“PDI!” Herndon called over the intercom, and Ed glanced down at the big instrument on his left forward panel. The pilot director indicator, or PDI, was a single needle that, when aligned with the navigator’s course, lined up on a large ‘0’ at the top of the gage. Normally, Herndon would use the aircraft’s AFCE (automatic flight control equipment, or autopilot) to make minor adjustments that kept the bomber on its final heading to the target. But that was only possible with the complex and generally accurate Norden bombsight, which had been removed for this mission.
During the twenty-odd years following the Great War, bombing had progressed from nails hammered into wing spars to “iron sights” that relied on the pilot’s eyes to a line of technical improvements that steadily compensated for aircraft parameters, temperatures, and, most crucially, winds. Gimbals, gyroscopes, and mechanical computers all combined to give a bombardier or pilot the best aim point possible from which to release bombs. As anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighter planes advanced, so did the necessity of a bomber’s reactive capability to maneuver and not be tied to long, predictable run-in headings. Also, the capability to fly above anti-aircraft fire, beyond the reach of fighters, and to deliver accurately from high altitudes was an ongoing quest for bomber development. After all, what was the point of risking life, limb, and aircraft only to arrive over an essential target and then miss? While Naval aviation was tactical and focused primarily on dive-bombing, the Army had both strategic and tactical missions.
Enter the Norden.
Designed by a Dutch émigré, its basic concept solved the fundamental problem with aerial bombing accuracy: the release point. Looking like a muscular microscope, the forty-five-pound apparatus was mounted in the aircraft’s nose, and with a small internal telescope and movable mirrors, the bombardier could maintain a stable image of the target while it was far ahead of the aircraft, and fine aiming adjustments were made using horizontal and vertical tuning knobs. It was supposed to make high-altitude bombing deadly accurate, which would enable bombers to surgically remove essential targets, cripple the enemy, and shorten the war. Nolan Herndon, like many professionals, had his doubts. In any event, the Norden was not effective for a level drop at fifteen hundred feet, and the weight saved could be carried in extra fuel, so Doolittle had them all removed. There was also the unspoken knowledge that if a bomber went down during the raid, this precaution would prevent the latest American bombing technology from falling into Japanese hands.
Leaning forward, Herndon squinted down at the ten-thousand-dollar Norden’s replacement, the twenty-cent “Mark Twain” designed by Captain Charles Ross Greening, pilot of the Hari Kari-er. Appointed as the raiders’ gunnery and bombing officer, Greening had given the basic problem some thought and applied the simplest solution possible. A thin, seven-inch quadrangle topped by a ninety-degree arc marked with ten-degree increments was installed on the existing Norden mount. With a handle attached, the bombardier could swivel the sight right or left, which correspondingly deflected the PDI in the cockpit and accounted for any horizontal corrections.
The vertical solution, or the release point, was similarly basic. A sighting bar, which rotated vertically on the quadrangle’s right face, could be aligned with the desired release angle, and when the target appeared at the end of the bar, the bombs were dropped. Herndon had already set the angle since the bombing parameters for all the planned targets were essentially the same: a fifteen-hundred-foot release, when the target hit the thirty-degree down angle on his Mark Twain sight. Leaning right, he checked the angle and tightened the thumb screw to hold it, then stared through the plain V notch cut into the near end of the bar—just like a rifle sight. It was a very Great War solution and would be useless at altitude. But from a low altitude level delivery, his bombs would fall in ten seconds and avoid running the gauntlet of changing wind speeds or directions encountered from medium or high altitudes.
Kneeling over the mount, Herndon stared through the glass nose panels as small roads widened, buildings became larger and closely packed, and railroad tracks converged. Eyes flickering between the sighting bar and the looming pillars of smoke ahead, he fine-tuned the PDI, although no bombardier could miss such an obvious target from this distance. With the bomb toggle switch between his left thumb and forefinger, Herndon aimed at the base of the smoke trails and watched them slide up. As they appeared to touch the sighting bar, he released the bombs.
“Bombs away!” The Mitchell jolted upward, and Herndon called again, “bomb bay doors closed.”
York immediately banked left thirty degrees and pushed the yoke down. Time to disappear again. Pulling back at one hundred feet, he let the bomber settle slightly and left the throttles wide open. Eyes darting between the gages and the ground, Ski checked the bomb bay’s door-open light and confirmed it was out. A muddy gray river flashed past, he felt the tail lift, and Plane 8 rocked sideways as he rolled out heading northwest.* From the tail cone, Sergeant Dave Pohl described the impact where the smoke was rising. Glancing at his watch, which was set on Hornet time, he saw 1215—so 1315 in Tokyo. Three hours and twenty-nine minutes since they’d skidded down the carrier’s wet deck.
Ignoring the navigator’s course corrections, York kept the Mitchell headed straight for the foothills rising off the nose to the west. There was a flat valley and a road to follow, but he angled slightly to the right, directly for the higher terrain. Roads meant people, and people meant a sighting that could be passed on to Jap fighters. He and Bob Emmens had planned the egress and knew the fastest way out of Japan was a 330-degree heading just south of a big peak rising in the distance.* It was ninety-seven miles from Utsunomiya, which York believed they’d just hit, to the Sea of Japan, then another 450 miles or so to the Russian coast. Both pilots had the same thought and looked at each other. Whatever lay ahead was certainly better than being caught in the firestorm behind them. Nothing York or Emmens knew about Imperial Japan gave hope for fair or respectful treatment if they went down over Honshu, especially after having the audacity to bomb the sacred Home Islands.
Now, at all costs, they had to get out of Japan.
While Plane 8 dashed over Honshu toward the dubious shelter of the Echigo Mountains, the assault on Tokyo continued. Lieutenant Everett Holstrom, nicknamed “Brick” due to his red hair, was fourth off the Hornet. Pilots are notoriously superstitious, and Holstrom had already dealt with a leaking left-wing tank, a failed top gun turret, and a miscalibrated compass that put them over land fifty miles south of Tokyo against a fully alerted enemy. Making landfall at 1330 Tokyo time, he decided to approach the capital from the south, reasoning that there would less opposition from that direction. Mistaking Sagami Bay for Tokyo Bay, Holstrom, also of the 95th Bomb Squadron, was now heading the opposite direction from the first three Mitchells. Under attack from four fighters, which looked alarmingly like Nazi Bf-109s, Brick dumped his bombs in Sagami Bay six miles southwest of Eno Island, then turned back down the coast.*
The next three Mitchells, led by Captain David “Davey” Jones, were slated against targets in central Tokyo. Eventually rejoining after takeoff, they stayed together until entering Tokyo Bay from the Chiba Peninsula. Stating in his official report that his first bomb fell on “an oil tank south of the palace,” Jones, with Lieutenant Ted Lawson’s Ruptured Duck off his left wing, mistook the Kawasaki industrial district for the Omori and Nihombashi dock areas north of the Tama River. Kawasaki, like much of the Tokyo Bay area, is fringed with artificial islands that are heavily utilized for commercial and military development, so any of the built-up harbor areas would look alike as he popped up from fifty to twelve hundred feet.
Roaring in over the Nichiman Wharf fully twelve miles southwest of the Imperial Palace, Davey’s first bomb landed in the Nippon Pipe Manufacturing compound north of a canal separating the artificial island of Ogimachi from the mainland. Banking up hard right away from Lawson, he raced back toward the bay over shipyards and a partially reclaimed island rising from the mud. Coming in from the east this time, he dropped an incendiary and a five-hundred-pounder on another Nippon Pipe facility south of the canal, and his remaining bomb hit the Yokoyama Manufacturing Company eleven hundred yards to the northwest. The incendiary did little to the concrete and metal structures, but both bombs caused extensive damage.
Flying the seventh bomber off the Hornet, Lawson stayed in loose formation with Jones over Kawasaki and released his first two bombs at roughly the same time. His first fell into the canal, but the second impacted very close to Jones’s weapon within the Nippon Pipe area and similarly did little damage. Also banking to the right away from the city, the Ruptured Duck wheeled around Kawasaki, dropped another bomb on the Japan Steel Pipe Manufacturing plant, then pitched back in from the east. Blitzing straight down the patchwork of reclaimed islands, Lawson’s incendiary hit the Tsurumi Dockyard a mile and half west of his first bomb. Dropping back down to the rooftops, Ruptured Duck turned toward Yokohama, then scooted southwest out over Sagami Bay.
Like many others, Lieutenant Chase Nielson, navigator for the Green Hornet, had a dodgy compass and no chance over water to update his navigation. Arriving over Japan, he quickly determined the sixth bomber’s position for the pilot, Lieutenant Dean “Jungle Jim” Hallmark. A former collegiate football player, the six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound pilot split off from Jones and Lawson, then initially headed deeper into Tokyo Bay, perhaps realizing he wasn’t far enough north. With fighters overhead, anti-aircraft bursts pockmarking the blue sky, and barrage balloons strung over the waterfront, it is certainly possible that Hallmark decided his original targets were too risky. Or maybe he, like Jones, mistook Kawasaki for his primary target area. In any event, he suddenly turned west and flew up the mouth of the Tama River separating Tokyo from Kawasaki. Spotting a big orderly compound past a bridge, Hallmark evidently decided it wouldn’t get much better than this and attacked.* Aiming for the Fuji Steel Mill on the south bank of the river, bombardier Sergeant William Dieter’s first bomb hit the street instead.
Banking sharply left, Hallmark muscled the Green Hornet around to the east, rolled out, and dropped on another factory at the bend in the river.† Wheeling right over the Chidori Canal, the Texan leveled off, pushed the throttles to the stops, and tore across Kawasaki heading southwest toward Yokohama. Largely destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, it had been rebuilt into the Keihin Industrial Area and boasted a formidable array of shipyards and drydocks. Approaching the piers and warehouses along the north end, Dieter aimed, but missed again, and Green Hornet’s third bomb went into the water short of the piers. Zooming overhead, Hallmark flew straight southwest across the thirteen-mile neck of the Miura Peninsula toward Sagami Bay. A mile past the dockyard, Dieter, probably mistaking buildings along the Nakamura River for military or government structures, opened fire with the .30-caliber nose gun. Unfortunately, the buildings were schools, and his bursts went into the Uchikoshi residential area, killing an infant. Letting go of the Browning, Dieter quickly hunched over the Mark Twain, sighted down the bar at a factory complex at the confluence of the Horiwari and Nakamura Rivers, and dropped his incendiary. Assuming he was aiming at the factories, again he missed and hit the Horinouchi neighborhood south of Maita Park.
At the same time, roughly one hundred miles northwest, Ed York reached the Echigo Mountains and, two thousand pounds lighter now, was dipping and banking toward the coast. The bombs were gone and the Japanese were outraged, humiliated, and vengeful—roughly the same emotions that had pervaded the United States since December 7, 1941, yet now the tables were turned. The objectives of the main mission, Arnold’s special bomber project, had been fulfilled, and for fifteen other B-25s and their crews the only remaining mission was to get as many home alive as possible.
But not Plane 8.
Throttling back to hold 250 miles per hour, York tapped Emmens on the shoulder and nodded at the yoke. Moving his feet to the rudders and wrapping both hands around the controls, Bob flew the Mitchell through a distinct saddle between two peaks and held a 305-degree course over Honshu’s backbone.* Off to the south, just visible on the horizon, both pilots could plainly see the solitary snowcapped peak that could only be Mount Fuji. Ten minutes later they “crossed the peak of the backbone” and the terrain fell away drastically. “Ahead stretched a magnificent view of some 50 miles of flat, green land,” Emmens recalled.
Sliding down the foothills, York took back the controls and picked a distant peak for a reference as Plane 8 crossed a pewter-colored river threading its way through a wide valley patched with fields and dotted with tiny hamlets.† They were so low that the Mitchell’s shadow looked like another bomber flying formation with them, and that made Bob feel less exposed somehow. Rolling hills appeared, and for the next two minutes there was little to see but trees. York periodically banked left or right permitting Laban and Pohl a better view of the high six o’clock position above the tail, which is certainly where any Japanese fighters would likely appear.
But none did.
As they darted across another river valley and up over a ridgeline, a silver sheen blended with the darker blue horizon, and Bob Emmens tore open another pack of cigarettes. The Sea of Japan … they were so close. His heart beat quicker at the thought of actually pulling this off and getting out of enemy territory. “I’ll bet we’re the first B-25 crew to cross Japan at noon on a Saturday,” he said into the interphone to break the tension. York managed a grim smile but did not reply as another valley suddenly opened up off the nose. People in the fields looked up and some even waved, then thirty seconds later Plane 8 roared over another river, then dropped back into the foothills. Rocks and trees filled the windscreen as this hillside was much steeper than the others. Grunting, York pulled harder and Bob felt the added g-forces push him back into the seat as Plane 8 soared over the ridge.
There!
Hills instantly melted away into clear air, and a flat coastal plain yawned from wingtip to wingtip. The sea … less than ten miles ahead! Pushing the bomber down, Bob strained against the lap belt and braced himself against the glare shield with his right hand as the Mitchell bottomed out one hundred feet over the countryside. Two rivers appeared and came together just beyond the nose as York pushed the throttles up and accelerated to 250 miles per hour for the final dash to the shore. “We passed low over a well-constructed railroad bridge … double track,”* Emmens wrote, then, after paralleling the rail line, a minute later they were over a “low sprawling city outlined against the sea beyond.”
The bomber’s shadow mirrored every twitch of the yoke as York continued checking their six o’clock. Both pilots were slightly incredulous that they’d made it this far without being intercepted. These damn Japs must have an aircraft warning system, Emmens thought as he leaned forward and stared ahead. The railroad tracks curved off to the left, intersecting another set coming in from the north, and the copilot could plainly see that “tall stacks reached up from the center of town … the chimneys might have indicated the blast furnaces of a steel mill.”† Thundering overhead, a thin ribbon of sand spread sideways like a brown mustache, and they were suddenly over water again. “Our shadow,” Bob recalled, “big and smooth now, [was] chasing alongside of us.”
Both pilots exhaled, and Ed banked up to 320 degrees as the coastline faded behind the wings. Now all they had to do was cross 450 miles over the Sea of Japan, which was the Imperial Navy’s backyard, then use outdated maps to find an airfield they’d never seen, and land unannounced and uninvited in a country at war. Assuming that was all possible, what facilities existed to service Plane 8 and send it on its way? Were there runways or just airfields? Were there gas, oil, and weapons—and what sort of cooperation would Americans receive? Lots of unknowns. But, of course, those very unknowns were the object of Plane 8’s right turn over Cape Inubo and disappearance into central Honshu.
Rolling out, York climbed up to a more comfortable two hundred feet and stared ahead. Off to the right, about two o’clock, a humped outline showed above the haze. Sado Island. Their maps showed that at least, and for the first time since Cape Inubo, Emmens knew exactly where they were. He hadn’t been completely certain over Utsunomiya, not that it mattered, and relief at one less variable made him relax slightly. York pointed at the instrument panel, and Bob understood. New cruise tables had been prepared, and the other crews had trained to maximize every gallon of gas. Despite not training for this, Ed York had helped develop the procedures and had more B-25 flying time than anyone on the raid except Jack Hilger. The idea was to keep manifold pressure high and control gas consumption by lowering the revolutions per minute through fine-tuning the propellor pitch and adding more air, or “leaning out” the fuel-air mixture entering the engines. Emmens fiddled with the MIXTURE knobs, which were on his side of the pedestal, while York adjusted the PROP controls and eased the throttles back slightly.
As Plane 8 was the only bomber with unmodified carburetors, the best they could manage was 170 mph, 1,400 rpm, and about 28 inches of manifold pressure. Without the two thousand pounds of extra weight from the bombs, this burned approximately ninety gallons per hour, and there was about 475 gallons remaining.* Bob craned forward and looked out of his window as they passed a point of land that hooked around to form a bay on the west side of Sado Island. Up ahead, the horizon was darker and blurry for the first time today. What, he wondered, was the worst enemy now? Weather, lack of fuel … or the Soviet Union.
Probably all three.
PART II
Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
—FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
5 THE DARKENING
The events placing Plane 8 over the Japanese coast on April 18, 1942, are a veritable Gordian knot of deception, intrigue, political failures, and rampant nationalism. Nonetheless, as with all knots, there is a beginning buried somewhere within the tangle. To some degree, that Ed York, Bob Emmens, and their crew found themselves south of Sado Island westbound for the Soviet Union was indirectly the fault of another American—Commodore James Biddle of the United States Navy.
In 1845, Biddle anchored the USS Vincennes and USS Columbus in the Uraga Channel at the mouth of Edo Bay, and was promptly surrounded by several dozen oared Japanese gunboats.* Snubbed by the Tokugawa shogun, Biddle was not permitted to land and was actually knocked down by a Japanese guard after being invited aboard one of the gunboats. Seven years later, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry entered the same channel, steamed through the startled Japanese toward their capital city, and trained his eight-inch Paixhans guns on the town of Uraga. Pugnacious, with the face of a bulldog and a temperament to match, Perry had no intention of suffering Biddle’s fate. Thunder filled the bay as he fired blanks from his seventy-three cannons; then he sent a letter ashore with a white flag informing the astonished Japanese that if they chose to fight they may keep the flag and use it for their surrender. Not only did Perry refuse all commands to leave, but he blatantly conducted surveys of the bay and its fortifications. Deeply disconcerted by their invincible warrior caste’s inability to intimidate or prevent Perry’s actions, the Japanese agreed to negotiate.
For insular Japan, which had resisted western influences and trade, this opened the door to the modern world. With this fracturing came the Boshin War and the restoration of the emperor over the shogunate in 1869. Prince Mutsuhito, ascending to the Chrysanthemum Throne as Emperor Meiji, realized that without western technology Japan was doomed. Promptly embarking on a series of reforms to ensure his country’s survival, he was most keen to create a modern navy. Somewhat ironically, Japan’s first new vessel was the USS Stonewall, a former Confederate ironclad, and over the next two decades Meiji ordered more warships than any other nation except the United Kingdom. This race to catch up and take its position as a major power would lead to Japan’s conflict with Imperial Russia and Tokyo’s participation on the Allied side during the Great War. Imperial Japanese ambitions would lead to its expansion into China and the Pacific, and eventually be manifest in the conflict that put five Americans in Plane 8 over the Honshu coastline.
Franklin Roosevelt and his military commanders had been aware that war was likely unavoidable since Poland fell in 1939, and the outlook was quite bleak. The United States military was rapidly emasculated after the Great War, and two decades of neglect from Congress coupled with indifference from the American people had turned a formidable war machine into a “muleback army hardly large enough for an Indian campaign.” Its weapons were generally obsolete, and there were too few of them. Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Corps, reported that his force was “practically nonexistent.” Fortunately, with abundant natural resources and the geographic shields of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, America had some time to prepare—but not much.
While industry shook off its cobwebs and began converting its awesome potential to war, Roosevelt reasoned that the best immediate defense of America was to keep her allies fighting, yet there were several complex problems with this. Many Americans had not supported involvement in the Great War, and isolationism had become a political lightning rod. As Italian fascism, German national socialism, and Japanese imperialism took root, an overwhelming majority of Americans felt no compunction to spend more treasure or blood solving the world’s problems, and beginning in 1935, four Neutrality Acts were passed that legally prevented armed U.S. involvement in overseas conflicts. Roosevelt was now in a political corner as he faced overwhelming public opinion against engagement, while realizing that eventually America would become involved in the looming global struggle. His challenge was to survive politically until an event occurred that changed public opinion and permitted overt participation.
The first Neutrality Act, invoked in response to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, prohibited trading in materiel or arms to any parties at war. Roosevelt imposed a separate “moral embargo” that applied to any other commerce not covered by the act that provided support to belligerents. In this way, it was hoped, no sides would be taken and America would not be involved in overseas military actions. In 1936 this act was extended and went further by forbidding loans or credits by U.S. banks to belligerents. However, provisions in the act did not cover civil wars, and companies like General Motors, Ford, and Standard Oil, amassed at least $100,000,000 selling goods to Franco’s Spanish Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War.
