Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (22 page)

“Carry me back to ol’ Virginny,” muttered one of the black stewards in the wardroom, while others soon sang a song set to the tune of
Snow White
. “Hi-ho, hi-ho, we’re off to Tokyo; we’ll bomb and blast and come back fast.”

War planners had mapped a course for the 5,223-mile journey to avenge the attack on Pearl Harbor that closely paralleled the route Admiral Nagumo had taken only four months earlier. The task force would follow the fortieth parallel just south of a polar front that promised high winds, squalls, and rough seas. While the inhospitable weather would slash visibility and limit patrol flights, it also made it equally likely that Japanese naval and merchant ships would avoid this route as well, providing the American armada a back door to the empire’s waters. “We went north to the 40th parallel and stuck on it just like a highway all the way across the Pacific,” remembered John Sutherland, a
Hornet
fighter pilot. “It’s a nice parallel to be on, because it was a very rough road and a very secure road, the weather was bad, the fog was heavy, it rained intermittently. That was the one time when the bad weather and the rocking of the ship did not make anybody unhappy at all. All of us wanted to go sight unseen.”

Safety was paramount even as the warships cut through the swells just off the West Coast. Shore-based planes would guard the task force until nightfall. Then the ships would steam on alone in radio silence, zigzagging and darkened to avoid submarines. Its flight deck crowded with bombers, the
Hornet
was like a toothless tiger. Until the task force rendezvoused more than a week later with Halsey and the carrier
Enterprise
, Mitscher would have to depend on his escorts for protection. America’s newest carrier, two cruisers, and a loaded fleet oiler would make an inviting target, a fact
hammered home by the
Cimarron
’s skipper, Commander Russell Ihrig, in a war message to his men. “Our new assignment will probably place us under fire, not only from submarines, but from aircraft and surface ships,” he warned. “Be fully prepared to go into action TO WIN. Knowledge of your job and careful performance of small duties become more important than ever. Remember, there is
no second place
in a sea-fight.”

To prepare for such threats—an attack on an oiler loaded with more than six million gallons of fuel could prove particularly dangerous—Ihrig issued battle instructions. “Don’t think of the Japs as faraway,” he cautioned his men. “Think of them as HERE!” Sailors dressed in full winter underwear to guard against possible flash burns and passed out steel helmets and gas masks. Others tossed flammable rubber mats overboard and removed non-watertight doors and even shower curtains; only those necessary for blackout protection could remain. Ihrig ordered the glass ports on the bridge replaced with metal plates and officer staterooms readied as battle dressing stations. The skipper knew that he could take no chances. “I have served six years in the Orient in close association with the Japs, including two years during the current war in China. I have seen their brutality, bestiality—and bravery. If you expect to survive, you will have to do your best,” Ihrig instructed his men. “This is a war to the death.”

The reality of the mission sank in as the
Hornet
steamed toward Japan, each hour taking the carrier and crews closer to the enemy’s homeland. Doolittle’s meeting had hammered home the gravity of the mission. Lawson passed out pads of paper to his crew that afternoon, demanding each one write down any idea on how to improve the plane. Other nervous airmen paced the flight deck, counting off each precious foot. The boundaries were no longer marked by flags and white lines but by cold blue ocean waves. A missed takeoff meant a plunge into the Pacific. Even Doolittle—the legendary pilot—felt edgy. The first full day at sea he, too, stared down the deck.

“Well, Hank,” he said to Miller. “How does it look to you?”

“This is a breeze.”

“Let’s get up in that airplane and look.”

Doolittle climbed into the cockpit, and Miller joined him in the copilot’s seat.

“This looks like a short distance
,” Doolittle observed.

“You see where that tool kit is way up the deck by that island structure?” Miller said. “That’s where I used to take off in fighters on the
Saratoga
and the
Lexington
.”

“Henry, what name do they use in the Navy for ‘bullshit’?”

The men climbed down and Miller headed to lunch, while Doolittle rushed to find Mitscher. He told the skipper that he wanted to scrap Miller’s proposed takeoff demonstration and instead take the sixteenth plane on the mission, a move that would increase the operation’s firepower by four bombs.

Just as Miller shoveled down the last of his dessert, he heard his name broadcast over the loudspeaker, summoning him to the bridge. The young lieutenant arrived to find Mitscher. “Well, Miller,” the skipper leveled with him. “I don’t think I’ll be able to give you 40 knots of wind over the deck.”

“Captain, I don’t need that anyway, because we have 495 feet,” he replied. “I taught these guys how to take off from an aircraft carrier with 40 knots of wind and 250 feet. We have lots of room.”

Miller concluded by sharing his story of his conversation with Doolittle right before lunch.

“Well, Miller,” Mitscher replied. “Do you have an extra pair of pants with you?”

“Oh, yes, Sir,” he answered. “I brought all my baggage with me because I’m going to fly nonstop to Columbia, South Carolina.”

Mitscher leveled with him.

“We’ll take that extra plane.”

Miller, of course, was thrilled. He had wanted to go all along and now he would be trapped on board, able to watch all sixteen planes thunder down the deck and lift off, all airmen he had trained. Miller concluded with a dose of levity.

“Captain, will you drop me off at the next mail buoy, please,” he said. “I’m a Lieutenant now but by the time I get back to Pensacola, I will have travelled half way around the world on a telephone call so I’ll probably end up as an Ensign.”

“The hell with them,” Mitscher said. “I’ll see that you make it OK.”

ADMIRAL YAMAMOTO’S OBSESSION
with preventing an attack on
Tokyo had only grown as Japan’s victories mounted and senior leaders debated the future direction of the war. The lightning successes in the conflict’s opening weeks had caught many of the nation’s strategists flat-footed. The great risks coupled with the preparations for the ambitious assault on Pearl Harbor and the seizure of the oil-rich southern territories had prompted senior leaders to postpone planning the next phase of the war, an oversight that became clear before the first month of the battle drew to a close. Combined Fleet chief of staff Matome Ugaki, who ordered his staff to prepare a blueprint of future operations by the end of February, captured that surprise in his diary. “We shall be able to finish first-stage operations by the middle of March, as far as the invasion operation is concerned. What are we going to do after that?” he wrote on January 5. “Advance to Australia, to India, attack Hawaii, or destroy the Soviet Union?”

War planners debated several options, including ending offensive actions and preparing a defense, an idea few supported. Another option was to invade Australia, robbing America of a launch pad to push back against Japan. Alternatively forces could push into the Indian Ocean, seize Ceylon, and finish off the British fleet, a move that would allow Japan to link up with Germany in the Middle East. The final option was to advance across the central Pacific and seize Hawaii, guaranteeing a showdown with America. Bogged down in China—and afraid of overextension—the Army resisted such moves. “We want to invade Ceylon; we are not allowed to!” complained Captain Yoshitake Miwa, the Combined Fleet’s air officer. “We want to invade Australia; we cannot! We want to attack Hawaii; we cannot do that either! All because the army will not agree to release the necessary forces.” Ugaki agreed. “It’s annoying to be passive,” he wrote in his diary. “Warfare is easier, with less trouble, indeed, when we hold the initiative.”

Throughout this debate Yamamoto maintained a single-minded focus—annihilate America’s Pacific Fleet. Despite the celebration that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto saw the strike largely as a Pyrrhic victory. Japan had anticipated the loss of as many as three of its six carriers, but the attack in the end had cost just twenty-nine planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than a hundred men. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo should have capitalized on his unexpected success that Sunday morning and ordered his pilots to rearm and attack again, spreading the assault over several days if
necessary. Yamamoto knew that the shortsighted focus only on the battleships and planes—leaving the submarine base, repair facilities, and aboveground tanks with 4.5 million barrels of precious fuel—would only help accelerate America’s rebound. Just two days after the attack—as the fires still smoldered at Pearl Harbor—Yamamoto ordered Ugaki to prepare a plan for the invasion of Hawaii. He had to clean up Nagumo’s mess.

Yamamoto believed that the destruction of America’s carriers—absent from Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning—coupled with the capture of Hawaii would give Japan the power to bargain a peace deal, one that would allow it to keep many of its conquests. Yamamoto’s concerns on the surface appeared unwarranted, considering Japan’s great successes, but the veteran admiral spied hints of trouble to come. That threat had first materialized in the form of an American carrier raid on the Marshall and the Gilbert Islands on February 1, just fifty-six days after the attack on Hawaii. The dawn strike had robbed Japan of a subchaser and the 6,500-ton transport
Bordeaux Maru
, as well as damaged eight other ships, including a light cruiser. The raiders had even managed to kill Marshall Islands commander Rear Admiral Yukicki Yashiro, a Naval Academy classmate of Ugaki’s and Japan’s first admiral killed in the war. “They have come after all,” Ugaki wrote in his diary with disbelief. “They are some guys!”

Although derided in the Japanese press as “guerrilla warfare,” the raid impressed senior leaders. “This attack was Heaven’s admonition for our shortcoming,” declared Miwa. “Our staff could only grit their teeth and jump up and down in frustration.” Few believed that the audacious assault would prove to be the last. Such a bold strike reflected America’s adventurous national personality, Ugaki noted, and would merely help make Japan’s leaders look “ridiculous.” “Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise, but we cannot say the same for this, which happened during the war,” Ugaki confided in his diary. “It was fortunate for us that the enemy only scratched us on this occasion and gave us a good lesson instead of directly attacking Tokyo.” Ugaki wasn’t alone in his fears. Japan’s lack of defenses would no doubt invite the Americans to attack again. “Whatever happens, we must absolutely prevent any air attack on Tokyo,” Miwa said. “Against enemy aircraft carriers, the defensive is bad strategy, and worse tactics.”

The United States followed up the raid
on the Marshall and the Gilbert Islands with a February 20 strike against Rabaul, which the Japanese repelled but at a cost of nineteen planes. American carriers then hit Wake on February 24 and Marcus Island on March 4. Six days later carriers appeared off New Guinea, launching a strike of 104 fighters and bombers against Japanese forces at Lae and Salamaua. “The failure to destroy the U.S. carriers at Pearl Harbor haunted us like a ghost ever after,” wrote Minoru Genda, one of the chief planners of the attack on Hawaii. “We always worried about them and had to reckon with their potential presence in every operation we planned.” The raids convinced senior naval aviators that Japan wasted time with its own attacks against Australia and British forces in the Indian Ocean, particularly when America’s carriers remained the only formidable force left in the Pacific. Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the air attack against Pearl Harbor, even warned Admiral Nagumo, “Don’t swing such a long sword.”

America’s carrier raids did little damage, but the marauding flattops posed a much greater potential threat. As in a game of Russian roulette, it was only a matter of time before the barrel pointed at Tokyo, the seat of the emperor. Halsey’s attack on Marcus Island had stirred up considerable concern, given that less than a thousand miles separated that island from the nation’s capital. Senior naval officers sweated out America’s attacks even as the oblivious Japanese public enjoyed victory celebrations. “If real enemy planes raided amidst the festivities, the mere thought of the result makes me shudder,” Ugaki wrote in his diary on March 12. “A great air raid over the heads of the rejoicing multitude!” As American attacks grew more audacious, senior leaders began to contemplate what had long been considered unthinkable, a question Miwa raised in his diary. “How shall we defend our capital against an enemy air raid?” he wrote. “It is a big problem.”

Yamamoto knew the only way to protect Tokyo was to destroy America’s flattops. But that was no easy task. With its Pacific and Asiatic fleets wrecked, America treated its carriers like an endangered species, always retreating at the first sign of danger. Yamamoto’s forces had no way to predict where, in an ocean that spread across sixty-five million square miles, to find them. The admiral needed a plan to lure them into combat, an objective so precious that Admiral Chester Nimitz would have no option but to send his carriers into battle. Since the Army would never sign off on the invasion of Hawaii
, Yamamoto needed a plan the Navy could tackle largely alone. He set his sights on Midway, the two-and-a-half-square-mile atoll between Tokyo and Hawaii, some thirteen hundred miles northwest of Oahu. This former stopover for the transpacific flights of Pan American Airways Clipper seaplanes had evolved into a vital American naval air and submarine base, whose proximity to Pearl Harbor led Admiral Nagumo to dub it “the sentry for Hawaii.”