‘head’ when I heard the order,” the pilot recalled. “Believe me; that was the best catharsis one could ever ask for!”

Doolittle ran into Miller.

“Would you help get the pilots in the airplanes?”

Miller agreed.

Sailors darted across the wet decks to help the Army airmen yank off engine and gun turret covers. Others topped off fuel tanks, rocking the bombers back and forth to get air bubbles out. Crews handed five-gallon gasoline cans up through the rear hatches to the gunners, as others untied ropes and removed wheel chocks so Navy handlers could position the bombers for takeoff. Airmen armed the ordnance already loaded in the bomb bays, as crews brought up the last of the incendiaries from below deck. “We had spent months preparing for this first bombing of Japan,” navigator Chase Nielsen recalled
, “and we were keyed up like a football team going into the big game.”

Problems soon arose.

Davy Jones had suffered a leak in his bomb bay tank only the day before, forcing technicians to patch the bladder and then leave it empty overnight to dry. As crews now rushed to fill the 225-gallon rubber sac and top off the wing tanks, they discovered that the Navy had shut off gas lines, a common procedure in the event of a surprise attack. Ross Greening ordered his crew chief to haul his extra tins over to Jones, optimistic that the Navy would turn the lines back on in time to allow him to finish fueling.

Harold Watson had green-lighted the replacement of his bomber’s fouled spark plugs that morning before general quarters. “When the alarm sounded, I found all the cowling off the left engine and all the plugs out!” he recalled. “The last piece of cowling was snapped in place as the ship ahead started its engines.”

Shorty Manch appeared alongside Ted Lawson’s
Ruptured Duck
with a fruitcake tin in hand. “Hey,” he shouted up to bombardier Bob Clever. “Will you-all do a fellow a big favor and carry my phonograph records under your seat? I’ll take my record-player along in my plane and we’ll meet in Chungking and have us some razz-ma-tazz.”

Miller stopped by as well, extending his hand for a farewell shake. “I wish to hell I could go with you.”

Airmen checked in with the
Hornet
’s navigation room for the latest weather reports, wind information, and the ship’s location. Crews knew that the magnetic compasses, after more than two weeks aboard the steel carrier, were far out of calibration. Furthermore, the squalls would prevent navigators from using a sextant to shoot sun or star shots. Pilots would have to fly dead reckoning to Japan. Compounding the challenge was a twenty-four-knot headwind they would have to battle. The biggest concern, however, came down to distance. The
Hornet
remained 824 statute miles east of Tokyo, almost twice as far as Doolittle had originally planned.

Ross Greening was inspecting each plane, making sure the bombs were all armed, when navigator Frank Kappeler approached.

“Captain Greening, we are over 800 miles from Tokyo,” Kappeler exclaimed. “I didn’t know we were going to be this far away.”

Greening chased down and informed
Doolittle, who merely nodded and did not utter a word.

He already knew.

News of the
Hornet
’s distance from Japan soon spread throughout the crews. “I wasn’t concerned about it,” recalled Hank Potter, Doolittle’s navigator. “We had full confidence in our pilot. We had full confidence in our airplane; we had full confidence in ourselves, and we had this to do.”

Others didn’t share Potter’s confidence.

The likelihood of running out of fuel loomed large. “The way things are now, we have about enough to get us within 200 miles of the China coast, and that’s all,” Jack Hilger leveled with his crew. “If anyone wants to withdraw, he can do it now. We can replace him from the men who are going to be left aboard. Nothing will ever be said about it, and it won’t be held against you. It’s your right. It’s up to you.”

Hilger’s men absorbed the news.

Bombardier Herb Macia remembered his parents and his wife, Mary Alice, pregnant with the couple’s son. He thought of everything he wished he had told them before he left, drawing comfort in the idea that his death would at least be honorable. “This couldn’t have happened to me, but it’s happening to me, so I’m going to go in and really do it right,” he concluded. “That’s all I care about!”

Others in the crew shared Macia’s determination.

“Not a man withdrew,” Jacob Eierman, Hilger’s engineer, later wrote. “Although I don’t suppose any of them felt any better than I did.”

Brick Holstrom warmed up the engines; then his navigator climbed in and delivered the bad news. “What the hell do we do now?” he thought.

Pilot Billy Farrow asked bombardier Jacob DeShazer whether he knew how to row a boat, while a sergeant shouted to DeShazer as he climbed in the back, “We just got one chance in a thousand of making it.”

It wasn’t just the airmen who were worried.

“We knew that the pilots really didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance of getting to China with those airplanes,” Miller recalled. “It was just too far.”

Despite the poor prospects posed by the added distance, aircrews still hurried to prepare for takeoff, stowing gear, warming up engines, and going over checklists. Carl Wildner did so even as his stomach churned. “I was scared,” the navigator on the second bomber later wrote. “We knew the odds were against us and it
seemed to me we were doing things without thinking—like automatons. I guess we were and maybe that’s the way it was supposed to be.”

The
Hornet
swung into the wind at 8:03 a.m. and increased speed to twenty-two knots. The seas crashed against the flattop’s bow, alarming even the most veteran sailors. “It’s the only time in my life,” Halsey recalled, “I ever saw green water come over the bow and right onto the flight deck of a carrier.”

Navy handlers positioned the bombers as far back on the flight deck as possible, two abreast and crisscrossed. The near-gale-force winds coupled with the revving engines made it difficult for the flight deck crew to maneuver, each of whom wore a safety line to keep from getting blown into the whirling props. “It sure was windy!” recalled George Bernstein, a flight deck crewman. “We had to literally drop to the deck and hang on with our fingers in the tie-down fittings when the B-25s revved up.”