War Stories II (17 page)

But if Doolittle had any doubts, he did not show it.

Corporal Jake DeShazer, from Salem, Oregon, was a cook for a sheep-herding camp before he joined the Army Air Corps in 1940 at the age of twenty-seven. He remembers being on KP duty when Pearl Harbor was bombed and thinking to himself, “Japan is really going to get it for this.” DeShazer recalls standing alone on the
Hornet
's flight deck, thinking, “I wonder how many more days I am going to spend in this world. Maybe I wasn't so fortunate after all to get to go on this trip.”

On 16 April, in heavy seas, the sailors and Army airmen aboard the
Hornet
moved the B-25s to a parking area at the rear of the flight deck, where they would be ready to take off. The following day the weather deteriorated
further. Halsey and Doolittle, concerned about the ability of the sailors and airmen to work on the open flight deck, ordered the planes fueled and bombs loaded, even though the task force didn't plan to be at the launch point until late on 19 April.

By darkness on 17 April, the airmen and deck crews were exhausted, but Halsey and Doolittle had done all they could to prepare. Now if they could just avoid the enemy picket ships and patrol craft, the
Hornet
might be able to get within 400 miles of Japan—and that edge might give the B-25s and their crews a chance of surviving the mission. But it wasn't to be.

In the predawn morning hours of 18 April, a radar operator on the
Enterprise
reported a “surface contact”—a ship—about ten miles from the carrier. Though the
Enterprise
was still more than 650 miles from Japan, Halsey ordered the entire task force to change direction to keep from being spotted by what had to be a Japanese ship. Then, at 0600, an American scout plane scouring the waters ahead of the American ships saw a Japanese patrol boat.

Hoping to sink the vessel before it could notify Japan of their presence, Halsey's cruiser, the USS
Nashville,
engaged with five-inch gunfire at 0738, and immediately afterward dive-bombers from the
Enterprise
attacked the picket ship. The
Nitto Maru
, designated as Japanese Naval Patrol Boat No. 23, sank in minutes. But not before the crew radioed Imperial Fleet HQ at Kure that three American aircraft carriers were headed for Japan.

Aboard the
Enterprise
, Navy code-breakers intercepted the
Nitto Maru
's radio traffic, and though the
Nitto Maru
incorrectly warned that there were three American carriers, it still meant that, despite the weather, the task force was now in great jeopardy. So, too, was Doolittle's attack plan.

The
Hornet
, with the sixteen B-25s aboard, was still hundreds of miles away from its intended launch destination, and hundreds of miles more
from the targets in Japan. Halsey had planned to steam west another thirty-two hours before launching the bombers, so that they would arrive over their targets on the night of 19 April—and be able to find their landing fields in China on the next morning.

Admiral Halsey and Doolittle now had to make a serious decision, and it had to be made quickly. The carriers couldn't proceed closer to the intended launch point, loath to engage an overwhelming Japanese naval force or provoke an attack by land-based bombers. But could the B-25s still make it to their targets—and then on to safety in China—if they launched now? If not, their only alternative was to abandon the mission. By signal light, from his flagship to the
Hornet,
Halsey presented the options to Doolittle.

The Army flight leader wasted no time in making a decision. Even though they were still nearly 700 miles from Tokyo, with almost no chance of reaching the recovery airfields in China after the bombing raid, Doolittle signaled back, “Let's go now.”

Halsey ordered the task force to turn into the wind and gave the order to launch the aircraft. The admiral ended his message with, “Good luck, and God bless you.”

Aboard the
Hornet
, Army airmen and sailors sprang into action as loudspeakers blared, “Army Air personnel, man your airplanes for immediate takeoff.” The aircrews raced onto the flight deck and readied the sixteen bombers for takeoff as high winds and thirty-five-foot swells tossed the ships about like toy boats. With water breaking over her bow, the
Hornet
turned into the wind, now blowing at twenty-five to thirty knots.

To the uninitiated, the idea of trying to launch sixteen overloaded B-25s from the terrifyingly short, pitching deck of an aircraft carrier into the teeth of a raging gale might seem like madness. But to Jimmy Doolittle, the MIT engineer perched in the lead aircraft, the plane that had the shortest takeoff roll, the wind was now their ally. It offered hope that all his aircrews could succeed in doing what no one had ever done before—first, getting the planes, weighing nearly fifteen tons, into the air, and then bombing the Japanese homeland.