Fishermen and farmers looked up and waved, assuming the warplanes were Japanese. "We got an aircraft carrier!"įive hours later, flying low, the squadron reached the coast of Japan. “He hung his ship almost straight up on its props,” Lawson said, so everyone could see the entire top of the plane, “then he leveled out.”Īll 16 planes made it into the sky, but not before a navy crewman slipped on the soaking deck and thrust his arm into the whirring propeller of the last plane to take off. Just as the carrier lifted up on a swell, Doolittle became airborne with only yards to spare. “Everyone knew if he couldn’t, we couldn’t.” “We wondered what the wind would do to him,” said pilot Ted Lawson, who was four planes back in Ruptured Duck. On signal, he revved his engines until his crew feared he’d burn them up, then lumbered down the deck. “It was like riding a see-saw,” Doolittle said. The carrier’s flight officer was timing the rise and fall of the vessel’s bow to give the plane the benefit of the rising deck. ![]() The ship was rolling and pitching wildly as Doolittle became the first to attempt takeoff. Hornet gave the order: “Army pilots, man your planes!" The klaxon sounded immediately, and the captain of the U.S.S. After a brief discussion with naval commanders, Doolittle got the okay to proceed anyway. Plans called for Doolittle’s squadron to take off about 300 miles from Japan, but when spotted the American ships were still 700 miles offshore. A Navy cruiser attacked and sank the vessel, but not before its crew had broadcast an alert. on April 18, radar detected a Japanese picket boat. ![]() Seas grew tall as a three story building. Cruisers and destroyers joined the carrier at sea, and the task force commander sent a message to all ships: “This force is bound for Tokyo.” A chorus of cheers rose from five thousand throats into the darkening Pacific skies.Īfter two weeks at sea, as the task force approached enemy territory, the weather began to deteriorate. Hornet slipped out of San Francisco Bay with 16 bombers lashed to its flight deck. Meanwhile, two dozen B-25s were equipped with extra fuel tanks and stripped of all unnecessary weight. Accustomed to taking off from mile-long runways, the fliers learned terrifying tactics for launching their planes from a short carrier deck. The Army pilots underwent arduous training at a secret site on Florida’s Gulf Coast. ![]() Doolittle assembled more than 100 of the group’s officers and men and informed them that volunteers were needed for “a very hazardous mission.” Every man signed up. The only pilots qualified to fly B-25s in combat were members of the Army Air Corps’ 17 th Bombardment Group stationed at Fort Pendleton, Oregon. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, one of the era’s most famous aviators and a man Arnold knew to be “absolutely fearless.” Landing one of the planes on a carrier was out of the question, but after bombing Japan it would have just enough fuel to make it to friendly fields in China.Īrmy Air Corps commander Gen. Then one cold January day someone got the idea that the B-25 “Mitchell,” a relatively new, twin-engine, medium bomber, might be able to take off from a flattop deck. Bombers could rain down destruction but were thought to be too large to take off and land from a carrier. Warplanes based on aircraft carriers were too small to inflict significant damage, and they didn’t hold enough fuel to make the mission feasible. and its allies could only stand by and watch as the Japanese juggernaut raced across the Pacific, crushing every British, Dutch, French, and American position in its path.įollowing the Pearl Harbor attack, President Franklin Roosevelt furiously pressed the chiefs of the armed services to find a way to retaliate against the Japanese homeland, but no one knew how to overcome the logistical challenges. The battleships of its Pacific Fleet lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, victims of the Japanese surprise attack launched on December 7, 1941. In the early weeks of 1942, America was outraged, humiliated, and demoralized.
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