training on the Hornet
Men are loading the final B-25 onto the USS Hornet.
On March 20, 1942 the USS Hornet arrived at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. With her own planes on deck, the Navy carefully removed her planes and around the mid-afternoon of April 1, 1942 all sixteen North American Mitchell Bombers were loaded and ready to leave the harbor. This situation was beginning to bother the captain of the ship (Marc A. Mitscher) because he had no idea of why the Navy took all the ships' planes and replaced them with B-25s. The only sort of reasoning he got was from Jimmy Doolittle telling him that the event was "special".
Eventually all seventy of the raiders arrived on board the USS Hornet (including myself) along with sixty-four men that volunteered to help maintain the ship. The USS Hornet left Alameda, California on April 2, 1942. Now that we were in the middle of the ocean, Doolittle explained to us our mission. "Men, you are going to make history. The reasons that I have trained you to take off a plane in about four-hundred feet and remove the lower gun turrets, the Installation of de-icers and anti-icers, added Steel blast plates mounted on the fuselage around the upper turret, Removal of the liaison radio set and Mock gun barrels installed in the tail cone to make these B-25s to make the plane lighter is so that you can depart off this aircraft carrier. Men, with secret orders from the president, we are going to bomb Japan as a result of Pearl Harbor!"
Eventually all seventy of the raiders arrived on board the USS Hornet (including myself) along with sixty-four men that volunteered to help maintain the ship. The USS Hornet left Alameda, California on April 2, 1942. Now that we were in the middle of the ocean, Doolittle explained to us our mission. "Men, you are going to make history. The reasons that I have trained you to take off a plane in about four-hundred feet and remove the lower gun turrets, the Installation of de-icers and anti-icers, added Steel blast plates mounted on the fuselage around the upper turret, Removal of the liaison radio set and Mock gun barrels installed in the tail cone to make these B-25s to make the plane lighter is so that you can depart off this aircraft carrier. Men, with secret orders from the president, we are going to bomb Japan as a result of Pearl Harbor!"
Immediately following Doolittle's statement, the entire crew went crazy with questions and remarks including, "Is this going to work?" and "Are you nuts?" were the words of commotion going around. Once everyone was on a calmer level, I myself asked this question, "If the entire raid is successful, where do we go to return back to dry land?" Doolittle responded, "Your B-25s have been rigged with double fuel capacity so you can fly to Japan and do your business, but you will still not have enough fuel to return to the Hornet."
"But you technically still haven't answered my question, where do we land?" "You will have to learn this phrase, 我是在美国 (Wǒ shì zài měiguó)." "What does that mean?" "It means, 'I am an American' in Chinese." This meant that all men were going to have to land in areas in China that were controlled by Chinese Nationalists (air fields in China) to walk on land safely once again. After we learned of the raid we went through tough debriefings of what we should do if for whatever reason encounter the Chinese. On April 17, 1942 (a day before the raid) Jimmy Doolittle explained to us that he was secretly coming aboard the raid with us, since the government wouldn't let him since he was too "valuable". We all went to our bunks after the meeting knowing that in about three days we were going to bomb five major cities in Japan knowing we would change the course of the war. In the early morning of April 18, 1942 (the Doolittle Raid) I woke up to the sound of the ship's alarm blaring into my ear. We were told to get dressed and go immediately to our planes. At first the entire crew and I thought it was a last minute drill to practice for the raid (since the raid was in about two days). We later discovered that around 7:38 A.M. the USS Hornet and USS Enterprise (who joined us in the middle of the ocean to help keep air cover just in case) saw that a Japanese picket boat (No.23 Nittō Maru) had spotted us. Doolittle could only assume they would tattle on them to the Japanese mainland, so the Hornet decided to sink the ship before they could send a clear message. Doolittle also decided it was time for the planes to depart from the Hornet, even though we were 170 nautical miles (310 km) farther from Japan than planned. This meant we could not hit our specific five targets (Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka). So we had to settle on hitting ten military and industrial targets in Tokyo, Japan. |
Once the first B-25 departed from the Hornet, my crew and I felt a bit more confident in ourselves that we were not going to die taking off of this aircraft carrier. From around 8:19 A.M. to 9:20 A.M. all sixteen B-25s were off of the Hornet. Immediately, the USS Hornet turned around and returned to Pearl Harbor in two days. That meant that we raiders were now stuck in the sky for ten hours. The six hour ride to Japan was the longest ride of my life.
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