The Doolittle Raid

Doolittle Raid Memo to FDR - 1942            Doolittle Raid Crew Roster

At dawn on April 18, 1942, less than five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, U.S. Navy Task Force 16 was steaming through violent Pacific waters toward Japan. The flotilla consisted of two actual task forces, task forces 16.2 and 16.1.  Task force 16.2 was built around the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier with the unlikely cargo of sixteen Army Air Corps, North American B-25s, and their crews.  The cruisers Nashville, and Vincennes as well as the oiler Cimarron and the destroyers Gwin, Meredith, Grayson, and Monssen complimented the Hornet.  US Navy Captain Marc Mitscher commanded the taskforce while Army Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" H. Doolittle was in command of the sixteen aircrews.  Task force 16.1 was built around the carrier USS Enterprise and served as an escort for the Hornet.  It included the cruisers Northampton and Salt Lake City, the oiler Sabine and the destroyers Balch, Benham, Ellet and Fanning.  Admiral William F. Halsey commanded. ("Destination Tokyo" by: Stan Cohen)

     Many early war allied defeats brought American moral desperately low.  The outlook for allied victory weighed heavily on the success of this mission. It called for the B-25s to take off from Hornet utilizing only four hundred and sixty feet of the carrier's deck.  This would be no easy task. The planes were heavily loaded with bombs and extra fuel for the expected sixteen hundred mile flight.   The aircraft were to take off about four hundred miles from Japan, hit selected targets at such locations as Yokohama and Tokyo, and then fly another twelve hundred miles to friendly airfields on Mainland China.  

     The mission seamed to be going according to plan until 3:10 a.m. on the 18th when radar operators on the Enterprise picked up what turned out to be a Japanese vessel.  The fleet changed course and fortunately avoided the ship, but this would be just the first of many events that would jeopardize the mission.  At daylight the Enterprise launched patrol aircraft.  Soon the patrols spotted another vessel about forty miles away.  This was a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and it seemed as if discovery of the U.S. fleet was going to be sooner than later.  What the task force was about to discover was that U.S. intelligence had failed to discover that Japan had stationed hundreds of fishing boats with radios in a picket line about six hundred to eight hundred miles of the coast.  About an hour after daybreak a seaman on the cruiser Vincennes spotted a Japanese fishing boat about twelve miles away.  Cannons from the cruiser Nashville quickly sank the boat, but it was to late.  Intercepted Japanese radio messages indicated that the boat had already notified mainland Japan.  Although the taskforce was seven hundred miles from the coast instead of the expected four hundred miles, the decision was made to launch the aircraft at once. ("Destination Tokyo" by: Stan Cohen)  

     The aircraft were quickly readied for flight.  The first B-25 was launched at 8:25 a.m., six hundred twenty-five miles from Japan, with Col. Jimmy Doolittle at the controls.  All sixteen B-25s made it safely off the deck, although injuring one ships crewman who had fallen into one of the planes propellers.  They all reached the Japanese islands, dropped their bombs on oil stores, factory areas, and military installations, and then headed out across the East China Sea. However, night was approaching, and the B-25s began running low on fuel, not to mention the fact that the weather was rapidly deteriorating. The crews realized they could not reach the Chinese airfields.  They were forced to bail out, ditch at sea, or crash-land, although one plane was able to divert to Vladivostok, Russia. 

     When the news of the raid reached the United States, the sixteen crews, referred to as the "Doolittle Raiders", were revered as heroes, and American moral soared. This attack on mainland Japan caused Japan to realize that they were no longer "untouchable" and forced them to expend more resources on defense, which meant that they now had less resources for offense.  

     Following the Doolittle Raid, many of the crews were forced into hiding in Japanese occupied China.  Only through the help of several friendly Chinese were some of the crews able to escape to "Free China".  On Aug. 15, 1942. It was learned from the Swiss Consulate General in Shanghai that eight American flyers were prisoners of the Japanese Police in that city. On October 19, 1942, the Japanese broadcast that two of Doolittle's crews had been put on trial for supposed war crimes, and had been sentenced to death. Soon after they reported that a small number had been executed and that the remainder had been sentenced to life imprisonment. No names or facts were given.  The Russians interned the crew that had landed in Russia for thirteen months.  When in China, Col. Doolittle thought he might face a court-martial upon his return to the United States, because he feared the mission might be seen as a disaster because of his decision to make an early takeoff.  In fact when Doolittle returned to the U.S. he was rewarded for is courage in making an impossible decision.  He received the Congressional Medal of Honor and was promoted to Brigadier General.    

      After the war, the facts were uncovered in a War Crimes Trial held at Shanghai, which opened in Feb. 1946 to try four Japanese officers for mistreatment of the eight POWs of the Tokyo Raid. Two of the original ten men, Dieter and Fitzmaurice, had died when their B-25 ditched off the coast of China. The other eight, Hallmark, Meder, Nielsen, Farrow, Hite, Barr, Spatz, and DeShazer were captured. In addition to being tortured, they contracted dysentery and beriberi as a result of the deplorable conditions under which they were confined. On Aug. 28, 1942, Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz were given a "trial" by Japanese officers, although they were never told the charges against them. On Oct. 14, 1942, Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz were advised they were to be executed the next day. At 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 15, 1942 the three Americans were brought by truck to Public Cemetery No. 1 outside Shanghai. In accordance with proper ceremonial procedures of the Japanese military, they were then shot. The other five men remained in military confinement on a starvation diet, their health rapidly deteriorating. In April 1943, they were moved to Nan king and on Dec. 1, 1943, Meder died. The other four men began to receive a slight improvement in their treatment and by sheer determination and the comfort they received from a lone copy of the Bible, they survived until they were freed at the war's end. In the 1946 trials four Japanese officers were held responsible for the mistreatment of the eight Doolittle Raiders. Three were sentenced to five years and the fourth to nine years of hard labor.