Jimmy Doolittle Releases the Brakes

A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the air. The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been retained many times and the end is not yet. The Japanese words "Kido-Butai" translates simply as "mobile force". Ten aircraft carriers organized into five divisions of two carriers each. Kido-Butai was invincible. That's not high-perfect. With only three of its five carrier divisions, the fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo planes of Kido-Butai sank virtually everything afloat at the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in the early morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. And Pearl Harbor had just been the beginning. On December 8, British forces detected a Japanese invasion confoibound from Malaya and dispatched the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS repulse to intercept. Two days later, land-based Japanese aircraft sank both of them, taking 840 men down with them. On February 18, British American and Dutch forces sent three cruisers, seven destroyers, two submarines, and 20 aircraft. To intercept a Paltry Japanese force, two transports as forted by four destroyers headed for the island of Bali. By the end of the next day, they'd lost two destroyers sunk and one cruiser damaged. All six Japanese ships continued on their mission. Now that same day, February 19, 1942, the first and second carrier divisions of Kido-Butai fresh from their attack on Pearl Harbor launched two devastating air attacks against the city of Darwin on the north coast of Australia. They sank 11 Allied ships and damaged 25 more. 236 Allied personnel died in the raid, the Japanese losses were two men killed and one taken prisoner. On February 27, the Allies mustered everything they had left and hurled it at the Japanese invasion force headed for the island of Java. 12 hours later, two of the three Allied light cruisers had been sunk, a heavy cruiser had been damaged and three of the nine destroyers were at the bottom as well. No Japanese ships were lost. 2,300 American, British, Dutch and Australian sailors had been killed in the battle of the Java Sea. The Japanese lost 36 men. That is what the Allies were facing less than three months into the war in the Pacific. 12 hours later, the Allies were in the battle of the Java Sea. On the night of December 8, 1941, the American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise glided slowly into Pearl Harbor. Now she had been scheduled to arrive on the sixth, just two days earlier, just in time to be sunk with the rest of the twisted wreckage, capsized hulls and American bodies that surrounded the American flat top as she came home. Leaning against the rail, just outside of the bridge was her skipper Admiral William H. Halsey. Halsey looked at the sunken tombs of so many of his friends and muttered, "Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell." Halsey was America's most aggressive admiral, and in those early dark and despairing days of the Pacific War, sometime it seemed that all America had left to fight the Japanese with was Bill Halsey's attitude. American soldiers and sailors entering the US front line base at Tulagi would pass a building board that read, "Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs," signed Admiral William F. Halsey. When the body counts started to climb later in the war, Halsey was asked if it was possible for the US Navy to peacefully share the ocean with the Japanese. Halsey replied, "Absolutely. We'll take the top of the Pacific and they can have the body." And there was the problem. Once the might of Kido Buti, ten carrier decks filled with superbly trained, seasoned, and confident pilots, stood USS Enterprise, USS Lexington, USS Saratoga, and USS Yorktown. The men aboard them were amateurs compared to the Japanese flyers and their obsolete aircraft no match for the nimble and lethal zeros and the deadly Japanese torpedo and dive bombers. How on earth could you attack an enemy so powerful with a force so weak? US Fleet Commander Admiral Ernest King was perhaps the most despised Allied leader of the war. He was a thoroughly unpleasant man. His fits of rage were legendary. One of his own daughters once described the admiral as the most even tempered man in the Navy. He's always in a rage. But like Halsey, King was a natural born fighter and the inability to act on that inborn aggression grieved him daily. King's chief of staff was Navy Captain Francis Lo. One night in January of 1942, Lo went to see King aboard his yacht, the Vixen, and asked if he could discuss what he called a foolish idea. Lo went on to describe what he had seen during his final inspection of the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, USS Hornet. A shore at a nearby airfield per air cruise had marked out an area the size of the Hornets flight deck had been practicing takeoffs and landings. Admiral, if the army has some plane that could take off in that short distance, I mean, a plane capable of carrying a bomb load. Couldn't we put a few of them on a carrier and bomb the mainland of Japan? Might even bomb Tokyo. King's eyes lit up. He leaned back in his chair and he said, "Low, that might be a good idea." When Lo's idea was presented to Hap Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, Arnold knew who to call. One member of his staff happened to be the most accomplished pilot in the world. Arnold called him into his office and laid out the problem. Jim, what airplane do we have that can take off in 500 feet, carry a 2,000 pound bomb load and fly 2,000 miles with a full crew? Well there's only one airplane that can do that, reply the celebrity. The B-25 is the answer to that question. Lo called him back to his office the next day. Jim, I need someone to take this job over and I know where you can get that someone, replied the small, bulleted man. He was just 5'4" tall and his name was James Harold Doe-Livell, known universally as Jimmy. Jimmy had always been smaller than the other boys his age and in Ruffin-Tumbo Gold Rush Alaska. That man had to learn how to fight. He learned a box and discovered that he liked it. In 1912 at the age of 15, he would win the amateur boxing championship of the Pacific Coast in the 105 pound flyweight division. Since my size was against me, he would say, I decided my survival could be insured only by a speedy attack right from the start. I found it was easy to draw blood if you were nimble on your feet aimed at the fellow's nose and got your licks in early. Now flight to interesting from the moment he'd heard about the Wright Brothers achievement back when he was 6 years old. He enlisted in the army. He passed his ground school and then found himself at Rockwell Field in San Diego where he got his first ever airplane ride on January 28, 1918. Doe-Livell turned out to be an excellent pilot and something much less common as well. He was an excellent teacher too. He was heartbroken when told that he'd be sitting out World War I in Southern California setting other men his age off to France. But his superior officers' reports were glowing. One of the most daring and skillful young aviators in the air service accomplished in the highest form of combat training, Reddit typical one. He became the first man to fly across the United States in less than 24 hours. Much of that in the thunderstorm completely blind. His engineering mind and daredevil soul was such a potent combination that the army entered it in the 1925 Schneider Cup contest. His average speed of 232 mph was a full 55 mph faster than the previous year's record. The Schneider Cup by the way was a C-plane race and Doe-Livell had never flown a C-plane before. On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doe-Livell climbed into the rear cockpit of a consolidated NY-2 Husky. Then he zipped the canvas cover over his head. It was pitch black in there except for the lights on the instruments that he had helped design. A safety pilot by the name of Ben Kelsey sat in the front cockpit to take over if he got into real trouble. Doe-Livell gun the engine and lift it off. Chelsea, we do the analysis. entire flight with both arms held high above his head to prove to observers on the ground that he was not doing the flying. Now using the artificial horizon, a supersensitive altimeter, the airspeed indicator, a gyroscopic compass and a stopwatch, do a little flew out two miles distant, turned around, flew back the same number of seconds, then chopped the engine, and when it indicated 15 feet above the field, he cut the power, glided to a landing, and came to a stop a few feet from where he started. It was the world's first instrument flight. That took real courage, Road Hat Arnold, before inviting him to join his staff. There was no cheering crowd, no audience, just Jim Doolittle risking one life that many others may live. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of US forces in the Pacific, was under almost unbearable pressure. He was being asked to send not one of his precious carriers into Japanese home waters, but two. Hornets Flight Deck would be loaded with B-25s. She would still have much of her airwhing aboard, but there was no way to get them up to the flight deck and no room for them even if they could. So Nimitz would not just be risking a Hornet, Enterprise was going to to provide fighter cover and scout planes. Now, if they ran into anything really unpleasant, they would push the Army planes overboard and get Hornets fighters up into the air as well. Now there was only one man for this job, and Nimitz summoned him to his office and laid out the cards. Do you believe this will work, Billy asked? Now they're going to need a lot of luck, replied Halsey. He was being asked to sail his newest aircraft carrier right to the doorstep of Japan in addition to his old Warhorse Enterprise, essentially half what was left of the Navy, to escort army bombers on a mission that might not even get off the deck. Are you willing to take them out there? As Nimitz? Yes, I am, replied Halsey. Now according to the pilots operating handbook for the North American B-25 Mitchell, at maximum gross weight with no headwind, 3,800 feet of runway were needed to get airborne. The total length of Hornet's deck was 814 feet but it was even worse than that. The big army bombers were too big for the elevators or hangers and they'd have to be stored right on the flight deck. The 16 bombers would take up so much room that the first airplane to take off, do littles aircraft, rate or one, would have just 467 feet of deck in front of it. That's 12% of what the manual said he needed. Now do a little realize right away that the runway length had nothing to do with the actual problem, which was getting a B-25 up to its minimum flying speed, which is a tad over 110 miles an hour, so let's say 115. Now the good news is, the wings don't care what the wheels are doing. All that mattered was 115 miles an hour of airspeed moving over the wing, that moving air is called relative wind. Now USS Hornet had a top speed of 37 miles per hour. If there happened to be, say, a 14 mile an hour headwind blowing and that's not unusual in the Pacific in April and Hornet turned into the wind, then you get the 14 miles per hour of the actual headwind plus the 37 miles per hour of the carrier and that means that a B-25 sitting stationary on the flight deck would already have 51 miles per hour of relative wind over the wing before moving an inch. Now with 51 miles per hour of relative wind, the takeoff roll drops from 3,800 feet to 1,100 feet. That's better, but it's not. And the only thing left to play with was the aircraft's weight. A full bomb load for the B-25 is 3,000 pounds consisting of 600-500 pound bombs. Now you could instantly pull 3,000 pounds of weight off the airplane by removing all the bombs flying to Tokyo and dropping a harshly worded letter, but that kind of defeats the purpose. Do a little team decided on four bombs instead of six and that saved a thousand pounds. The Mitchell's 50 caliber machine guns weighed about 100 pounds each and the hundreds of rounds of their huge bullets weighed a lot too. The bottom turret on the Mitchell was useless so they got rid of the twin 50s below and the entire turret assembly. Now to cover his blind spot in the rear, Do a little had his crew punch a pair of sawd off, black painted broomsticks out the rear of the airplane. There were no tail guns on the early B-25s, but the Japanese didn't know that. They would also be flying far too low to use the 75 pound, $10,000 northern bomb site. They replaced it with a jury rig version that weighed a few ounces, cost 22 cents, and worked just great. The radios weighed about 200 pounds, but they'd be observing strict radio silence so they were ditched as well. Now all they had to do was test these calculations off the coast of Japan. The cruisers and destroyers began to leave the San Francisco Navy yard at about a quarter hundred eight in the morning on April 2, 1942, and Hornet passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge at 11.13 a.m. Edmund Mark Mischer, Halsey's most aggressive carrier driver after Halsey himself would command the Hornet, Halsey and his Enterprise Strike Group would rendezvous in mid-ocean north of Hawaii. Now here this said Admiral Mischer speaking to every one of the 2,900 men aboard the Hornet, this ship will carry the army bombers to the coast of Japan for the bombing of Tokyo. Lieutenant Tom Lynch said the effect of that announcement was unlike anything the crew had or would ever experience again. It was the biggest thrill of the war he remembered. We were going to bomb Tokyo. Now it didn't take very long for some wag to put new words to a song from Walt Disney Snow White, and before long the entire crew was singing it. "Hiho, hiho, we're off to Tokyo. We'll bomb and blast and come back fast. Hiho, hiho, hiho, hiho." Bill Halsey, USS Enterprise, two cruisers, four destroyers and an Euler left Pearl Harbor on April 8th heading north. By 6.30 a.m. on April 13th, the two task forces had merged. They would get to within 500 miles of the coast of Japan the final leg of which would be under cover of darkness. All 16 B-25s would launch at night, hit their targets while it was still dark, giving his crews a much better chance against enemy fighters and adier craft guns. The raiders would then turn southwest to continue flying through dawn and make a daylight landing in the Chinese airfields that were waiting for them. Now do little, head out that Mishur could get the Hornet within 450 miles of the coast and decided that 650 miles would be the drop dead cutoff point launching any further than that would mean that every raider would have to ditch either over Japan or in the East China Sea. Just before 8 a.m. on April 18th, lookout for board Hornets spotted the Japanese picket boat Nito Maru number 23. Radio operators on the Hornet heard the small Japanese ship report three enemy aircraft carriers sighted and that was it. The game was up. Now the American cruisers immediately opened up on the target but by the time Nito Maru went off the air, they had been continuously broadcasting the location of the American carriers for 27 minutes. Do little was standing beside Mishur on the bridge of the Hornet when the cruisers open fire, but looks like you're going to be on your way soon said the admiral, they know we're here. And most of the raiders were just sitting down to breakfast as Mishur's voice rang out throughout the carrier. Now here this, now here this, Army pilots, man your planes. The surprise was so complete that raider 9's left engine calings were completely off and his maintenance crew had pulled all 28 spark plugs on the 14 cylinder radial engine. Crew 11's pilot Ross Greening had been in the plot room aboard the Hornet when the order came. Do little had wanted to get within 450 miles, 650 miles was his go no go limit. Leading went down to inform Do little that Hornet was 824 miles away from the coast of Japan. Do little just nodded and continued to collect his gear. Now before they headed to the airplanes, Do little had a final word with the 80 men manning the 16 B25s. Launching this far from shore into this kind of a headwind meant that they would have no chance whatsoever of making the coast a China. Every man climbed into a B25 was going to end up in the ocean in Japanese patrol waters at least 200 miles from China. Now as he had all throughout their training, he told them that this was an all volunteer mission, that the dangerous mission that they'd signed up for was now practically suicidal and that if any of them wanted to change their minds, they could do it without casting the slightest dispersion on any single one. Do little had 16 aircraft, but he'd brought 22 crews. And for the past week, the men of the backup crews had been begging and even trying to bribe the 80 men who'd been selected so that they could swap places with them. Not one man of the original 80 dropped down. Radar 2's engineer Douglas Radney captured the feelings not only of the men in that room, but of men who'd volunteered for dangerous missions all throughout history. We were afraid when we took off, but we were more afraid not to. For several days now, they'd been sailing into gale force winds. The deck pitching and heaving as hornets smashed through the waves. No one, not even Bill Halls had ever seen weather like this. It's the only time in my life that I ever saw green water come over the bow and right onto the flight deck of a carrier he would say. Now during an engine warm-up on Raider 7 called the rupture duck, Ted Lawson watched his altimeter fluctuate by as much as 200 feet based on the pitching of the waves. That meant, but now, the entire mission would depend on one man, who turned an Edgar Osborne, the Hornet signal arms. The timing of the takeoff roll had to be perfect. If they began their roll too early, the big B-25s would leave the deck while Hornet was pointed down into the trough of the waves, the bomber and her crew of five would fly directly into the water and the bow of the Hornet would smash them to atoms as it plowed into the next wave. Osborne would have to calculate precisely when to signal the pilot to release his brakes. If he got it right, they would be accelerating downhill during the roll and then as the bow rose to meet the next wave it would practically catapult the big bombers up into the spell. Jimmy Doolittle climbed aboard aircraft number one. Copilot Dick Cole had been warming up the engines, Doolittle strapped in beside him, got on a microphone and said, "Everything all right, Paul?" he asked and back to the flight engineer station, Master Sergeant Paul Leonard did a final scan of the engine gauges. "Everything's okay, Colonel," he said. Doolittle advanced both throttles of the right twin-cycline engines. They were screaming at full power and both Doolittle and Cole had to practically stand on the tow brakes just to hold you in place. Doolittle had an instant to glance over at the words that Misher had painted on the side of Hornet's island in bold black letters. Remember, Curl Harbor, get red. Now Osborne waited as Hornet pressed the wave and started back down into the trunk. 467 feet in front of Doolittle's nose at the football field in half. The carrier deck disappeared into an on-rushing wall of water. Osborne waited as Hornet pressed the wave and started back down into the next truck. Osborne held for just one moment and then he dropped his flight. Doolittle released the brakes and started the roll. It was 8.20 am on April 18, 1942. They'll never make it. Some anonymous sailor shouted his raider-one thundered past Hornet's super-structure. It's right wing missing the carrier's island by about 6 feet. Doolittle's B-25 plummeted out of view below the back. Now back on the rupture duck, navigator Charles McClure felt a knot in his stomach. Doolittle's gone, he remembered thinking, "We're gonna have to make it without it." And then raider-one slowly climbed into view. And with it came a cheer, the likes of which none of the army pilots more Hornet sailors had heard before or would never hear again. Mission Dr. Tom White recalled that the shout that went up should have been heard in Tokyo. We were all yelling and pounding each other on the back. I don't think there was a sound pair of vocal cords in the entire flitile. Now, maybe it was his native optimism, but raider-one's co-pilot Lieutenant Bob Cole didn't have the slightest doubt that they would make it not only to Tokyo but safely onto China. As raider-one droned on westward low over the ocean, Bob Cole started singing "Wabash Cannonball" so loud and stomping his feet so enthusiastically that when he turned away from the white caps flashing under his wing and back to his mission commander, Du Little was staring at him in open mouth amazement. I was singing and stomping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked to me in a very questioning manner like he thought I was going batty. Cole would later remember. The weather had cleared dramatically about 70 miles from the coast. Small boats appeared with more frequency as they got closer to shore. Now, Du Little had ended up making landfall about 30 miles north of Tokyo, and as he banked left, he rationalized that at least the Japanese would not be expecting him to come in from the north. But that's how they came in. Low, very low. Engines roaring 200 feet above the ground, hopping over hills and trees with dick-hole stamping his feet and singing "Wabash Cannonball" the chorus of which reads, "Listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar." As he glides along, the woodlands threw the hills and by the shore. Here the mighty rush of the engine hear the Lonesome Hobos call, traveling through the jungle on the Wabash Cannonball. Each of the raiders came in alone from seemingly every point on the compass and hit target scattered across Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and Kobe. Du Little wanted to strike as wide an area as possible to show the entire nation that they were not safe from the vengeance that they had unleashed on that Sunday morning in Hawaii 132 days earlier. Time and again, they'd seen flights of enemy fighter planes circling overhead, but with a few exceptions, most of the enemy zeroes were searching for them in the sky above, not at a suicidal 75 feet above the ground at the B25's top speed 275 miles an hour. Scattered anti-aircraft fire was ineffective as well. Even though they planned to come in under cover of darkness, every single one of the 16 Du Little Raiders made it to their targets in broad daylight and not a single one of them was shot there. Now all they had to do was get out of there. Even before they'd started their engines, the raiders knew that their early detection meant that they were going to splash into the East China Sea about 200 miles short of the coast. But on the way in, the headwind that they'd been fighting suddenly lussied, and as they left the last of the Japanese islands behind them and headed out into the East China Sea, raider one's navigator Hank Potter could not believe his numbers or his eyes. We've got a tailwind, shouted Porter. The hand that had been holding them back the entire way had not just disappeared. It was now pushing them along, closer to China with every passing minute. Darkness would get there before they did, and a thick fog had gathered just offshore as well. They had been given a miraculous tailwind and now that they were arriving over the Chinese coast they couldn't see anything. Each individual aircraft commander would have to make their own decision as to whether they should bail out and parachute into total darkness or attempt to ditch their B-25s in the sea within swimming distance of shore. Those decisions would now have to be made, and the choices made by the 16 aircraft commanders would determine who was going to live and who was going to die. The primary landing field was at Chuchao, a thick cloud layer and driving rain covered the entire southeastern coast of China. Do little ordered crew ones navigator Hank Potter to get them as close to Chuchao as possible at which point do little set the autopilot and watched as Paul Leonard, Fred Braemer and Hank Potter disappeared into the roaring darkness of the open bomb bay. You see, and you soon dick, he said to his co-pilot and then call dropped into the blackness as well. Do little had flown 2,250 miles in 13 hours of flying much of that at treetop level or low enough for salt spray to cover the windows. He checked his gear and for the third time in his life, hit the silk in order to survive. Do little crew would be the first of the lucky ones. Most of the others would get lucky too, so let's look at the lucky ones first. Every one of the five men comprising crews 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 would make it to China and survive the raid. Rader 8 had been leaking fuel all the way in. Pilot Ski York knew he hadn't the slightest chance of making China, so he diverted to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. Now this caused a major diplomatic dispute between Japan and the USSR. They were on opposite sides of the war, but they did have a non-aggression treaty. But in the end, the Russians would turn a blind eye and let the crew of Rader 8 escape to the British Embassy in Iran after 13 months of internment in the Soviet Union. All of these men, the so-called lucky men, endured great hardship and the tales of the risks that they took and the dangers they faced could and has filled volumes. But they were, in fact, the lucky ones. 12 of the 16 crews would return unharmed that 60 of the 80 men who took off from USS Hornet on April 18th, 1942, including their mission commander, Jimmy Du Little. Every one of the crews that crash landed or bailed out over China would remark on the incredible courage and generosity of the Chinese who had risked their lives to help them. These people are the most sincere, grateful, and just plain wonderful people I've ever seen. Raider 5 pilot, David Jones, speaking on behalf of all of the American airmen. For men who were convinced that they were heading on a suicide mission, it was a remarkable expression of courage, skill, and good fortune. But four of the crews would do worse, and two of them would do much worse. Coincidentally, all four aircraft suffer casualties had been named by their crews. So now, let's take a look at what happened to the men aboard Whiskey Pete, the Green Hornet, the rupture duck, and bat out of hill. The crew of Raider 3, Whiskey Pete, had bailed out significantly closer to Chuchau than do little, but the terrain below them was much worse. Bob Gray, Shorty Manch, and Bombadier Aiden Jones landed without injury. But navigator Chuck Ozuk landed in steep rocky terrain, and he ended up with a deep gash down the length of his leg. He would hang from his parachute hardest bleeding and in great pain, for more than 24 hours before being rescued by the Chinese. But Gunner Leland Factor had parachuted hard into a steep clip in total darkness, which collapsed his shoot. His crewmates found him the next day. Flight engineer Corporal Leland D Factor, aged 20, was dead, killed by either the initial impact or the fall immediately afterward. The other four, including Chuck Ozuk, would make it home with the rest. Ted Lawson, pilot of Raider 7, the ruptured duck, got below the clouds to discover a white sandy beach. He decided to land on the hard, packed sand down by the waterline. He had flaps and gear down when both engines quit while he was about a quarter mile off his shoot. The wheels bit into the water at about 100 miles an hour, causing Raider 7 to decelerate so hard that both Lawson and his co-pilot, Dean Davenport, both, went flying forwards through the small windows while still strapped to the seats. In the plexiglass nose of the B-25, the impact co-bomb a deer, Bob Clever, directly through the plastic and into the ocean. Crew 7's navigator Charles McClure, bashed a shoulder against some armor plate, and he too was thrown from the airplane. The only person not badly injured was Gunner Dave Thatcher, and it would be Thatcher that would keep the rest of his crew alive. When Ted Lawson came too, he found himself strapped to a seat 15 feet underwater. Now fortunately, the impact had activated the co-two cartridge in his life vest, so that when he unbuckled his seat belt, he popped to the surface like a cold. It was dark and it started to rain. He managed to get to the beach, but when he tried to stand up, he realized both legs had gone numb. He started cursing, but his voice sounded funny. He put his hand to his mouth. He could feel his bottom lip flapping against his chin. My upper teeth were bent in, Lawson would later write, "I reached into my mouth with both of my thumbs and put my thumbs behind the teeth and tried to push them out straight again. They bent out straight and then they broke off in my hands. I did the same thing with the bottom teeth and they broke off too, bringing with them pieces of my lower gum." His co-pilot Dick Davenport had also struggled to shore and was appalled at the sight of his aircraft commander. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "You're really bashed open. Your entire face is pushed in." Now meanwhile, navigator Charles McClure tried to swim towards shore, but he realized he couldn't get his arms out of the water. Gradually, I realized that both were broken, he would later say. As he kicked toward the beach, he came upon Bob Clever, whose entire face was red with blood. "Help me," he pleaded when he heard McClure speak to him. "Can't," he replied. "I think both of my arms are broken." "You wouldn't kid me, would you?" McClure assured him that he was not kidding. "Come on, you son of a bitch," Clever shouted back. "Come back and help me." But McClure could barely move himself, and that led to the sorry sight of the two badly wounded men slowly managing to stagger out of the water, cursing each other, and threatening to fight as soon as they got on their feet. Now Dave Thatcher was still aboard the ruptured duck. He heard McClure shouting to him from the shore. Dave Thatcher jumped into the water and started swimming, and just as Thatcher was walking out of the surf, two men appeared on a nearby embankment. Thatcher drew his side arm and aimed at Adam. "Should I shoot him?" he asked. "Tell no," replied McClure. "They're Chinese fishermen." Thatcher wasn't convinced. "How do you know?" "Well, I've read the National Geographic magazine," he replied. The two Chinese fishermen immediately knew that these were American pilots, although they did not yet know from where. One of the fishermen tried to lift McClure who weighed 205 pounds and carry him off the beach. He was a little bit of a squirt, he would later remember fondly, partly more than four-feet tollum weighing not more than a hundred pounds ringing wet. But he backed up manfully and tried to take my arms over his shoulders. Now that caused McClure to bellow in pain so the fisherman bent over and carried the American airman 200 yards to his house. Soon all four of the injured men were inside the small, thatched hut and thatcher was doing everything in his power to get them patched up. Davenport had a deep gash in one leg. By morning he would not be able to walk. McClure's shattered shoulders were already beginning to swell all the way to his elbows. Clever had a sprained hip that prevented him from walking and most of his scalp had been torn away by the razor sharp plastic he'd been thrown through. But Ted Lawson was in the worst shape. Thatcher could clearly see the shocking white of his femur and shin bones in Lawson's left leg. His face had been smashed and thatcher estimated that he lost at least 19. Dave Thatcher took a lantern and went back out to the wreck trying to get the medical supply stored in the tail. But the tide had come in since they ditched and ruptured duck was mostly underwater. Soon after he returned to the hut a third man appeared and through sign language managed to communicate the Japanese troops were now searching the island and that Thatcher's only chance was to come with him immediately before the patrols arrived. But Thatcher wasn't leaving his crew. He managed to make it clear that they needed to get to a hospital right away but the nearest hospital was a long, long way away. Many day said the third man. Many. By morning a small crowd of Chinese had assembled outside and began to construct litters out of bamboo poles, rope and fishing nets. They then proceeded to carry the Americans to the hospital a four day trek at the very least. Lawson wondered why these dirt poor people would go to all of this trouble and risk death by helping them when they could simply turn the Americans over to the Japanese for a sizable reward. He closed his eyes to try to fight off the pain only to discover that one of the Chinese guerrilla fighters had gently pressed a lighted cigarette into the side of his mouth whereas lips still met. I tried to smile back at him but it felt more like crying. We're called the pilot of the ruptured duck. Anyway, I closed my eyes and thought wherever I was I was among good men, men who were fighting for the same thing that I was fighting for. Clever's face was caked in so much dried blood that he couldn't open his eyes. McClure's right arm started to turn black. Davenport's leg had swollen to the point where he couldn't move it at all. By this point, Dave Thatcher had been awake for 36 hours but he never stopped caring for his crewmates doing everything he could to ease as much of the endless, throbbing pain as possible. At 10 o'clock in the morning of April 24th, six days after they left the hornet, they finally made it to a small hospital. The men were surprised and pleased to see Doc White, the squadron medical officer who'd remained aboard sinking raider 15 in order to retrieve his medical kit and surgical tools. Now meanwhile Ted Lawson continued to deteriorate. Doc White had never seen anything like it. All of the wounds were hideously infected, he would say, with a very virulent organism, apparently one of the fecal contamination types of symbiotic aerobic bacteria. He excised a small patch of gangrene skin on Lawson's foot, which resulted in so much discharge that White considered a miracle he was still alive. Now by May 3rd, it was clear that they could not save the leg. With the aid of a vial of Novakine smuggled out of a Shanghai hospital and a spinal injection, Doc White removed Ted Lawson's left leg above the knee. Lawson was awake although numb for the entire procedure. The Chinese nurses let go of my risks he would later recall. One picked up the leg by the ankle, the other nurse picked up the other thicker end, I watched the two nurses carry it out the door. The next day, Ted was better, wrote Doc White. He was comfortable for the first time since the accident and was elucid for the first time in weeks. By May 20th, it was time to go. Japanese forces were closing in fast, unspeakably ruthless, and their attempts to capture as many of the raiders as they could. They arrived in Nancheng on May 24th, expecting to find a waiting aircraft, instead the entire field had been bombed flat by the Japanese. Now that meant more delay, and Doc White had the guts to refuse Lawson more feint to ease the suffering from his still throbbing leg. I had to let him suffer quite a bit of pain to keep from making an attic out of him he would later say. And then on June 3rd, a US Army DC-3 arrived in the skies overhead. Four of the men had been in great pain since the night. they crash landed off the beach on the night of April 18th. Ted Lawson, a special, had been in agony for 46 days. When the plane landed, the second man out the door was Ted Lawson's good friend, Davey Jones, pilot and commander of crew 5. They had suffered unimaginable hell, but they were all going home. Ted Lawson, author of the bestselling book 30 seconds over Tokyo, would later write, "I knew I'd start crying as soon as I heard Davey's voice and damn defy it." The crews of Dean Hallmark's Raider 6, the Green Hornet, and Bill Ferro's Raider 16, bat out of hell, became so intertwined that the story of both Raiders has to be told simultaneous. 6 and 16 were the only two crews to be captured by the Japanese. With the sole exception of Leland Factor who was killed bailing out of Raider 3, all of the prisoners and all the fatalities would come from the 10 men of these two aircraft. Dean Hallmark elected to ditch his plane in the East China Sea not far from shore. Hallmark landed just a few miles south of Raider 7, the ruptured duck. Navigator Chase Nielsen remembered hearing Bombadier build Deeder's scream just below and in front of him. The impact knocked Nielsen unconscious when he came to a moment later, Dean Hallmark in front of him was simply gone. He and Copilot Bob Nader made their way out to the top of the few-slush hallmark could also have been flung forward through the window somehow managed to join them. The fifth member of the crew, engineer Gunner Don Fitzmerees, managed to crawl out of a hatch from his position in the rear of the plane. It was a sight that Chase Nielsen would not soon forget. The gunner was crawling out the back and he was bleeding all down his face. He had a big hole right in his forehead. I just then Nielsen caught sight of the Bombadier, built Deeder approaching from the other direction. The Bombadier finally came under the wing and he was an awful mess Nielsen continued. I don't think he was using either arm. Hallmark ordered the men to stay together when they hit the water. It was raining, and it was dark and the sea was rough. It wasn't long before shock and exhaustion had caused all five of them to drift away from each other despite Hallmark's orders. Sometime later, Nielsen found himself swimming through the surf, but when he tried to stand to walk out of the water, he discovered that his legs wouldn't move. So he crawled out as high as he could and then collapsed into a deep, deep sleep. Raider 16, bat out of hell, went deeper into China than any of the others. Crew 16's navigator George Barr had pinpointed the area he thought was most likely to be in the general vicinity of Chuchao. The pilot Bill Farrow wanted to save the airplane if he could, so he decided to fly a little further west looking for a hole in the weather. This decision was to costume his life. Raider 16 had flown all the way over the fairly wide swath of friendly territory and ended up just short of Nanchang, which was held by the Japanese. Gunner Harry Spads, bailed out through the rear hatch, Jake De Shaser was next. He had a good shoot, but when he landed, he landed on something hard, hard enough to break several of his ribs. De Shaser had landed in a cemetery, and he was so happy to be alive that despite the broken ribs, he hugged the grave stone he landed on. Navigator George Barr stepped his pockets with cigarettes and candy bars, pulled on his flight hat, and jumped into the darkness at the bottom of the hatch. As soon as I went through the hatch, the hat blew away. It's funny, but my first thoughts were about losing that hat. He landed way steep in the mud and water of a rice patty, the fire from the wreckage of Raider 16 visible just a few miles away. While attempting to cross a small bamboo bridge, he felt the cold steel of a rifle barrel shoved into his back. As he was prodded along from behind, they approached a small town and Barr was pushed into a room containing 15 Japanese officers in full uniform. They were delighted with their captive Barr recalled, "I was a rare prize." Now like George Barr, copilot Bobby Height landed in a rice patty. He wandered around until he found the firmer ground of a cemetery and he laid down to get some rest. The Schaser woke around dawn on the 19th. He saw a young man in a strange uniform, probably around 15 or 16. He figured this might be his best chance, so he walked up to the stun teenager and asked "China? Japan?" "China," said the boy. The Schaser led out a huge sigh of relief. "America," he said, pointing to himself. But he'd been too naive. The young man led him into a room where a Japanese officer was sitting along with an English interpreter. "You are in the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army," he announced. "Are you afraid?" asked the interpreter. "What should I be afraid of?" replied the 29-year-old bombardier from Crew 16, but that was all bravado. You see, before being captured, the Schaser and Pilot Billy Farrow had both been hidden by an elderly Chinese man. When a Japanese patrol arrived, the man went out and started speaking with a commander of the Japanese company. The Japanese officer threatened the man who protested that he knew nothing. And at that, the Japanese officer barked out a few orders and soon soldiers had wrapped the old man in a blanket, tied it around his waist, kicked him to the ground, and started to douse him with gasoline. Now, neither Farrow nor to Schaser were willing to watch this man die in order to protect them, so they started banging on the lock, inner door, and shouting in English that they'd surrendered. The Japanese officer ignored them for a moment, he lit a match, and handed it to the wife of the man on the ground. When she refused, the officer grabbed her smallest child by the neck and began to strangle the infant. Left with no choice, she tossed the match onto the gasoline, soaked blanket, and sobbed. The Japanese troops laughed and applauded at the screams of the dying man, and then two of them bashed his head in with their rifle butts and proceeded to burn down the entire village. Jake the Schaser had been bluffing. After a single day among the Japanese, he knew to a high degree of precision what he should have been afraid of. Chase Nielsen awoke around 8 a.m. to a beautiful, clear, sunny day, but washed up on the shore not too far apart from each other, where two bodies in American flight suits and bright orange may West life preserves, even from a distance. He could tell that these were the remains of Bamedir Bill Dieter and Don Fitzmoree's, the gunner who'd staggered out of the rear hatch with blood covering his face and a large hole in his head. "Stand up or me shoot," said a Chinese resistance fighter. "They dead," said the man nodding in the direction of the two bodies lying on the white sand. "Berry them in an hour. You go with me." The two men ducked into the thick bamboo forest lining the beach and disappeared. He led him to a small garrison of about two dozen ragged-looking guerrilla fighters. Now to a surprise and delight, Nielsen discovered that pilot Dean Hallmark was already in the camp, even better. Co-pilot Bob Mieter arrived soon afterwards. The three of them insisted on returning to the beach to bury their fellow crewman. The Chinese had fashioned two wooden coffins and they brought them along. The three survivors of crew number six carefully placed the bodies of Sergeant William J. Dieter 29 in Corporal Donald E. Fitzmoree's age 23 into the simple wooden coffins arranged their arms and wet clothing into his dignified manner as they could, and then they buried them in the sand, overlooking the patch of the ocean that had swallowed the B-25 that they had named the Green Hornet. On the morning of the third day, April 21, there was a sudden commotion at the edge of the camp. The Japanese were here, several hundred of them, and heavily armed, a round-faced Japanese officer with a thin mustache entered the hut containing the three American flyers. "You now Japanese prisoner," he said with a slight smile, "no worry, we treat you fine." But the Japanese did not treat them fine. The torture and interrogations began immediately for all eight men. The five crew members from bat out of hell and the three survivors of the Green Hornet. Before one interrogation session, a battered and exhausted George Barr heard screams coming from a room nearby and as he passed the open door, he could see Japanese guards pushing sharpened pencils between the fingers and into the hands of Jake De Shazia. The raiders would be hung from the ceiling by both arms, often for hours and occasionally for the entire night, the pain usually being so intense that the men would pass out. The Japanese would pull back on a man's fingers until they broke with a loud wet popping sound. They would even insert a lit cigarette deep into a prisoner's nose. It isn't so bad when American would later explain to reporters after the war, because the membranes inside the nose put out the cigarette and you don't feel pain very long. And they would tie their arms and legs at night. The men could feel the lice crawling all over them, biting them mercilessly and be unable to brush them away or scratch the intense itching that remained for hours. Now in Bob Height was taken prisoner by the Japanese he weighed 180 pounds. When he was liberated at the end of the war, he weighed 76 pounds. Raider Six's pilot and commander Dean Hallmark lost 80 pounds and was wrecked with dysentery. He had no control over his Bell's whatsoever and he could hold nothing in his stomach, Nielsen would later testify. He was just at a state where he didn't know he was there or what was going on. For months, his fellow Raiders took turns holding his head in their laps, trying to keep him as comfortable as they could. He wanted me to sing songs to him, recalled height. He wanted to remember all of the tunes and things that he'd heard throughout the years. All throughout the spring and summer, high-ranking Japanese back in Tokyo continued to struggle with the monumental loss of face caused by the due little raid. Shame fell most heavily on General Hajime Sujiyama, whose army chief of staff was the man ultimately responsible for the air defense of the capital and their miserable failure to shoot down so much as a single American bomber. As early as April 28th, just 10 days after the raid, he was pressing for the trial and execution of all eight prisoners and by the beginning of October, Sujiyama had managed to get his trial and subsequent death sentences. Tojo himself opposed this strongly before the emperor, and in the end a compromise was reached. All eight Americans would be found guilty, but through the divine grace of the emperor, five of those eight death sentences would be commuted to life in prison. A mockery of a trial was arranged, after six months in Japanese prisons, all eight men were in terrible shape. Dean Hallmark had to be carried into the court, and during the proceedings, he needed help just keeping his head up. All eight men were found guilty of war crimes, all eight given the death penalty, but five of those sentences would be commuted to life in prison. Three of those sentences were not commuted. Lieutenant Dean E. Hallmark aged 28 and pilot of Raider 6, the Green Hornet, received the death penalty. Lieutenant William G. Farrow aged 24, the pilot of Raider 16, bat out of hell, also received the death penalty, and inexplicably so did flight engineer and gunner of Raider 16, Sergeant Harold A. Spatz aged 20. Prosecutors had claimed that Spatz had intentionally fired on civilians, which, given his position in the top turret, was physically impossible. At 10 a.m. on October 15th 1942, three ragged and emaciated walking skeletons emerged from a blacked out truck and into the blinding sunlight of public cemetery number one. Their executioner asked if they had any last words. Please tell the folks at home that we died very bravely said Bill Farrow. They were then let out into a small field where three crosses had been hammered into the ground. They were ordered to turn around and kneel, and then Hallmark, Farrow and Spatz had their arms tied behind the cross. The Japanese placed a white hood over their heads where the black circle painted in the center of each man's forehead just above the top of the nose. Prepare, shouted the officer, and six Japanese soldiers raised their rifles. They were 20 yards away. Fire! The heads of Dean Hallmark, Bill Farrow, and Howard Spatz snapped back from the impact, and then each of them slumped forward, each of them held upright by the crosses that they'd been tied to. But that was not the only blood that the Japanese had to shed and revenge, they managed to massacre anyone who could have possibly sheltered the raiders. During their reprisals against the Chinese, two Japanese officers decided to have a murder race. Chinese men, women, and children were put into two lines, each with precisely 100 people. All of them were made to kneel. At the sound of a starter pistol, the two officers unsheathed their swords and went down the line, beheading the civilians, racing each other to get to the end. They finished so close together that a tie was declared, and the number was raised from 100 each to 250. New hostages were lined up, and the contest continues. Now no one knows how many Chinese were murdered just in this one act of revenge for sheltering the American pilots, but it was at least 70,000 civilians, and it may have been as high as 250,000. That's roughly double the number of Japanese that would be killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Right around 7.30 pm on the night of August 20th, 1945, the first American patrols arrived at a Japanese prison camp. The Empire of Japan had surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay 11 days earlier. One of the men in the patrol opened the door to a small, dark, stinking cell, containing a 103-pound living skeleton. He looks like an American, he called to the rest of the men in his unit, and then he turned back to that creature lying on the ground in front of him. Are you an American? Prisoner tried to speak, but nothing came out. Are you American? He asked again. Yes, I'm an American. And were you taking prisoner? Back in April of 1942, I flew off of a carrier, USS Hornet, and it'd be 25 with a guy named Do Little. He paused for a moment and then he added, "We bombed Tokyo." The American soldier wasn't buying it. Hell, those guys were all executed years ago, he said, and then he turned to the other amazement standing behind him. You're gonna have to watch him this one's out of his head. No, I'm not replied the bearded skeleton, Lieutenant Chase J. Nielsen, navigator on Dean Hallmarts, Raider 6 known as the Green Hornet. There's three more of them that are down the hall from here too, and they're with me. We've been kicked around Japan through Shanghai and Nanking, and now we're up here. Nielsen looked at the freshly-shaven American soldier, his uniform crisply ironed, issues clean and shiny, his eyes bright and alert, and a full 100 pounds heavier than he was. Who are you guys? He asked the Raider. The war's over. The soldier sits softly. Let's go home. Copilot Robert Height, navigator George Barr, and bombardier Harold Spatz, the surviving crew of Raider 16, bad out of hell. Joined by navigator Chase Nielsen, the sole survivor of Raider 6, the Green Hornet, had been held prisoner by the Japanese for 1,218 days. They were going home. Bob Meeter, copilot of the Green Hornet, was not among them. Bob Meeter was found in his cell on December 11, 1943. He died of Barry Barry, that's a vitamin B deficiency brought on by starvation, infection, and malnutrition on his 601st day of captivity. 12 of the 69 men that made it back from China would be killed later in the war, including Bob Clever, who'd lost most of his scalp when the rupture duck ditched just offshore. All of the do-little raiders living in dead would receive the distinguished flying cross, every single one of them, joining the same elite group that included famous aviators such as Orville and Wilbur Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Chuck Yeager, Robin Olds, and Dick Routant, who would receive 5th. Other recipients included actor Jimmy Stewart, star trek creator Jean Roddenberry, astronauts Allen Shepherd and John Glenn, 5 of the men who walked on the surface of the moon, and one former president of the United States of America, the late George Herbert Walker Bush. All of those men were in R, proud to be in the same company as anyone of the 80 do-little raiders. Do-little himself, returning home in May with minor damage done to Tokyo, and exactly none of the 16 B-25s entrusted to him fully genuinely expected to be court-martialed for the failure of the do-little raid. Instead, on May 20, 1942, he lowered his head in the oval office of the White House as president Franklin Delano Roosevelt placed the Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck. So, was it worth it? What in the end had the do-little raid accomplished other than some minor damage to the city of Tokyo easily repaired? While the effect it had on the morale of the American people was immeasurable, the utter humiliation of what had seemed to be an unstoppable, invincible enemy steamroller. Now, the Japanese knew the shame and horror and dismay that America had experienced at the hands of the Japanese on that Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor. When he heard the news of the bombing of Tokyo, Japanese Admiral Isakuro Yamamoto became physically ill. Only 16 days after the do-little raid, American and Japanese carriers fought the first of their six major engagements at the Battle of the Coral Sea, which was a tactical win for Japan. But the big Japanese fleet carrier Shokaku had taken some bomb damage and her twin sister, Koi Kaku, had lost a significant number of aircraft. But Yamamoto Shame, the Americans, had just missed the Imperial Palace and the son of heaven had nearly been killed. Was so intense that he was not going to wait for repairs in resupply, he would force the American fleet to midway and destroy it with the four carriers he had in hand, rather than wait for the knockout punch of Shokaku and Zoi Kaku, his two strongest flat tops. Had the do-little raid not happened and the Japanese had brought six carriers instead of four, the battle would have been almost entirely different and cost the Americans the Hornet and the Enterprise in addition to the York Tomb. But the do-little raid did happen. Yamamoto had been shamed into a town attacking without his full force, which was four Japanese carriers and not six. And that would face the three American flat tops and all four would go down as a result of the furious six minutes that forever broke the back of Keto Brutai at the Battle of Midway on June 4th, 1942. The day before they launched from the Hornet, Du Little had assembled all of his men and made them a promise. When we get the Chung King, he said, "I'm going to give you a party that you will not forget." But by the end of 1945, all of them had finally come home, the living and the dead and Du Little, invited each of the 61 men that had survived both the Tokyo raid and the war to a party in Miami, Florida over the weekend of December 15th. They went back to Miami in 1947, having viewed the first reunion as something of a warm-up, and this time they held nothing back. They resolved to have a reunion every year for the rest of their lives, however long that may be. The 17th reunion was held in Tucson, Arizona in 1959, where local civic leaders presented the Raiders with 80 identical silver goblets each inscribed with the name of one of the men that took off from the USS Hornet on that April day in 1942. Each of the individual names were engraved twice, with the second copy being inscribed upside down. Then they showed the Du Little Raiders the real power of this generous gift. Slowly, one by one, the men would take a goblet of a man who was no longer with them and place it upside down on the table, where the second inverted inscription was now readable. Du Little immediately purchased a bottle of 1896 Hennessy Konyak and presented it to the surviving Raiders with a single request. The bottle would remain with the goblets until only two men were left, and then the last two Du Little Raiders whoever they were, would finally open the bottle and drink a toast to all of the names on all of the 78 inverted goblets or rated the tape. Now for many years, a goblet or two would be flipped at the annual reunion, but as the men got older, more goblets would be turned each year. Du Little himself, twice as old as many of the men that volunteered to fly with him that day, lived to the age of 96. That is an astonishing testament to the skill of the man who had taken such mighty risks and taken them so often. There were only four of them left alive by the time of the final official reunion in 2013, and one of them, Bob Height, was not healthy enough to make the journey. But since they had a quorum, they decided to amend the rules just a little. All three of the attendees were well into their 90s and having pushed their luck this far, they decided it would be better to advance the final toast rather than risk not having won it all. So the last three Raiders drank the health of their friends, Gone West, with a 117-year-old bottle of Konyak. Ed Saler, engineer on Don Smith's Raider 15, would pass away in 2015, as would Japanese POW Bob Height, would flown all the way to hell, remained there for three and a half years, and somehow managed to come home and pass away peacefully at age 95. And that was the last official reunion of the Du Little Raiders. However, in 2015, I received an invitation by a friend, a Marine Corps veteran, and one of the greatest, most successful and well-liked men I've ever met. He asked me if I would like to attend a very small and very informal, unofficial reunion of the last two survivors of the Du Little Raiders. I said I would like that very much. I didn't know as much then as I do now because I had to ask an attendee who one of the men was. He told me he was a gunner on one of the B-25s that flew to Japan that day. What I didn't know, but very much wish that I had known, was that this gunner was David Thatcher, the man who had cared for the four terribly wounded men on the ruptured duck and whose heroism had kept them alive for all of that time. Dave Thatcher joined the rest of the Du Little Raiders on June 22, 2016. He too was 95 years old. Now the other man there was Dick Cole, co-pilot of crew number one. The man who rode to Tokyo shoulder to shoulder with the great Jimmy Du Little himself. After the small presentation was over, I was able to crouch right in front of him and tell him how much I appreciated everything he'd done for me. Dick smiled and nodded. Now there's something I wish I'd known about Dick Cole as well when I met him back in 2015 because if I had, I would have made a fuss about it until I got my way on this one, as the story of his life and the achievements of those men played on that screen in a room in a hotel convention center. I would have added a soundtrack. And then I wouldn't be watching the screen at all. I'd be watching Dick Cole's face to see how long it would take for him to recognize the two. I wonder if he would have smiled and maybe stamped his feet a little like he did sitting next to Jimmy Du Little in that morning of April 18, 1942, skimming the waves on the way to Japan. Maybe he would have even mowed the words. Dick Cole flew west to join the rest of the guys on April 9, 2019, all 80 of the Du Little Raiders finally reunited again at last. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Eugene Cole had written the Wabash Cannonball for 103 years. He covered a lot of track. Now it's time to go home. (gentle music)