Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (19 page)

Navigator George Barr used his downtime in Texas to call the family he lived with after the death of his mother. “I am going on a special mission with Jimmy Doolittle,” Barr exclaimed. “Wish me luck.”

The airmen pressed on the next day. “We flew to Sacramento non-stop in the longest flight
I have made, being nine hrs. and 25 minutes,” Reddy wrote in his diary. “I rode most of the way in the nose and I really got a good look at the country.”

Hilger flew across southern Arizona, following Highway 10 through the Dragoon Mountains and Texas Canyon.

“Can you see that little spot over there of a town?” Macia asked the major. “That is where I was raised.”

“What in the hell is the name of that place?” Hilger asked.

“Tombstone.”

Lawson and McClure’s mischief continued on the final day of the flight. “Over Texas, we chased cattle for hours. Near El Paso we were chasing automobiles off of the highways and at one point, a bus skidded to a stop and as we pulled up, we saw passengers heading for the open country,” McClure wrote. “Going up the valley to Sacramento, we were right on the deck and noticed when we passed over farmers, each of them waved to us which was not at all like the colored people in the South.”

Doolittle landed at McClellan and met with air depot commander Colonel John Clark and his senior engineering and maintenance personnel. Doolittle still had a list of modifications and equipment he needed before the task force’s April departure.

“I would like to have a complete inspection of each airplane including airplane engine, equipment, and accessories,” Doolittle began, according to a transcript of the meeting. “We don’t want the airplanes taken to pieces. Just inspected insofar as they can be inspected—cowling, doors opened, etc. Also a pair of propellers installed on each plane. Forty-four have been ordered.”

“We did not get any teletype on it,” one of the men protested.

“They were ordered three weeks ago.”

Doolittle felt the now familiar pushback to his demands, even though the depot’s instructions to cooperate were clear. “Services and supplies requested by Colonel Doolittle,” orders stated, “will be given the highest priority.”

He pressed on with the briefing, alerting the officers that the planes had been modified with several added gas tanks. The sixty-gallon rubber bag that would go in place of the lower gun turret would arrive in Sacramento either that day or the next along with new covers to replace the larger ones for the added bomb bay tanks.

“My ship is complete,” Doolittle told them.
“Use it as a model.”

He instructed the officers to remove the liaison radio sets from each bomber and the tracing antenna and asked for parachutes.

“How many were you supposed to have, sir?”

“About 60 pack type and about 40 detachable. When they come in we want to have them fitted to the pilots and labeled,” Doolittle continued. “There will be a man here from Wright Field to install six still cameras in six of the airplanes and 16 movie cameras in the other airplanes.”

Doolittle again warned them not to tamper with the planes unless maintenance crews found a major issue. “If you find something definitely wrong, we want that fixed,” he said. “We are anxious to give them the last finishing touch and take them away.”

Since the plan was to turn the bombers over to China, Doolittle instructed them that the original Norden bombsights, radios, and instrument accessories would all be collected in Sacramento and then shipped to the final destination.

“I am particularly interested in propellers,” Doolittle said, returning to his earlier topic. “They should be painted. Don’t want shiny ones. They should have been here two weeks ago.”

“What about ammunition?”

“We’ll get that from Benicia Arsenal.”

Doolittle requested that any burned-out instrumentation lights be replaced. “Wherever there are places for spares I would like to have spares put in,” he added. “Also spare fuses. All we are going to have for these ships are what is on them.”

If any problems came up, Doolittle instructed the depot officials to contact Captain York.

“This project is a highly confidential one,” he concluded. “As a matter of fact, I am having to notify General Arnold in code that I arrived.”

Doolittle’s meeting translated into serious orders—at least on paper. “Under no circumstances is any equipment to be removed or tampered with on these airplanes,” orders stated. “This will be strictly complied with at all times on this Project. Inspectors or men working on the Airplane finding defective or damaged parts must notify the Project Officer or Project Supervisor of this condition before accomplishing any work.”

Doolittle’s fliers landed one after the other at McClellan.

“Stick close to the field,” Doolittle instructed his men.
“I want every first pilot to make absolutely certain that his plane is in perfect shape.”

He warned his crews that mechanics planned to remove the radios: “You won’t need it where you’re going.”

Many now assumed that meant Japan.

The rubber gas tanks, cameras, and broomstick tail guns drew questions from the curious ground personnel, prompting a sharp retort: “Mind your own business.”

Despite strict orders, problems persisted, as described by Lawson. “I had to stand by and watch one of the mechanics rev my engines so fast that the new blades picked up dirt which pockmarked their tips,” he wrote. “I caught another one trying to sandpaper the imperfections away and yelled at him until he got out some oil and rubbed it on the places which he had sandpapered. I knew that salt air would make those prop tips pulpy where they have been scraped. The way they revved our engines made us wince. All of us were so afraid that they’d hurt the ships, the way they were handling them, yet we couldn’t tell them why we wanted them to be so careful. I guess we must have acted like the biggest bunch of soreheads those mechanics ever saw.”

Doolittle finally picked up the phone to Arnold.

“Things are going too slowly out here,” he told the general. “I’d appreciate it very much if you would personally build a fire under these people.”

Arnold obliged.

Another time Doolittle chatted with several pilots in base operations when he heard a bomber engine backfire. He looked over to see a B-25 cough black exhaust as a worker tried to start the engine. An expert had visited Eglin to tune all the carburetors, not to regulation but to help guarantee each plane could achieve the maximum range. Doolittle had specifically ordered that no worker touch any of the carburetor settings—and under no circumstances change them.

“What’s going on here?” Doolittle demanded.

“We’re just readjusting the carburetors,” the mechanic countered. “They’re all out of adjustment.”

“I was madder than a son of a bitch,” Doolittle later recalled. “I naturally blew my top.”

He cooled down and picked up the phone again to Arnold.

The crews ran into a similar headache
with the arsenal, forcing yet another call to Washington. Even Doc White battled the post’s uncooperative medical supply officer. “In several instances he had the desired supplies on his shelves but apparently did not want to deplete his stores and by one excuse or another refused to fill most of my requisitions,” White griped in his report. “The Surgeon refused to override his decisions in spite of my explaining the urgency of my needs.”

As work progressed on the bombers, the men used the evenings to relax. Ken Reddy went bowling, danced at the Breakers, and even visited a honky-tonk with the daughter of a sheep rancher. Others hung out at the Senator Hotel, where some of the airmen stayed. One night a few of the fliers decided to drop dollar bills from the hotel window to see what kind of commotion might unfold on the street below, a plan that ran afoul after some of the bills landed on a ledge below. “We lowered Dean Hallmark head-first out of the window and held him by the ankles; he retrieved the bills and sent them down to the street,” Holstrom recalled. “About this time some of the senior guys told everybody to knock it off before someone called the cops.”

Greening, Jones, and York stumbled out of the hotel bar, only to find an elderly gentleman passed out in the lobby.

“Let’s give him a hot foot,” Jones suggested.

Jones stuck a lit match in the toe of the gentleman’s shoe while the airmen retreated to the far side of the lobby to watch. The match burned down and went out as the gentleman slept soundly. Jones did it again, this time using two matches, but once again the trick failed to waken the man. The third time he decided to use the entire matchbook to line the sole of the gentleman’s shoe.

“Shame on you boys!” a woman, who had watched the prank unfold, protested. “Why don’t you leave the poor man alone?”

The gentleman suddenly woke up. Rather than target Jones, he turned on the woman. “Go away y’ol’bat!” he barked. “Let ’em have their fun.”

He then promptly passed out again.

Other airmen used the downtime to write final letters home, including engineer Jacob Eierman. “This will be my last letter for sometime because we are on our way—I am not able to tell you where we are going, but you will read about us in the newspapers,” he wrote. “If the information leaked out as to where
we are going, none of us would ever come back.” Engineer Melvin Gardner echoed him. “Please don’t worry mother,” he wrote. “Remember no news is good news.”

A classified message arrived from Arnold, directing Doolittle to travel to nearby San Francisco for a meeting with Admiral Halsey, his chief of staff, Captain Miles Browning, and Duncan. After his briefing with Duncan at Pearl Harbor, Halsey wanted a face-to-face with Doolittle—the man for whom he was about to risk the remnants of the Pacific Fleet. Nimitz agreed, ordering him to fly to the West Coast. The officers met March 30 in the bar of the luxurious Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill, which afforded spectacular views of the bay. The men sat in the bar, but Halsey feared Doolittle had too many friends in the area who might recognize him, so the group moved up to Halsey’s room. “It immediately occurred to me that a personal contact with Jimmy Doolittle, whom I did not know at that time, was desirable,” Halsey later recalled. “First, so that we could size each other up, and secondly, to discuss way and means.”

During the three-hour conference Halsey and Duncan walked Doolittle through the Navy’s plan. The submarines
Trout
and
Thresher
would scout weather conditions and search out enemy naval forces the surface ships might encounter. The
Hornet
, two cruisers, four destroyers, and an oiler would depart Alameda on April 2 as Task Force 16.2 under the command of Marc Mitscher. After flying back to Pearl Harbor, Halsey would put to sea April 7 in command of Task Force 16.1, consisting of the carrier
Enterprise
, plus another two cruisers, four destroyers, and a second oiler. The two task forces would rendezvous at sea on Sunday, April 12, to create Task Force 16. These sixteen warships would then steam toward to Tokyo, refueling some eight hundred miles from Japan. At that point the oilers would remain behind while the carriers, cruisers, and destroyers steamed to within four hundred miles of the enemy’s capital.

“We discussed the operation from every point of view,” Doolittle recalled. “We tried to think of every contingency that might possibly arise and have an answer to that contingency.” If the task force was within range
of Japan, the bombers would immediately take off, execute the mission, and hopefully reach China or get picked up by submarines. If the task force was within range of either Hawaii to Midway, the bombers would take off for those destinations. The worst-case scenario called for crews to push the B-25s overboard to clear the
Hornet
’s deck so the Navy could launch fighters. “This was understandable and I accepted this possibility,” Doolittle wrote. “After all, if the two carriers, the cruisers, and the destroyers were lost, it would mean the end of American naval strength in the Pacific for a long time. The Navy was, therefore, taking an extraordinary risk in our attempt to bring the war to the Japanese homeland.”

With the final modifications and tune-ups complete, aircrews prepared to fly to Alameda to board the
Hornet
. Only then did York learn that mechanics—in defiance of Doolittle’s orders—had swapped out the carburetors on his bomber. “We just happened to find out, by looking the engine over and checking the serial numbers, that they were different,” he recalled. “No mention was made, or notation made, to let us know that the carburetors had been changed. We accidentally found out about it.”

York summoned one of the mechanics.

“We had to change the carburetors,” he explained. “You had the wrong carburetors on this airplane.”

York pulled Doolittle aside and shared the news.

“Oh, Christ,” Doolittle said. “What do you want to do?”

Time was up—there was nothing he could do.

“I don’t think it makes any difference,” York answered. “A carburetor is a carburetor anyway you look at it.”

That statement would later haunt him.

“Well, if you think so,” Doolittle replied. “Come ahead.”

Miller had continued to practice short-field takeoffs with the crews at an airfield near Willows, just north of Sacramento.

“How do you think everybody’s doing?” Doolittle asked him.

“I think it’s no strain at all,” Miller replied. “Everybody’s doing great.”

Doolittle planned to take fifteen airplanes along with several extra aircrews aboard the
Hornet
. “Would you list the crews in order of take off expertise—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7?”

Miller did so, turning the list over to Doolittle and Hilger to review. Hilger objected to Miller’s exclusion of Bates.

“When you get on over enemy territory and
you have some of those Japs chasing you, you’ve got to be really sharp and you’ve got to be thinking all the time,” Miller said. “If you panic, you’re lost. I wouldn’t take Bates.”

Bates would go aboard the carrier, but he would not fly the mission. Miller was reluctant to end his adventure, seizing an opportunity to make his case when Doolittle asked him again for his views on the readiness of the aircrews.