On December 16, Yamamoto dispatched the carriers Hiryū and Sōryū, which were accompanied by two heavy cruisers and several destroyers to the atoll. The same day (December 15 at Pearl) the Saratoga, flying Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher’s flag, sortied for Wake from Oahu leading Task Force 14. Three days later, Kimmel was relieved, and Vice Admiral William S. Pye took over temporarily while the Pacific Fleet awaited its new commander: Admiral Chester Nimitz.
As the warships steamed toward the beleaguered atoll, the Japanese continued to attack from the air and steadily weaken Wake’s defenses. By December 20, Putnam’s fighter squadron was down to a single F4F and morale, especially among the civilians, was ebbing as most of the defenders realized that a reinforcing action, or an evacuation, should have occurred by now. So the sight of a Navy PBY Catalina landing in the lagoon that very afternoon was welcome to all. Word quickly spread that ships were en route to Wake with medical supplies, ammunition, and a pair of radars: an SCR-270 for long range and early warning and a SCR-268 for fire control. Most of the civilians would be taken off, and the Marine Fourth Defense Battalion would land to strengthen the garrison. Saratoga, now less than a thousand miles east, would also bring in Major Verne McCaul’s VMF-221, so Wake would again have air cover. The atoll’s defenders watched the PBY lift off at dawn the following morning bearing dispatches and bound for Midway, followed by Pearl Harbor. Two days. They only had to hold on another two days, and hopes were high.
But not for long.
At 0700 on December 21, near the time the PBY lifted off, Hiryū and Sōryū swung into the wind and launched every available aircraft toward Wake. The new Japanese plan called for two days of concentrated air attacks to more effectively “soften” the American defenses, followed by a much heavier amphibious assault. This same morning, Admiral Kajioka put out from Kwajalein steaming north for the two-day run up to Wake. This time he brought six heavy cruisers, six destroyers, and one thousand men of the Maizaru Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF) to breach the American defenses.* Additionally, four destroyers with augmented crews would, if necessary, beach themselves to provide additional manpower.
Escorted by eighteen Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, twenty-nine Aichi D3A Val dive-bombers from both carriers appeared over Wake at 0850 and concentrated on the anti-aircraft batteries. This attack was followed several hours later by thirty-three land-based bombers from Roi and another thirty-nine-plane carrier strike the next morning. This last attack permanently claimed the last two Marine Wildcat fighters, and the remnants of VMF-211 dispersed among the ground combat units. The arrival of enemy naval aircraft ominously foretold Wake’s future, and both Cunningham and Devereaux correctly deduced that if Japanese carriers were prowling nearby, then another invasion attempt was imminent. At 1320 that afternoon Cunningham radioed the joint land-based and carrier-based attacks to Admiral Pye, who had now reviewed the reports brought to Pearl by the PBY and, to his credit, stated “the situation at Wake seemed to warrant taking a greater chance to effect its reinforcement, even at the sacrifice of the Tangier and possible damage to some major ships of Task Force 14.”
Nimitz agreed and ordered Halsey to assist Task Force 14. Given the urgency, it was assumed that Saratoga would press in with all haste, yet Fletcher, ever obsessed with fuel, insisted on refueling, which cost an entire day to complete. Wary of submarines, he was also zigzagging. This was arguably ineffective given his paltry twelve-knot steaming speed to accommodate the oiler Neches. With hindsight, it is far too easy to second-guess tactical decisions, yet the hard fact remains that Americans were fighting and dying, and had been desperately holding on for fourteen days with no help from Pearl Harbor.
A more aggressive commander might have pressed in to save these men. With the heavy cruisers Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Astoria, plus eight destroyers, Fletcher could have left suitable escorts for the slower Neches and seaplane tender Tangiers, then lunged ahead with the balance of his force to close on Wake and launch the Marine Wildcats. Better still, another admiral could have used the tactical situation to ambush the Japanese. What would seventy-odd unexpected American carrier aircraft have done to surprise Hiryū or Sōryū? Or, at the very least, Fletcher’s task force could have evacuated Wake if he’d arrived several days earlier. One wonders how history could have changed for the atoll’s surviving defenders if Kimmel had reacted decisively, or if Halsey’s carrier had been the closer task force to Wake.
But it was not to be.
At 0235 Gun Number 10, a .50-caliber Marine machine gun on Wilkes, opened fire toward the sound of engines in the crashing surf, and its sixty-inch searchlight slashed through the darkness, catching a Japanese landing craft grinding onto the coral. Also illuminated in the glare were the two old destroyer transports, now designated as Patrol Boats 32 and 33, aground south of Wake’s beach with assault troops swarming ashore. Just before 0300 Cunningham radioed Pearl Harbor “island under gunfire. Enemy apparently landing.”
Admiral Pye was now faced with the type of decision that makes or breaks careers, and that can haunt a commander for the rest of his life. “The real question at issue,” Pye later wrote, “is, shall we take the chance of the loss of a carrier group to attempt to attack the enemy forces in the vicinity of Wake.” With enemy forces landing, the atoll appeared to be past saving, but to his credit the admiral considered offensive action even with the potential destruction of Task Force 14 worth the risk. Admiral Harold Stark, chief of naval operations (CNO), did not. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, any carrier loss would critically weaken an already weakened Pacific Fleet. As of yet, there was no clear picture of where the Japanese would next strike; Hawaii, and even the U.S. West Coast, were not beyond the realm of possibilities. Stark made the decision that Wake was now a “liability” and recalled Task Force 14. From the Main Navy Building in Washington, D.C., this seemed quite logical. Yet 6,700 miles west, those isolated on a lonely atoll in a vast ocean facing death or a long, brutal captivity did not face such an abandonment quite so objectively.
The next few hours on Wake were punctuated by enemy landings, and the confusion of the battle was worsened by loss of communications. Japanese flags appeared across the middle of the atoll, and at least a dozen warships were now visible beyond the shoreline. On Wilkes, a handful of Marines under Lieutenant John McAllister were assaulted by one hundred SNLF troops of the Takano Unit. After several hours of hard fighting, there were no more Japanese, and the lieutenant counted ninety-four enemy bodies—the enemy unit had been killed to the last man. But even victories like this could not prevent Wake’s conquest, and by early afternoon it was apparent to the bloodied defenders that the island must fall. Cunningham surrendered, and 1,622 brave Americans began, in some cases, a nearly four-year fight for survival in captivity.*
Staggering from bad news on every front, America clung to Wake’s heroic defense and tragic end with desperate pride. George Gallup’s latest poll found fully 97 percent of the country favored all-out war with Japan, and he added “although the particular time and place of the outbreak of hostilities came as a surprise, war with Japan was not unexpected by the public.” Thomas Holcomb, commandant of the Marine Corps, would write:
“Wake Island began the war magnificently for the Marine Corps, and America found that the old soldierly virtues are still embodied in its fighting men.… Out of such actions as this a people’s strength and ultimate victory must come. America remembers Wake Island and is proud. The enemy remembers Wake Island and is uneasy.”
Tokyo should have taken the surprising resistance on Wake and in the Philippines as a warning, but did not. The worst strategic scenario imagined by the American chiefs of staff would be a concentrated Japanese thrust between New Guinea and Wake Island. Though the Japanese realized invading Australia was beyond its current military capabilities, neither Washington nor Melbourne knew that in early 1942. Tokyo did understand the desirability, but not the urgency, of isolating the continent from American seaborne support. Had Japan immediately slashed southwest into the Solomons from its bases in the Marshalls and Gilberts, imperial forces could have fanned out and quite likely taken American Samoa and the Fijis. This would cut the vital U.S. supply line between the U.S. West Coast and Australia and complete the outer defensive arc protecting the Japanese Home Islands. Such a move would also leave America with no real base in the Pacific except Hawaii. This done, the resource-rich Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, and the Solomons could be subdued at will with little Allied interference. Such a plan, Operation FS, did exist, but believing the Pacific Fleet was permanently crippled by Pearl Harbor, the Imperial General Staff did not consider it a priority.
A coup de grâce would then be to successfully neutralize the Panama Canal. This would delay U.S. naval reinforcements, specifically aircraft carriers from the Atlantic Fleet or East Coast shipyards, from reaching the Pacific.* Initiated by the French La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique in 1880 to bypass the lengthy, dangerous, and expensive voyage around South America via Cape Horn, the canal was to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by a fifty-mile passage through Panama’s isthmus. After expending one billion francs and losing some twenty-two thousand workers, the bankrupt French concluded it was impossible and abandoned the project. The Americans, recognizing its strategic importance, bought out French interests and began construction in 1907, from both ends, and completed the “impossible” canal in 1914.† The roughly 13,000-nautical-mile voyage from New York to California via the Straits of Magellan or Drake’s Passage was now only five thousand miles through the canal. Steaming time had been shaved from thirty-six to about fourteen days—this was a critical advantage in wartime, especially during 1942, when American assets were scarce and thinly spread.
Aware of all this, the Japanese could have dispatched a half dozen submarines equipped with floatplanes to bomb the canal—specifically, the Gatun Dam. If this was destroyed, there would be no hydroelectric power and the locks would be useless, thus putting the canal out of commission. Variants of the imperial A-, B-, and J-class submarines all carried E14Y Glen floatplanes that were launched from a deck catapult. In fact, the only fixed-wing aerial attack on the United States mainland was executed by I-25, a B1 scout submarine, against a pair of targets in Oregon.* With a 475-nautical-mile range, the Glen was certainly capable of hitting Gatun Dam from a launch point in the Gulf of Panama. Of course, the Americans would find a way to repair any damage, but this would take valuable resources and time, which would give the Japanese a relatively free hand for a bit longer in the Pacific.
American military strategists, and President Roosevelt, were also quite aware of this possibility, but they were facing critical decisions on all fronts at the moment. First and foremost was the challenge to overcome two decades of political and financial neglect and rebuild the armed forces as quickly as possible. A $58 billion budget was rapidly approved by the Seventy-Seventh Congress, and within six weeks of Pearl Harbor the newly created War Production Board would cover 25,000 prime contractors and 120,000 subcontractors manufacturing everything from fighter aircraft to GI socks.
Over nine million tons of new shipping was required for 1942, and nearly double that for 1943. Existing shipyards and factories were converted to war production, and dozens more built from scratch. The lingering Depression-era unemployment, which peaked at 25 percent, fell to 4.7 percent in 1942, then effectively disappeared until 1946. America was now in the war with a vengeance—but the six months following Pearl Harbor were critical, and any gains made would have to be paid for in blood. For the first six months of 1942 it was imperative to disrupt and blunt enemy momentum until the United States could stand firmly on a war footing. This was especially true in the Pacific, where America stood virtually alone against Japan.
A gesture was needed.
Franklin Roosevelt had been thinking of this since Wake Island and Guam. Some act of defiance against overwhelming odds to demonstrate to the world, and more important to the American people, that the Japanese Empire was not unassailable. That it also could be attacked and wounded.
2 THE DRAGON’S MOUTH
Engines roaring, Captain Ed York muscled the B-25 through a sluggish left turn away from the Hornet’s bow. On the ragged edge of a stall, he wanted to drop the nose to gain airspeed, but the tossing wave tops were so close he could see into the troughs. There was no real horizon to watch, and he didn’t want to fly on instruments fifty feet over the ocean, so Ski eyeballed the cloud bottoms to stay level.
One heartbeat.
Two heartbeats … he felt the props bite into the heavy, wet air and slowly lift the bomber up away from the sea. Easing the yoke back and further left, York brought the Mitchell up to one hundred feet, then rolled out parallel to the carrier heading in the opposite direction. Leaving the flaps down, he accelerated to 170 miles per hour, then retracted the flaps. Tugging the throttles back to hold the airspeed, he stared back through the side window and let the Hornet’s fantail drift under the wing. When it passed beneath his tail, York booted the rudder and twisted the yoke left again. Leaning forward against his harness, he stared from the front quarter window and then played the turn to roll out a half mile behind the carrier and about two hundred yards off her starboard side. Fighting the gusts to stay level and stable, Plane 8 charged ahead and passed the carrier as another B-25 lumbered off her bow. Before takeoff, the Hornet’s navigator had given them all the ship’s heading, and down in the nose compartment navigator Nolan Herndon adjusted his compass to match it. Both pilots did the same.
310 degrees.
With the Hornet’s coordinates, 35º43' N, 153º25' E, and now a baseline heading, Herndon computed Plane 8’s inbound course. A heading of 243 degrees for 710 statute miles would bring them to the Boso Peninsula—Cape Inubo, to be precise. The best landmark on eastern Honshu, Inubo was an eight-mile shark tooth jutting out from the mouth of the Tone River between Toriakeura Bay and the Kashima Sea. At 170 miles per hour, no wind, Herndon calculated it would take them four hours and six minutes to make landfall. From the cape it was about the same heading for their target, and if York pushed the airspeed up to at least 240 miles per hour, Plane 8 would cover the sixty miles into Tokyo in another fifteen minutes. Confirming this via intercom, the navigator promised a fuel-consumption update in an hour. Ten feet behind Herndon and five feet above, the two pilots exchanged glances. That, they knew, would be an interesting number. Loosening their lap belts and shoulder harnesses, both men were relieved to be airborne and, not for the first time, wondered how they’d gone from flying bombers over Oregon to this bleak spot in the Pacific heading straight into the mouth of the imperial Japanese dragon.
Sixteen Army bombers flew off an aircraft carrier that morning because on a cold Saturday in January 1942, a weary Navy captain came to a historic decision. Francis Stuart Low, known as Frog to his Annapolis classmates and friends, had just returned from Norfolk, Virginia, with a startling idea. While waiting for takeoff back to Washington, he’d noticed several Army bombers making practice attacks on the runway, which was painted to simulate a carrier deck. The sight of medium-range, land-based bombers and the outline of an aircraft carrier suddenly combined into a shocking notion, and he thought of nothing else on the short trip back to the capital. Upon his return, Low, who served under the Commander, U.S. Fleet (COMINCH), proceeded immediately to the gunboat USS Vixen (PG-53), docked at the Washington Navy Yard on the Anacostia River. He intended to risk a conversation with his notoriously short-tempered chief.*
Sixty-three-year-old Admiral Ernest Joseph King was generally disliked personally but widely admired for his blunt, decisive nature and comprehensive naval experience. He’d been a surface naval officer, attended the New London Submarine School, and then, at age forty-eight, became a naval aviator. A veteran of the Spanish-American War, Veracruz, and the Great War, King had commanded several ships, including the aircraft carrier Lexington. Brilliant and acerbic, the admiral was widely feared for his abrasive personality. One of his daughters would later famously remark, “he is the most even-tempered person in the United States Navy. He is always in a rage.” Nevertheless, Low came aboard the converted motor yacht, where he was also quartered, then proceeded to the admiral’s stateroom, paused, and knocked. Hearing a muffled command to enter, Francis Low turned the knob, then opened the door—and changed the course of events in the Second World War.
Despite Washington’s rhetoric and stubborn defense on Wake Island, Japan’s explosive expansion was still materially unchecked. The British had surrendered Hong Kong, and imperial forces were moving into Borneo. The day Wake fell the Japanese landed on Luzon in the Philippines, and General Douglas MacArthur met this challenge by hosting a Christmas party for his three-year-old son, Arthur. The following day, the general took himself, his family, and personal staff by steamer across Manila Bay to the island fortress of Corregidor, leaving the Philippine capital to its fate. While MacArthur fled to safety, the North Luzon Force’s American and Filipino troops withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and dug in along a series of defensive lines. The First Battle of Bataan, marking the onset of a grueling three-month campaign, began the same day Frog Low knocked on Admiral King’s door.
As a submariner, Low expected a rebuke for proposing an aviation operation but was surprised at King’s reply. “You may have something there,” the admiral grated. “Talk to Duncan about it.”
That night Low called Captain Donald Bradley Duncan and asked to meet the following morning at the Navy Department in downtown Washington. At forty-six years old, Duncan was one of the most experienced naval aviators in the service. Nicknamed Wu due to his slightly Asiatic features, he was a 1917 graduate of Annapolis and earned his gold aviator wings in 1920. Between sea duty Duncan obtained a Master of Science from Harvard and served aboard battleships as well as the carriers Langley, Lexington, and Saratoga before assuming command of the Navy’s first escort carrier, Long Island (CVE-1), in 1941. Ordered back to Washington after December 7, Duncan was Admiral King’s chief of air operations and was slated to command the USS Essex (CV-9) later in 1942.
“There are two big questions to be answered,” Low told Duncan that Sunday morning. “First, can such a plane—a land-based, twin-engine medium bomber—land aboard a carrier?” The Navy pilot wasn’t overly shocked by the question. Such inquiries had already emerged whenever carriers ferried bombers to wherever they were needed in the world, and Wu already knew the answer. “A definite negative.” Low looked surprised, but the pilot continued. “A carrier deck is too short to land an army medium bomber safely. The newest bombers, the North American B-25 Mitchell and Martin B-26 Marauder have tricycle landing gear. The tails are so high off the deck that there is no way to install a landing hook.” He didn’t add that bombers also had a very high landing speed, and even if a hook could be attached the airframe wasn’t designed to take the stress of a sudden, full-stop, arrested landing; it would rip the tail off. There also was no place to stow them below even if they did land since a medium bomber could not fit on the elevator that moved planes down to the hangar deck.
Low exhaled. As a submariner he knew none of this, but plainly Duncan did, though the aviator was surprised by the next question. “Alright. But can such a plane, stripped down to its bare essentials and loaded with bombs and gasoline, take off from a carrier deck?”
Duncan blinked. Ferry missions were not uncommon, but the planes were manually loaded and off-loaded—not flown off. And bombs … Wu blinked again. Obviously, there was more to this than his chief was telling him. “That,” he finally answered, “will take some figuring. I’ll get to work and let you know.”
“All right,” Low replied, then added softly, “But the boss said not to tell another soul what you’re doing.”
Duncan found an empty office and immediately began his preliminary evaluation, slowly becoming more excited as he worked. There had been a lot of speculation about attacking Japan’s Home Islands, but always with carrier aircraft. Though he divined the intent of this request immediately, Wu was too much the professional to let on, and if Frog had wished him to know officially then he would have said so. Someone, probably Low himself, had thought of using army bombers from a carrier, and this appealed to Duncan for several tactical reasons. Medium-range bombers, unlike carrier aircraft, could be launched at least one hundred miles beyond the Japanese pickets that guarded the Home Islands, some three hundred miles out to sea.
Japanese military leaders had considered such an option but were focused on a land-based attack from American bombers potentially operating west from China, not a carrier threat from the east. However, with the success of the recent U.S. carrier raids, especially against Marcus Island, this might have changed. Nevertheless, if Army bombers could take off four hundred miles from Japan’s coast, then there was a very good chance of arriving over their targets undetected. The point was moot, though, as landing on a carrier was not feasible. But Wu had a startlingly obvious thought: just because a plane took off from a carrier didn’t mean it had to land on one—and that raised some fascinating possibilities.
Any plan would hinge on the selected bomber’s capabilities and limitations, so from operations manuals and through U.S Army Air Force staff officers he knew, Duncan began noting available aircraft.* He eliminated the Douglas B-18 Bolo, which was already obsolete in 1942. Lockheed’s Hudson light bombers were almost all slotted for the Royal Air Force, and Consolidated’s B-24 Liberator was a heavy bomber; its monstrous 110-foot wingspan made it impractical for use off a carrier. The Douglas A-20 Havoc looked promising: small enough to fit and fast enough for the mission, but most of them were spoken for as well. Besides, if the bomber wasn’t going to return to the carrier, that necessitated a landing in friendly territory, which meant Russia or China, and neither was truly an option for the Havoc’s 945-mile range. The choice eventually came down to two aircraft: Martin’s B-26 and the B-25 from North American. Both were new medium bombers that had first flown in late 1940, and both were regarded as state-of-art, frontline aircraft.
Duncan learned that both aircraft had been designed in response to Air Corps Proposal 39–640, which stated the bombers were to exceed three hundred miles per hour and carry a three-thousand-pound bombload at least two thousand miles. Seven aircraft companies entered bids, and in August 1939, twenty-two days before the German invasion of Poland, Secretary of War Henry Woodring divided the 385-aircraft contract between James “Dutch” Kindelberger’s North American Aviation and the Glenn L. Martin company.
Martin’s Model 179 design would evolve into the B-26 Martian (fortunately, this was later changed to Marauder), but clogged fuel lines, leaking hydraulics, and other issues would plague its production. Though comparable to the B-25 in range, payload, and airspeed, the Marauder was heavier, had a longer wingspan, and carried a crew of seven against five for the Mitchell. After five days of research, Wu Duncan decided Kindelberger’s B-25 was the only real choice.
