Dufilo’s guns jammed, so “Butch,” as O’Hare was known, attacked alone, damaging one bomber and sending three more down in flames. Originally it was believed he destroyed five aircraft, but by single-handedly disrupting the attack, Butch very likely saved the carrier from severe damage and perhaps prevented its total loss. A hero when America desperately needed one, Edward O’Hare became the first World War Two naval aviator to be awarded the Medal of Honor.* Having lost the element of surprise but determined to create as much confusion for the enemy as possible, Admiral Brown continued toward Rabaul until sunset, then reversed course out to sea. The Japanese lost sixteen of eighteen bombers during their two strikes and a pair of four-engined patrol planes. Wilson’s task force lost two Wildcats, but one of the pilots was safely recovered.
In the meantime, Nimitz ordered Halsey to sea again, and after a quick turnaround Enterprise sortied from Pearl Harbor on Valentine’s Day, headed toward Wake Island. February 24, sixty-three days after the Japanese flag broke over Wake, Enterprise swung into the wind and launched fifty-one aircraft against any enemy shipping, aircraft, and shore batteries in place on the atoll. Opening fire at 0742, the heavy cruisers Northampton and Salt Lake City, with a pair of destroyers, pummeled the atoll with 1,868 rounds of high explosive. Again caught by surprise, Japanese defenses responded sporadically, and the task force vanished back out to sea with the loss of a single Dauntless scout bomber.
The following day Nimitz ordered Halsey, fuel permitting, to continue seven hundred nautical miles northwest from Wake and attack Marcus Island. Annexed by the Japanese in 1898, the island was only 1,148 miles from Tokyo, so striking it would be hitting Japanese territory, certainly rattling the Imperial General Staff. On March 4, Enterprise once again turned in to the wind and launched a thirty-seven-aircraft strike, but with overcast skies navigation to the 372-acre flyspeck would be problematic. However, the Americans hit on a novel solution. Unlike imperial carriers, U.S. carriers were all equipped with radar, and the Enterprise’s CXAM-1 set was used to vector the aircraft to Marcus, where they achieved complete surprise. Fuel storage and hangars were badly mauled, and the carrier air group again vanished out to sea with the loss of a single aircraft.
Six days later, in the first U.S. Navy combined carrier action, Lexington and Yorktown launched 104 aircraft, led by Commander Bill Ault, over the Papuan Peninsula’s rugged Owen Stanley Mountains against Japanese forces landing at Lae and Salamaua. Sliding in from the Coral Sea along the Australian side of New Guinea, the flattops were undetected, and the Japanese again badly surprised. Four transports were sunk, a destroyer badly damaged, and the light cruiser Yūbari hit so hard she was sent back to Japan. One Dauntless from the Lexington was lost over Lae.
By now the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff was alarmed, and the carrier raids forced a shift from grand strategy to tactical details. The Americans were in no way defeated, and the raids proved they could, and would, attack anywhere at will as long as their carriers remained operational. The General Staff had been pushing Operation FS, a major southeasterly thrust toward Fiji and American Samoa, and now this became a priority. But shipping, exacerbated by the American raid on Lae, was a problem. Japan had limited logistical capacities, and any loss or damage of crucial transports would inhibit operations in the southwest Pacific. The American carrier raids also demonstrated to some that the Home Islands might be vulnerable, but the Imperial General Staff dismissed such concerns, though they did order the line of early-warning picket ships moved farther out to some seven hundred miles east of Honshu. This was sufficient, Tokyo believed, as the Americans did not possess the means from which to attack the sacred Home Islands. Carrier aviation was range-limited, and the pickets would provide ample warning. As for land-based bombers, there was no evidence of U.S. bases on mainland China or in the Maritime Territory of the Soviet Union.
One vote.
On the heels of the war in Europe and the embargo against Japan that would certainly lead to war, the U.S. House of Representatives extended the military draft by a single vote on August 12, 1941. Men were easy enough to train, but what of modern equipment, specifically aircraft, to fight the imminent war? Years of budget cuts, isolationism, and financial upheavals had left the American military emasculated, and the Air Corps was no exception. More funds were allocated for hay and calvary horses than for aircraft development during the 1930s, and now the piper had to be paid. Nonetheless, in less than twenty years warplanes had evolved from underpowered fabric kites into serious and expensive weapons—particularly in nations now aligned against the United States. Fighters, still known as pursuit aircraft, were undergoing their own metamorphosis due to lessons learned from the 1940 Battle of Britain, but bombers were another matter altogether.
A medium bomber, one that packed a punch, could protect itself, and fly at near fighter speeds for long distances, was deemed an acceptable compromise between cost and capability. In March 1939, the Air Corps issued Proposal 39–640 to top American manufacturers for just such an aircraft. North American Aviation, which would also produce the iconic P-51 Mustang fighter, answered with an innovative design they called NA-62, but would later be designated the B-25 medium bomber.
As Wu Duncan surmised, this was the only aircraft for the mission, but he did not know enough about the technical details to completely vouch for its feasibility. Fortunately, the man sitting sixty feet down the hallway from Hap Arnold did know, and he was promptly called to Arnold’s office. Short, balding, and with a certain professorial air, the man hardly fit the image of the stereotypical military pilot. But then he never had.
“I had long curls, which promptly classified me as a sissy,” James H. Doolittle later wrote of his childhood in Nome, Alaska. “At about age five, I had my first fight.” Apparently, one day an Eskimo boy began punching the little chechako, or newcomer, and Jimmy promptly struck back, smashing his opponent’s nose: “Blood spurted over his parka … I ran home to my mother, certain I had killed an Eskimo.”
Doolittle’s father, Frank Henry, was a skilled carpenter from Alameda, California, who had gone north with the Klondike gold rush in 1897 after the birth of his only son. Eventually buying passage for his family on the SS Zealandia, Jimmy and his mother joined Frank during the summer of 1900. Moving into a comfortable house built by Frank, who was doing well enough as a carpenter he had no need to become a miner, as an only child Jimmy described his upbringing as “spoiled.” Nome was a tough place to grow up. One day he and a friend were walking through town and the other boy tripped. Before he could get up, a half dozen ferocious malemute sled dogs tore the child to pieces.
Shorter than the other boys, Doolittle grew up tough; “I had to fight all the time,” he recalled, though he had no idea how much this pugnacious attitude would shape most of his life. Always a scrapper and not much interested in school, Jimmy was frequently at odds with his father and later wrote, “I told him when I was big enough, I was going to whip him.”
It was a short childhood.
Three things changed the course of his life forever. At seven years of age, he took a six-week trip with his father to Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and “saw everything in a new perspective.” There were trains, automobiles, trolley cars, and modern houses; the world suddenly and irreversibly opened up for him. When his mother moved back to California, Jimmy happily accompanied her, and it was there, in January 1910, that Doolittle discovered aviation at the Los Angeles International Air Meet. Captivated by a sky full of biplanes, monoplanes, and blimps, he decided to build his own glider and promptly began selling newspapers and doing odd jobs to make enough money for the project. From a 1909 Popular Mechanics article, Jimmy painstakingly constructed his aircraft from wood, fabric, and piano wire, then towed it to a cliff in a wagon. Demonstrating the absolute fearlessness that would serve him so well later in life, the boy “strapped it on and ran toward the edge.”
He plummeted straight down with the glider on top of him. Bruised, bleeding, but undeterred, the boy decided “what was needed was more speed.” One friend of his could get to his father’s car, so after repairing the glider Doolittle tied it, and himself, to the rear bumper while his buddy drove. The car quickly outpaced the boy and his glider, so in desperation Jimmy jumped into the air hoping to fly rather than be dragged. Though he managed to briefly get airborne, there was no lift, so boy and glider crashed back to the ground and were dragged behind the car. With no money to build another aircraft, Doolittle took up boxing courtesy of Forest Bailey, his English teacher. Once the five-foot-four-inch teenager learned the difference between street brawling and the science of boxing, he began winning flyweight and bantamweight amateur bouts along the West Coast. His mother, unenthused by his battered face and ungentlemanly behavior, bought him a motorcycle in hopes that he would quit boxing. Jimmy simply used it for travel to matches beyond walking distance, but tinkering with the machine awakened a latent interest in machinery that would serve him well in later years. Now fifteen, a final significant event occurred that truly changed the course of his life.
A girl.
Josephine “Jo” Daniels was not just any girl but a beautiful, intelligent southern belle from Louisiana. She was everything Doolittle was not: cultured and well mannered, a straight-A student, and admired by all, especially Jimmy. He knew if he was to have any hope with her, then he would have to change—and change he did. Enrolling in Los Angeles junior college, he transferred to the School of Mines at the University of California, Berkeley. Doolittle’s initial plan was a degree in mining engineering, but this was altered with America’s entry into the Great War. Enlisting in the Army’s Signal Corps, he was sent to aviation ground school back at Berkeley and married Josephine on Christmas Eve, 1917, before his commissioning as a second lieutenant.
Unable to get to Europe to fight before the war ended, Jimmy went on to receive his degree from UC Berkeley, then served as a test pilot before earning a master’s of science and a doctorate in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Winning the Schneider Cup and the Mackay Trophy, Doolittle resigned his commission and headed to Shell Oil’s Aviation Department, where he was largely responsible for the development of hundred-octane fuel. Jimmy went on to win the Bendix and Thompson Trophies, then became president of the Institute of Aeronautical Science. He had come a long, long way from the undersized, unruly boy off the streets of Nome that no one, except Jo, believed would amount to anything. By 1940, with war looming, he was accepted back on active duty as a major and was serving at Army Air Forces Headquarters in Washington when Pearl Harbor was attacked. At age forty-five, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel the week before Frog Low went to see Admiral King about his bomber notion.
Hap Arnold briefed Doolittle on the concept of the raid, Admiral King’s interest, and Wu Duncan’s preliminary assessment. “Jim … I need someone to take this over and—”
“And I know where you can get that someone!” he interrupted excitedly, and Arnold smiled.
“Okay … it’s your baby. You’ll have first priority on anything you need to get the job done. Get in touch with me directly if anybody gets in your way.”
And that was it. Jimmy had his “verbal marching orders” from the head of the Army Air Forces, and that was sufficient. Arnold despised paperwork and gave verbal orders whenever possible. In any event, there wasn’t time to put together staff packages and feasibility studies. He had to trust the expert knowledge and professionalism of those he selected to do jobs for him. Hap was also under pressure to explore the feasibility of another concept: bombing Japan from China or the Soviet Union. On January 28, he was at a meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Admiral King, and President Roosevelt, who wanted to know what progress was being made on attacking Japan from the Asian continent. Arnold had some thoughts about that that were tied to the Doolittle Raid, but for now they would have to wait.
Doolittle also loathed paperwork, but organized his thoughts about the raid and its requirements in memorandum form for Arnold. In part, it read:
Subject: B25B Special Project
To: Commanding General Army Air Forces
The purpose of this special project is to bomb and fire the industrial centers of Japan. It is anticipated that this will not only cause confusion and impeded production but will undoubtedly facilitate operations against Japan in other theatres due to their probable withdrawal of troops for the purpose of defending the home country.
An action of this kind is most desirable now due to the psychological effect on the American public, our allies and our enemies.
The method contemplated is to bring carrier borne bombers to within 400 or 500 miles (all distances mentioned will be in statute miles) of the coast of Japan, preferably to the south-southeast.
They will then take off from the carrier deck and proceed directly to selected objectives. These objectives will be military and industrial targets in the Tokyo-Yokahama [sic], Nagoya and Osaka-Kobi areas.
Simultaneous bombings of these areas is contemplated with the bombers coming in up waterways from the southeast and, after dropping their bombs, returning in the same direction. After clearing the Japanese outside coastline a sufficient distance a general westerly course will be set for one or more of the following airports in China: Chuchow (Lishui), Yushan and or Chien. C … chow is about seventy miles inland and two hundred twenty miles to the south south-west of Shanghai.
After refueling the airplanes will proceed to the strong Chinese air base at Chungking, about 800 miles distant, and from there to such […] as may, at that time, be indicated!
The greatest nonstop distance that any airplane will have to fly is 2000 miles.
Eighteen B25B (North American Medium Bomber) airplanes will be employed in this raid. Each will carry about 1100 gallons of gasoline which assures a range of 2400 miles at 5000 feet altitude in still air.
Each bomber will carry two 500# demolition bombs and as near as possible to 1000# of incendiaries. The demolition bombs will be dropped first and then the incendiaries.
The extra gasoline will be carried in a 275-gallon auxiliary leak proof tank in the top of the bomb bay and a 175-gallon flexible rubber tank in the passageway above the bomb bay. It is anticipated that the gasoline from this top tank will be used up and the tank flattened out or rolled up and removed prior to entering the combat zone. This assures that the airplane will be fully operational and minimizes the fire and explosion hazard characteristic of a near empty tank.
In all other respects the airplanes are conventional.
The work of installing the required additional tankage is being done by Mid-Continent Airlines at Minneapolis. All production and installation work is progressing according to schedule and the 24 airplanes (6 spares) should be completely converted by March 15th.
Extensive range and performance tests will be conducted on #1 article while the others are being converted. A short period will be required to assemble and give special training to the crews. The training will include teamwork in bombing, gunnery, navigation, flying, short take off and at least one carrier takeoff for each pilot.
If the crews are selected promptly from men familiar with their jobs and the B-25-B airplane the complete unit should be ready for loading on the carrier by April 1st.
General operational instructions in the use of his particular equipment will be supplied to each crew member for study and practice. Final operational instructions will be issued just before take-off from the carrier.
