queen city heritage - cincinnati museum...

Queen City Heritage

Thomas C. Griffin, a residentof Cincinnati for over fortyyears, participated in the firstbombing raid on Japan inWorld War II, the now leg-endary Doolittle raid. (CHSPhotograph Collection)

Winter 1992

Navigating from Shangri-La: Cincinnati'sDoolittle Raider atWar

Navigating from Shangri-La

Kevin C. McHugh

Over a half century ago on April 18, 1942,the Cincinnati Enquirer reported: "Washington, April 18— (AP) — The War and Navy Departments had no confir-mation immediately on the Japanese announcement of thebombing of Tokyo."1 Questions had been raised whenTokyo radio, monitored by UPI in San Francisco, had sud-denly gone off the air and then had interrupted program-ming for a news "flash":

Enemy bombers appeared over Tokyo for thefirst time since the outbreak of the current war of GreaterEast Asia. The bombing inflicted telling damages on schoolsand hospitals. The raid occurred several minutes past noon onSaturday. The invading planes failed to cause any damage tomilitary establishments?

Reporters wanted information. ButAmericans, starved for good news from the Pacific, seizedthe early reports, dismissed the enemy propaganda, andcelebrated their first significant victory in the war againstJapan. The next day, in fact, newspapers all over the coun-try fed the following naively optimistic headline to theirhungry readers: "Allied Offensive Indicated By U.S. AirAttack On Japan."3 The euphoria of the day was under-standable. America was reeling from a series of defeats:Pearl Harbor had been surprised, Wake Island and Guamhad fallen; in the Philippines, Bataan had just surrenderedin the worst defeat of American military history, while sur-vivors clung precariously to "The Rock," the little islandfortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay. But the retaliatorybombing of Japan, the Doolittle Raid, as it came to becalled, changed all that. It had come, President Rooseveltlater volunteered somewhat impishly, "from our secretbase in Shangri-La" (the fictional Utopia of James Hilton'sLost Horizons)} The daring attack caught the imaginationof the American people and made them feel less impotent.Cincinnatians knew that history had been made. One wit-nessed it first-hand.

Since his arrival in Cincinnati over forty yearsago, Bridgetown resident Thomas Carson Griffin has

served as Cincinnati's oral historian for "one of America'sbiggest gambles"5 of World War II, the now legendaryDoolittle Raid on Japan. A soft-spoken man, Mr. Griffincharacteristically downplays his part in the first bombingraid on Japan: "[It] just caught the fancy of the Americanpeople. A lot of people had a lot worse assignments."6

Nevertheless, he has shared his wartime experiences withCincinnati and the country, both in speaking engagementsand in print. In 1962 to celebrate the twentieth anniversaryof the historic mission, the Cincinnati Enquirer highlight-ed Mr. Griffin's recollections in an article that began,"Bomber Strike from Carrier Recalled."7 For the fiftiethanniversary in 1992, the Cincinnati Post shared his adven-ture in a full-page article entitled, "A Veteran Remembers. . . 30 Seconds Over Tokyo."8 The Historical Society,which has a taped interview with Mr. Griffin in its archives,recently invited him to speak to museum-goers9 and spot-lighted his part in the raid with a display in the "CincinnatiGoes to War" exhibit. But Mr. Griffin's experiences in thatwar include more than that single mission, no matter howmemorable. They have particular value because they mirrorthe experiences of the generation who shaped the present,a generation that diminishes in size as the anniversariesclimb in number. Those experiences also serve as a lensthrough which a new generation of Cincinnatians can dis-cover that the history of some fifty years past is more thanjust the events and dates of textbooks but the flesh andblood of real people like themselves.

Thomas Griffin was born in Green Bay,Wisconsin, in 1916. He grew up there and then attendedthe University of Alabama, graduating in 1939 with an A.B.degree in political science and economics — and an ROTCcommission as a second lieutenant in the United StatesArmy because he saw that "war was coming." By 1939Hider had seized Czechoslovakia and turned up the propa-ganda blitz that preceded the real blitzkrieg invasion ofPoland. Lt. Griffin — serial number 0377848, he remem-bers without hesitation10 — first served with the anti-air-craft batteries of the 61st Coast Artillery. He soon volun-teered for the air corps, however, because he "didn't wantto be standing on the ground shooting up." Griffin's apti-

Kevin C. McHugh, a fellow ofthe Ohio Writing Project andEnglish department chairmanat Finneytown Jr./Sr. HighSchool in Cincinnati, has anM.A. in English from theUniversity of Windsor,Windsor, Canada.

Queen City Heritage

tude for mathematics steered him to navigator's school,which the Army conducted in Coral Gables, Florida, in the"flying classrooms" of Pan American Airways' Commodoreflying boats. By 1941 Lt. Griffin had been stationed withthe 17th Bombardment Group at Camp Pendleton,Oregon. At that time the air corps had begun replacingthat unit's lumbering, twin-engined B-18 Bolero Bombers(military derivatives of the once revolutionary DC-2 airlin-er) with the faster, twin-engined, twin-ruddered B-25BMitchell bomber.11 This changeover, in fact, proved crucialto Griffin's participation in the first and most famous of hismany World War II exploits.

Because the Japanese attack of December 7,1941, had left much of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet restingin the mud of Pearl Harbor, near-panic swept the WestCoast. "There was simply no capability, no air defense and,with the exception of a few National Guard companies, noground defense," recalls fellow Tokyo Raider and 17thGroup pilot, "Brick" Holstrom. "An enemy carrier forcecould have bombed [the U.S.] at will . . . . " As a result,the 17th, the "only combat-ready medium bomb group inthe country," and the only fully B-25 equipped unit, wasordered "to protect the shipping and coastline of the

Northwest" — often at dubious risk to themselves due tothe area's treacherous weather, especially the fog. Duringone such dangerous anti-submarine patrol just twenty-fivemiles off the mouth of the Columbia River, on ChristmasEve 1941, Holstrom and the crew of his B-25 are creditedwith destroying a Japanese submarine, the first of thePacific war to be sunk by an American aircraft.12

About the same time as Lt. Griffin's unitunderwent its first engagement with the enemy, PresidentRoosevelt was urging the soonest possible retaliationagainst Japan, a bombing attack against the Japanese homeislands, to boost American and Allied morale. He pressedhis recommendation in the following weeks, particularly inlight of repeated Allied disasters in the Pacific theater.13 Atthat time, only the navy had the capability of carrying outsuch attack. To do so, however, would put at risk theAmerican aircraft carriers that had narrowly avoideddestruction at Pearl Harbor. (America had four carriers inthe Pacific at that time; the Japanese had ten.) Bringingthose vessels within their aircrafts' limited 300-mile rangewould put them within striking distance of the Japanesehome fleet, as well as land-based aircraft — which had ear-lier proved their effectiveness by sinking the British battle-

Griffin joined the ROTC whileattending the University ofAlabama because he saw that"war was coming." As aROTC cadet he learned toload anti-aircraft guns.(Griffin helping load the gun

is fourth from the right;Thomas C. Griffin Collection)

Winter 1992 Navigating from Shangri-La

ships Repulse and Prince of Wales in the Gulf of Siam onDecember 10. Only army bombers had the range to reachJapan while leaving the naval forces sufficiently distant toavoid probable detection and destruction. The onlybomber with the capability and dimensions making it theo-retically suitable for a carrier takeoff was the B-25B —though it had never been done before. The challenge thusfell to the 17th Bombardment Group and Thomas Griffin.

"They asked us to do something," saidGriffin who described how the air corps called for volun-teers from the 17th for what planners would only describeas an "extremely hazardous mission."14 "Air corps crewswere needed . . . ," Griffin remarked matter-of-factly."Why were we there? Why were we trained?" By February27, 1942, twenty-four crews began arriving at Eglin Field,Florida, for special training. There, in the first week inMarch, navigator Tom Griffin and the others met theirmission commander, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, a smallman with the stature of a Lindbergh, already famous as aresult of his aviation feats and firsts. "The selection ofDoolittle to lead this nearly suicidal mission was a naturalone," said General Henry "Hap" Arnold, Chief of Staff ofthe Army Air Forces, in retrospect. "He was fearless, tech-nically brilliant" — earning one of M.I.T.'s first doctoratesin aeronautical engineering — "a leader who not onlycould be counted upon to do a task himself if it werehumanly possible, but could impart that spirit to others."15

At the end of March, after brief training atEglin, the special force flew to the McClellan Field atSacramento, California, and from there to Alameda NavalAir Station where the aircraft were lifted by crane onto thedeck of the Navy's newest carrier, the Hornet. Griffin's B-25, The Whirling Dervish, became plane number nine ofthe sixteen that eventually made the flight. Though Col.Doolittle had originally hoped for an attacking "force of18" aircraft, "it was decided that only 15 could be handledsafely" aboard ship.16 The colonel had some misgivings ashe examined the Hornet's flight deck for the first time:

Knowing some of the crews were apprehensiveabout taking off when they saw the short deck space, I asked[ship] Captain [Marc] Mitscher if we could have a sixteenthB-25 loaded. After we were about 100 miles at sea, I thoughttwo of the pilots . . . could take off to show the rest of the crewsit was possible.17

The volunteers had plenty of reasons fortheir own misgivings. While they had practiced short-dis-tance takeoffs from a carrier painted on the tarmac atEglin, none of them had actually flown from a pitching

carrier deck before. And no one had ever lifted a fully-gassed, fully armed B-25 from one either.18 That the man-ufacturer's specifications called for a minimum of 1,200 feetof runway provided little comfort. Unlike airfields, howev-er, carriers could be turned into the wind. This, plannershoped, plus the ship's forward movement, would providethe necessary lift to get the heavily loaded planes airborne.To complicate matters even further, however, the Hornet'sflight deck was narrower than the nearly sixty-eight footwingspan of the B-25.19 To avoid collision with the ship'sisland (its "control tower"), pilots would have to take offwith their left wing hanging over the edge of the ship, theleft landing gear and nose wheel following white linespainted on the deck.20 Nevertheless, Col. Doolittleresolved to add the sixteenth plane to the complement."Of course, Doolittle [intended to take] the first plane off,and that made us all very . . . confident that maybe wecould do it, too." Though "apprehension about taking off. . . was rife," sub-buster "Brick" Holstrom, pilot of num-ber four, "had no fear, no qualms . . . primarily because of[his] faith in Doolittle. He had insisted that it was feasible,and that was that."21

Technical problems plaguing the B-25s,some quite serious, added to the crews' uncertainties.While the army bombers might manage to leave the carri-er, they could not return: they were too large, they lackedthe arresting hook required to snag the cables used to"catch" Navy planes during landings, and the tail sectionsof the bombers would likely snap off upon impact with aheaving flight deck.22 This meant that the planes wouldhave to be flown to land bases, leaving only two options.The first, shortest, and therefore the safest proposal wouldroute the planes northwest from Japan to the Soviet Unionwhere the crews could surrender their ships as part of theLend-Lease program. But the Soviets had their own mis-givings — in this case a fear of antagonizing the Japanesewith whom they were not at war. Despite the fact that theSoviet naval attache to Japan had been supplying dataabout potential air strike targets to American intelligence,Soviet Premier Josef Stalin denied the Americans permis-sion to land in the U.S.S.R. after bombing raids onJapan.23 The alternative required the planes to turn south-west toward airfields in Nationalist (Allied)-controlledareas of China — well beyond the normal 1400 mile rangeof a B-25B.24 There, the planes would be turned over tothe newly formed 10th and 14th Air Forces in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. Because top-secretinformation within the Chinese command had previously

Queen City Heritage

reached the Japanese with near postal-service regularity,American planners never briefed Nationalist GeneralissimoChiang Kai-shek about the actual attack. When asked ingeneral terms about providing such forward landing fieldsfor American bombers for an attack upon Japan itself (pre-sumably flying first through China), Chiang balked, fear-ing retaliation by the Japanese — a fear that later provedjustified. Ultimately he conceded in principle to the Alliedrequest, but not until March 28.25 The China route hadalready been chosen, nonetheless.

To extend the range of the Mitchell bomber,Doolittle ordered considerable modifications to the plane.He had the defensive belly turret removed from each shipto reduce weight. In its place, an extra gas tank was added.Other tanks were installed, one in the upper part of thebomb bay (reducing the bomb load to 2000 pounds26) anda collapsible "balloon" in the crawlway between the noseand tail sections. Since even these changes couldn't guar-antee adequate range, each plane carried an additional fiftygallons, in five gallon cans, in the tail — the fuel to bepoured into the belly-gun tank by the gunner during theflight to Japan.27 But the newly installed tanks leaked andneeded constant repair. In fact, some were still leaking attakeoff.28 To compound the danger, the sheer volume ofaviation gas within each B-25 obviously increased the risks,too. A single tracer bullet or a hot shell fragment mightignite the entire plane. What's more, the removal of theplane's belly guns left only the dorsal (top), power-operat-ed turret with two .50 caliber machine guns and one cum-bersome .30 caliber machine gun in the plexiglas "green-house" nose as a defense against enemy fighters.

The new power turrets failed chronically,another "glitch" that was not resolved by launch date.29 Inaddition, the new .50 caliber machine guns, fresh from themanufacturer, jammed after only four or five shots. In theproduction rush at the outset of the war, the guns arrivedat Eglin Air Field with critical firing mechanisms roughand unfinished. So, instead of the sharpening their shoot-ing skills during the few weeks of training, gunners spentmost of their training ironing out problems with their"shooting irons."30 In fact, in hopes of warding offJapanese attackers, two broomstick handles, painted black,were attached to the small plexiglas "blister" at the tail ofthe plane, a tactic that proved surprisingly effective overJapan.31

Such snags undoubtedly passed through theminds of volunteers like Tom Griffin when Doolittle askedthe crews, as he did throughout training and on the trip to

Japan, if anyone wanted to drop out — without questionor consequence. No one did. As for the mission itself, writ-ers have detailed the events in great detail, beginning withpilot Ted Lawson's now classic account, Thirty Seconds overTokyo, made into a propaganda film in 1943 (starring VanJohnson as Lawson and Spencer Tracy as Doolittle). Morerecently Stan Cohen's updated pictorial history,Destination: Tokyo, Carroll Glines' and Duane Schultz'sbooks, both entitled The Doolittle Raid and released in1988, provide specifics about the attack itself. Glines' andSchultz's books also succeed in capturing the feeling of theparticipants, using extensive first-hand recollections —including those of navigator Griffin. Most noteworthy inunderstanding the mettle of Col. Doolittle, Lt. Griffin, andthe seventy-eight other Doolittle Raiders (as they came tobe called), are the other last-minute complications that fur-ther jeopardized their lives and the mission.

Since the success of the endeavor dependedalmost entirely upon the element of surprise, planners andcrews would have been stunned to learn that the Japanesewere expecting the American counterattack. When, onApril 10, their naval intelligence monitored radio U.S.Navy transmissions, author Duane Schultz reveals that theJapanese had correctly surmised the location of theAmerican ships headed their way and that the Americanforce included as many as three U.S. carriers. Actually, theJapanese, who could assemble over 200 planes, nine sub-marines, ten destroyers, six heavy cruisers, and five aircraftcarriers, were looking forward to delivering the knockoutblow to the American Pacific Fleet — when it reached its300 mile operating range on April 19.32 To assure them-

The crew of plane numbernine, The Whirling Dervish,as they appeared on theHornet before the attack.(Left to right:) Lt. Thomas C.Griffin, navigator; Lt. HaroldF. "Doc "Watson, pilot; T/Sgt.

Eldred V. Scott, engineer-gunner; Lt. James N. Parker,Jr., co-pilot; Sgt. Wayne M.Bissell, bombardier. All sur-vived the war. (USAF #94608)


•HI

i

selves an adequate warning, they had already stationed aline of early-warning picket boats some 600-1000 miles tothe south and east of their islands, a measure that wasunknown to American naval intelligence. One of theseradio ships discovered Task Force 16, as it was named,under Admiral "Bull" Halsey at dawn on April 18, 1942. Atthis point Halsey's ships numbered just five cruisers andtwo carriers, the Hornet and the Enterprise}3 Bad weatherhad forced the admiral on April 17 to take an extra risk toavoid possible delay. He left behind his slower screeningforce of eight destroyers (and two oilers) for a high-speedapproach to the launch point.34 Aware that, if his attackingforce were lost, the United States would have "virtually noPacific Fleet,"35 Halsey correctly decided to launch thebombers immediately — not from the 400-450 miles out asplanned, but from nearly 600-650 miles.36 Hypotheticallyspeaking, this was far from a worst-case scenario. In theevent of an even earlier discovery, planners had decidedthat, if need be, the Hornet should launch the bombers on

a one-way trip to Japan, so long as it lay within the farthestlimit of the bombers' range. Under such extreme circum-stances, Tom Griffin and all the B-25 crews knew that theywere expendable. The most optimistic of eventualities sawthem winding up as POWs — a prospect made less palat-able due to the reports all had heard of the brutalitiesinflicted upon prisoners in China, Malaya, and thePhilippines. The naval intelligence officer aboard theHornet, Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Jurika, told the men that, "ifthey were captured . . . , the chances of their survivalwould be awfully slim, very, very slim." In reality hethought they "would be tried by some sort of kangaroocourt and probably publicly beheaded."37 Halsey knew allthis, too, and he knew that his orders multiplied the oddsagainst all the fliers — among them, navigator Lt. ThomasGriffin.

The discovery of the American presence andHalsey's prompt decision nevertheless caught everyone bysurprise. Everyone in the task force had assumed that the

Wartime censors obliteratedthe squadron insignias onfliers jackets to prevent theJapanese from learning whatgroups were involved in theraid. In the left foregroundmission commander Lt. Col.

James Doolittle chats withthe Capt. Marc Mitscher, theskipper of the Hornet. Griffinstanding in the second row,third from the right, andother army fliers look on.

Queen City Heritage

attack would not be mounted until that evening,38 theJapanese thought the following day.39 When at 8:00 A.M.,the klaxon on the Hornet sounded, and the intercomcalled, "Army pilots, man your planes," Lt. Griffin was inthe wardroom, eating an orange. He hit the deck and wasnearly blown overboard by the wash of the propellers fromthe planes ahead of him. Griffin's pilot, "Doc" Watsonfound his plane incapable of flying because he had givenflight engineer-gunner, T/Sgt. Eldred Scott, permission toservice the plane. "I found all the cowling [engine cover]off the left engine and all the plugs out! The last piece ofcowling was snapped in place as the ship ahead started itsengines."40 The early launch time also precluded the nightattack that had been planned with Doolittle's number oneplane arriving over Tokyo at dusk to mark with incendiarybombs the targets for the raiders who were to follow. Italso forced the inadequately armed planes over hostile airspace in broad daylight, and it meant that the B-25s, if theirgas held out, would be arriving over primitive and, as itturned out, unmarked and unlit airfields in China at night.41

There was still the question of the takeoff,made more complicated by gale-force winds and a lurchingdeck. Special care had to be taken to launch each plane asthe Hornet reached the peak of each wave; if not, the B-25

would plough through the thirty-foot seas crashing overthe bow and into the trough of the wave.

Some, like Tom Griffin, "dealt with things asthey came." In contrast, pilot "Brick" Holstrom won-dered, "What the hell do we do now? Whatever it was, wewere headed straight for it, but I resolved to give Tokyothe worst within my power. I had trained for this momentfor months and wasn't going to let the opportunity slipfrom my grasp."42 Doolittle had expressed similar, evenstronger sentiments earlier when one of the raiders hadasked him at a briefing what the colonel would do if hisown plane were critically damaged over Japan.

"Each pilot must decide for himself what hewill do and what he'll tell his crew to do if it happens. Iknow what I intend to do."

The same raider posed the follow-up ques-tion. The colonel replied:

I don't intend to be taken prisoner. Fm 45years old and have lived a full life. If my plane is crippledbeyond any possibility of fighting or escape, Fm going to havemy crew bail out and then Fm going to dive my B-25 into thebest military target I can find. Tou fellows are all youngerand have a long life ahead of you. I don't expect any of therest of you to do what I intend to do.43

B-25 Mitchell bombersassembled at the stern of theHornet. Pilots steered theirplanes along white linespainted on the deck to avoidcolliding with the carrier'sisland. During the take off the

planes' left wings dangledover the ship's side. (ThomasC. Griffin Collection)


Fortunately, Doolittle never had to fulfill hispledge. The stiff headwinds provided more than enoughlift for all the planes to climb off the deck,44 but not with-out incident. As deck handlers, called airdales, muscledplane number sixteen into place along the white lines, oneof them slipped. The wash from the preceding bombersent him into the buzz-saw prop of number sixteen. Themishap cost him an arm. As for Holstrom and his B-25,intercepted by nine Japanese fighters and with an inopera-tive gun turret, he ordered the bombardier to jettison theirbombs (over Tokyo Bay45), the only one of the raiders todo so. He gunned the throttle and managed to lose thefighters in an overcast.46 Eventually, he and his crewreached China. Another plane, however, consuming toomuch fuel, headed for an unauthorized landing inVladivostok, U.S.S.R. There, the crew was interned for"the duration." They escaped thirteen months later.47

Tom Griffin's plane found and hit an indus-trial target, what Griffin recalls as a tank factory in theKawasaki district of Tokyo.48 He described his reaction asThe Whirling Dervish neared the drop point: "We weresurprised and shocked to realize that the small black cloudswe were seeing [over the target] were flak [anti-aircraftfire]. They were shooting at us."49 But that isn't whatGriffin remembers the most. Two memories stand out:

Oddly enough, the one [thing] I remembermore than anything else [occurred] after we had bombed thefactory that was our target. We made a sweeping left turnand we flew at rooftop level right over [Emperor of Japan]Hirohito's house. And I enjoyed that. [I] looked down at abig white house, sort of in a park-like area . . . We scared oldHirohito. But we couldn't touch him.Prior to the mission, in fact, Doolittle had made it clear toall the raiders that they were not to make the same mistakein attacking the emperor that the Japanese had made inattacking Pearl Harbor:

On one occasion, I heard a couple of the boystalking about bombing the emperor's palace — the "Templeof Heaven." I promptly jumped into their conversation.

"You are to bomb military targets only," I toldthem. ccThere is nothing that would unite the Japanese nationmore than to bomb the emperor's home. It is not a militarytarget! And you are to avoid hospitals, schools, and othernonmilitary targets." 50

Griffin's other memory marks his initiation into what somewriters refer to as the "brotherhood of war":

I was never frightened because I didn't havesense enough to be until we were two or three hours south of

Tokyo and we saw Jap[anese] cruisers up ahead and steam-ing toward Tokyo. And we turned . . . and were about 10 to15 feet above the water. . . . They spread out [and] . . . wecould see what they were doing and we got too close to themand they opened up on us. [One of the cruisers] was a sheet offlames. . . . We were flying through columns of water thatthey [the shells] were throwing up at us. I just know I wasscared. That was the first time. "This is dangerous business. [Irealized.] This is scary I" That's the part of the action Iremember most vividly.

To conserve fuel, [pilot "Doc"] Watson [had]throttled back. . . . Finally and reluctantly [he] pushed thethrottles forward and got out of there. I think if we hadn'tprodded him he would have gambled on riding it through.He had fuel consumption on his mind.51

"He did the best job of conserving fuel" ofany of the pilots — reaching 300 miles inland. "He was thefinest pilot I ever flew with," reminisces Tom Griffin,remembering his friend and comrade who died recently.

According to engineer-gunner T/Sgt .Eldred Scott's recollections, this encounter with theImperial Japanese Navy took place some time before whenplane number nine swooped low over Tokyo Bay: "There Iwas, firing back with a .50 caliber machine gun. Might aswell have had a cap pistol."52

The Whirling Dervish, Griffin's plane, camethrough the anti-aircraft fire safely, but the crew's experi-

On April 18, 1942, one by onethe heavily laden bombersstaggered into the air fromthe carrier's deck.(Thomas C.Griffin Collection)

10 Queen City Heritage

ence raises questions about the Doolittle's "official"account that the raiding force met little enemy opposition.Looking back at the events, Griffin admits a different view:

It's sort of a bone of contention [betweenDoolittle and myself]. Fve heard the General [Doolittle waspromoted following the attack], who was in plane number 1say that there wasn't much opposition. I've never had thecourage to contradict him. But I was in plane number 9 thatcame in over the target about 45-50 minutes later [afterDoolittle's plane number 1 dropped the first bombs]. Andthere was a lot of flak . . . . [He] had stirred up a hornet'snest. . . . He wasn't entirely accurate.

At one point, an enemy fighter fired tracersthat passed over the left engine of Griffin's plane beforeengineer-gunner Scott drove him off. Holstrom's B-25,says Griffin, "actually had eighteen pursuits [fighters]"after it.

Tradition holds, too, that — so secret wasthis mission — the volunteers had no idea where they wereheaded until Task Force 16 had put to sea. True, Doolittlehad cautioned the utmost secrecy, telling the airmen atEglin (and played up by Hollywood) that the F.B.I, wouldtake care of anyone who asked too many questions abouttheir training. Nevertheless, Tom Griffin counters that, inabout ten days, the volunteers had pretty much puttogether the clues of the mission — a carrier outlined onthe landing field, for one. He knew the destination, as didLt. Davy Jones, the pilot of plane number five and naviga-tion-intelligence officer for the raid. Both had beenordered to Washington where they and army intelligencespent a week pouring over classified maps of the targetareas. Their job was to select the necessary charts, whichwere copied, crated, and shipped to California. Navigators,after all, needed detailed maps to prepare for their part ofthe job. When Griffin and Jones returned to Eglin, theyremained "very closemouthed" about their absence.53 Tomaintain the tightest possible security, General Marshalleven chose not to tell President Roosevelt about the raid.54

Tom Griffin's recollections include muchmore. In his book historian Carroll Glines contends that,contrary to Col. Doolittle's specific instructions, navigatorGriffin and the crew of number nine had determined, ifcrippled over Tokyo, to hurl The Whirling Dervish intoHirohito's palace rather than crash or bail out over Japan.Though such a scenario makes good reading, it never hap-pened, Griffin claims. He does, however, acknowledegethat the crew had devised one emergency plan: if forceddown over water, they had agreed to ditch next to a

Japanese fishing boat and capture it. Glines does capturewhat was undoubtedly, for Tom Griffin, one of the mostprivately stressful moments of the attack. While the weath-er over Tokyo was ideal, it had been terrible for takeoffand it was just as bad for landing. As the raiders turned forChina, they encountered a terrible storm and fierce head-winds. For a time, in fact, it appeared that all (except forthe plane that flew to the U.S.S.R.) would wind in the Seaof Japan, a hundred miles or more from land. Then, in the"last real navigating" he did, Griffin took a wind drift tofind that the wind direction had changed, that the stormhad now created a tail wind. It was this wind change thatenabled the fifteen crews to reach landfall. That readingwas Tom Griffin's last of the flight: the weather closed inand prevented any of the navigators from "getting a fix"on their positions. "I felt like baggage," says Griffin.

However, hope springs eternal. It was at thismoment a rift appeared in the clouds overhead and a lonestar shone through! Four sets of eyes turned on me. 'Griffin!A star! Get a fix!' Their eyes told me that this was to be oursalvation — if I could produce.

. . . J [did not] attempt to point out that incelestial navigation at least two heavenly bodies must be usedto obtain a fix . . . . With those four sets of eyes on me it didnot seem the moment to start a class in elementary naviga-tion. I . . . picked up by octant [navigational instrument]wondering what I was going to do. . . . After several momentsof sighting, the storm once more entirely engulfed the plane.The star appeared no more. I was off the hook and once moreexcess baggage.55

Lost, in darkness, unable to find airfields thathad neither been supplied nor marked by radio beacons asplanned, the planes made emergency landings sputteredout of gas and the crews bailed out.

Four B-25s, like Ted Lawson's RupturedDuck, ditched along the coastline, in some cases killing andinjuring some of the airmen. Lawson, for one, nearly diedas the result of the injuries he sustained. Chance sparedhim when the outfit's only surgeon, Harvard graduate Dr.(Doc) Thomas White — who had first to qualify as a gun-ner before Doolittle agreed to his being taken along —came down near The Ruptured Duck. In emergencysurgery with the most rudimentary equipment and sup-plies, White amputated Lawson's badly infected leg. Onegunner was killed outright when his parachute failed toopen. Two others were killed in ditching. Eight fell intoJapanese hands. These prisoners were subsequently tor-tured, forced to sign "confessions," written only in

• :

:

• - » * , .

mm

Japanese, that they had indiscriminately massacred civilians,and — ignorant of the charges brought against them —"tried" as war criminals in the kangaroo court Lt. Jurikahad foreseen. Three were executed, the others receiving"clemency" through the personal intervention of theemperor. Their experiences became another Hollywoodpropaganda film, Purple Heart, in 1944 and the subject ofCarroll Glines' book Four Came Home. "I've been led tobelieve," says Tom Griffin, "that Hirohito himself wentover the trial records and said, 'Shoot these three and putthe others in solitary.'" Of the remaining prisoners, oneeventually died in captivity of malnutrition. The four sur-vivors were rescued in August 1945, when OSS (special ser-vices) men parachuted into Peking and negotiated their

release from their Japanese captors.56

The crew of The Whirling Dervish was lucky.Watson had nursed his B-25 farther inland than any of theother planes. Fifteen and a half hours into their flight, thetwin engines sputtering, the crew dropped through thehatches into the darkness and the storm. Tom Griffinremembers what it was like bailing out: "It was a peculiarsensation. . . . I was in a big pendulum. . . . until "[myparachute] hung up on the tops of some bamboo trees andI was lowered to the earth with the greatest of ease." Allfive of Griffin's crew survived. But they were not yet safe.The next morning he, co-pilot Lt. James Parker, and gun-ner-engineer T/Sgt. Eldred Scott met in a Chinese villagewhere the three were held prisoner by armed Chinese sol-

Few photos of the DoolittleRaid survived the ditchingsand crash landing that fol-lowed the raid. However, oneshowing a pilot's eye view ofthe Yokosuka Naval Base did.The "knob" in the lower left-

hand corner is the spinner ofthe plane's left propeller.(Thomas C. Griffin Collection)


diers until Catholic missionaries identified them asAmericans. "Doc" Watson joined them two days later —with a shoulder injury so severe that he flew nothing but adesk for the rest of the war. Bombardier Wayne Bissell wasthe last to be reunited with his crew. He had been cap-tured by Chinese bandits who apparently intended to holdhim for ransom. But, Griffin recalls "he escaped by thesimple expedient of running away." Generally, however —with the exception of one crew turned over to the Japanese— the Chinese treated the American fliers as heroes andhelped them escape.

In retaliation for the raid, Tokyo ordered theChinese airfields taken and the American "war criminals"captured. "The Japanese seemed to know where all ourcrews were," says Griffin. "Their Zeros flew over the townwe were in and circled us at low altitude. . . . [They] laterwiped that town out."57 So ruthless were the Japanese intheir reprisals against the Chinese who had assisted theAmericans, that they did the same to many such places. ABelgian missionary described what happened to the manwho had aided Lt. Watson: "'They wrapped him up insome blankets, poured the oil of a lamp on him and oblig-ed his wife to set fire to the human torch.'"58 Doolittlerecorded in his autobiography: "All told, in the wake of

[Tom Griffin's] crew's escape, Japanese forces killed thou-sands of Chinese peasants for assisting the Americans. Itwas later estimated that 250,000 innocent Chinese paidwith their lives for helping us."59

What had Tom Griffin's mission accom-plished — particularly in light of the awful cost? On April19, the day following the raid, the Cincinnati Enquirerheadlines proclaimed, "Fire and Explosive Bombs DoWidespread Damage, Axis Accounts Hint." The accompa-nying article reported: "The very fact that the Japaneseradios shouted officially that the 'imperial family is safe'suggested a major disaster, because only at times of greatemergency are such assurances given." The article citedINS sources: "Japan, shaken by the impact of bombs onher own soil for the first time in the war, prepared franti-cally . . . to meet an openly expected renewal of raids car-ried out . . . against four of her leading cities by bombersidentified in Tokyo as American."

Even neutral Switzerland cheered the news:Bern, April 19 — (AP) — The bombing of Tokyo wasdescribed as a demonstration of the "spirit of the offensivenow animating the Anglo-Saxons" by the newspaper LaSuisse, Geneva, today.

The Swiss newspaper, in a front-page editori-

Pictured here is the nowfamous photo of JimmyDoolittle, thoroughly dejectedbecause he feared the mis-sion had failed, seated nearthe wing of his wrecked B-25in China. (Thomas C. GriffinCollection)

Winter 1992 Navigating from Shangri-La 13

al entitled "From Defensive to Offensive," said the raidbrought the war home to the people of Japan for the firsttime since last December 7 [Pearl Harbor].60

The Los Angeles Times reported "DoolittleDid It!"61 And the Nome, Alaska (Doolittle's home town)Nugget dared the following headline, "Nome Town BoyMakes Good."62 So, as far as some of the press was con-cerned, the Doolittle Raid was an unqualified success.

Navigator Griffin and the rest of theDoolittle Raiders came to an entirely different conclusion:"When we [the crews] got together in China and com-pared our notes and realized we'd lost all our planes, ourinitial feelings were that we thought we'd made a mess ofthe whole thing. We had an assignment, which was tobomb military and industrial targets and then deliverplanes to Chiang Kai-shek." None of them had completedthe second part of their mission. A now famous photo ofDoolittle shows the colonel, dejected, seated on a Chinesemountainside, staring at the remains of his shattered B-25."I felt lower than a frog's posterior," he recalls. "This wasmy first combat mission. . . . I was sure it was my last."63

"'It's been a complete failure,'" he told his engineer-gun-ner S/Sgt. Paul Leonard.64

As I sat there, . . . Leonard took my pictureand . . . tried to cheer me up. He asked, ccWhat do you thinkwill happen when you go home, Colonel?"

I answered, Well, aI guess they'll court-mar-tial me and send me to prison at Fort Leavenworth."

Paul said, aNo, sir. I'll tell you what will hap-pen. They're going to make you a general."

I smiled weakly and he tried again. "Andthey're going to give you the Congressional Medal of Honor."

I smiled again and he made a final effort. "Iknow they're going to give you another airplane and whenthey do, I'd like to fly with you as your crew chief."

It was then that tears came to my eyes.65

All three of Paul Leonard's predictionsproved true66. For their heroism Lt. Thomas Griffin and allthe Tokyo Raiders were awarded medals from the Chinesegovernment and the Distinguished Flying Cross from theair corps. A modest Tom Griffin responded to the sugges-tion that he had done anything "heroic." "If the Americanpeople and everyone thought we'd done a great job, weweren't going to argue with them." As for the results ofthe raid, he replies with understatement: "It had somevery fortunate results. . . . Sometimes you have to do littlethings to get the pot boiling."

Tactically the Doolittle Raid did little bomb

damage. "Two and a half years later," concedes Griffin,"two B-29s carried more tonnage than all sixteen [raider]planes." But, historians agree, it was a great psychologicalboost for the American people and just as great a shock forthe Japanese. They (like their German counterparts) hadbeen assured by their leaders that no Allied plane couldever violate Japan's airspace.67 In fact, on April 16 Japaneseradio had dismissed as ludicrous a Reuters report that threeAmerican planes had bombed Tokyo. Radio Tokyo boast-ed that it was '"absolutely impossible for enemy bombersto get within 500 miles of Tokyo."68 After all, ever since1281, when a fierce storm had miraculously destroyed aninvading Mongolian fleet, Japan had been protected by thekamikaze, the divine wind.69 As the news of the raid sankin, so did feelings of shock and disbelief. Ramon MunizLavalle, an attache assigned to the Argentine embassy inTokyo, witnessed the Japanese reaction at the time. Laterhe concluded, "That raid by Doolittle was one of thegreatest psychological tricks ever used. It caught the[Japanese] by surprise. Their unbounded confidence beganto crack."70

Some historians, such as Edwin P. Hoyt inhis 1990 book The Airmen, contend that the raid was "pri-marily valuable as propaganda." However, this interpreta-tion oversimplifies and underestimates its effects. In ThePacific War John Costello states, "The most far-reachingimpact of the Tokyo Raid was the psychological effect ithad of the [Japanese] Imperial General Staff. The generalsand admirals had suffered a tremendous loss of face, andtheir angry overreaction eventually brought a succession ofstrategic disasters."71 They became obsessed with whatCostello and John Keegan in The Second World War char-acterize as "victory disease."72 The raid, says Keegan,"might have been judged a fiasco had it not registeredwith the Japanese high command." There was greatembarrassment over the attack and a fear for the emperor'swell-being.73 A mortified Admiral Yamamoto, who hadplanned the Pearl Harbor attack, retired to the cabin of hisflagship, leaving the pursuit of Halsey's Task Force 16 tohis chief of staff.74 But he and the Japanese naval command"resolved to save face"75 by drawing the remnants of theAmerican Pacific Fleet into a showdown at which Japanesenumerical superiority would prevail. Yamamoto pressed forJapanese expansion to the east, against the wishes of thearmy, who preferred a southward drive toward Australia.The army now acceded to Yamamoto's plan — in part toremove the now ever-present potential of airstrikes onJapan by eliminating America's westernmost outpost:


Midway Island. Costello describes the feelings of the time:The members of the naval staff were over-

whelmed with a sense of shame. Navy Chief AdmiralNagumo, who had been having second thoughts about theforthcoming Midway operation, now accepted Tamamoto'sview that unless priority was given to capturing the mid-Pacific islands to extend Japan's defensive frontier, the wholeImperial Navy would soon be on patrol to prevent future car-rier raids on Japan.76

The rest, as the expression goes, is history.Just six weeks after the bombing of Japan, the U.S. Navystruck back at Midway. Forewarned of the attack byAmerican intelligence — who had cracked the Japanesecode — U.S. Navy fliers turned the tide of the Pacific War.This is, Tom Griffin agrees, the "biggest thing that theDoolittle Raid did." The pot, indeed, had been stirred tothe boiling point.

Ironically, shortly after bailing out over

China, Charles Greening of plane number eleven summedup the mission of his plane, the Hari-Carrier:ul thinkthey'll call this mission a success anyhow. But there's onething we'll have to admit."

"What's that?" [his crew] asked in unison."It was a mission that will go down in the

official report listed under the heading, 'Not as Briefed.'"77

How ironic, too, that in the fiftieth year afterthe historic flight, as Esther Griffin, Tom's wife of almostfifty years, acknowledges that sometimes, "when you asksomeone what a Doolittle Raider is, they say, 'Is that aprofessional basketball team?'" Undeterred, CincinnatianTom Griffin tells his story and, in so doing, remindsAmericans of the sacrifices of his friends. And, wheneverpossible, he attends the annual reunions of the DoolittleRaiders, possibly for the reason given in the introductionto Destination Tokyo: "Old soldiers get together becauseonce, when they were young, they faced death together —

A series of sketches drawn byRandy Renner illustratedscenes of the Doolittle raid.This one recreates a view ofthe cockpit just before takeoff. (Illustration courtesyRandy Renner)


and survived."78 One of the raiders, fellow-navigatorWilliam Bower of Ravenna, Ohio, recalls nostalgically:"Oh, it was the greatest, the wildest bunch of men that Ihave ever been associated with. There was somethingabout that Seventeenth Group, about the collection ofpeople that were in it, that I have never experiencedsince."79

At the annual reunion of the DoolittleRaiders, held as close to the anniversary date as possible,the living toast their fallen comrades. They raise their silvergoblets — there are eighty of them, each inscribed withtheir name of a raider. And there is a bottle of 1896cognac, the year of General Doolittle's birth — to beshared eventually by the last two survivors. "I personallyhope I'm not one of the last two because," Tom Griffinsays, "I don't like cognac."

Griffin returned to China in 1983, shortlyafter that country opened its doors to outsiders, hoping tophotograph the places he remembered from his Doolittledays. The Chinese government did little to help him, prob-ably because the current regime wants nothing to do withlong-discredited Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Mr.Griffin is currently at work on his latest project associatedwith the Doolittle Raid. In light of recent political devel-opments, the Raiders Association has asked him toapproach the American and Russian governments aboutsecuring the release of the last possible "prisoner" of theDoolittle Raid on Japan, plane number eight, internedalong with its crew in the U.S.S.R. If it survives, Griffinmaintains, B-25B number 40-2242 would make an historicaddition to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington or theAir Force Museum in Dayton. He adds that General

This sketch shows a B-25 onthe flight deck preparing fortake off. (Illustration courtesyRandy Renner)


Doolittle — "The Boss" as he is known by the raiders —is, at the time of this writing, still alive and living inCarmel, California with his son. He is ninety-six years old.In 1991 Doolittle completed his autobiography, I CouldNever Be So Lucky Again.

World War II did not end for Lt. ThomasCarson Griffin after the famous attack on Tokyo. Hereturned from China, was assigned to the 319thBombardment Group, and flew twenty-three missions overNorth Africa and the Mediterranean. Promoted in August1942, Captain Griffin was shot down twice. The first time,he wound up "in the drink." The second time he bailedout of his burning plane and was captured by the Germans,who imprisoned him in the POW complex made famousby the book and movie, The Great Escape. But that, as thesaying goes, is "another story."

1."Tokyo Bombed, Report," Cincinnati Enquirer, April 18, 1942, p.1:1.2. Enquirer, April 18,1942.3. "Allied Offensive Indicated by U.S. Air Attack on Japan."Cincinnati Enquirer, April 19,1942, p. 1:1.4. James A. Cox, "'Tokyo Bombed! Doolittle Do'od I t , ' "Smithsonian, June 1992, p. 118.5. Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, U.S.N. (Ret.) et al, And I WasThere: Pearl Harbor and Midway — Breaking the Secrets. (New York,1985), p. 380.6. Thomas C. Griffin, Interview with the author, May 6, 1992.Hereafter, references to this interview will be 1992 Interview.7. Paul Lugannini, "Member of Doolittle Tokyo Raid Now Lives InCincinnati," Cincinnati Enquirer, April 15,1962, p. 6-A.8. Nick Clooney, "A Veteran Remembers . . . 30 Seconds OverTokyo," Cincinnati Post, April 17,1992, pp. Cl-2.9. Illness prevented Tom Griffin from speaking in 1992.10. Thomas C. Griffin, Interview obtained by the CincinnatiHistorical Society, December 5, 1989. Hereafter, references to thisinterview will be cited as 1989 Interview.

Another sketch by Rennerillustrates a lone B-25 gainingaltitude after dropping itspayload. In the backgroundexplosives and incendiariesdarken the skies over Japan.The tethered barrage of bal-

loons were designed to pre-vent low-level attacks such asthe one made by Doolittle'sfliers. (Illustration courtesyRandy Renner)

Winter 1992 Navigating from Shangri-La 17

11. 1992, 1989 Interviews. The bomber was named after GeneralWilliam "Billy" Mitchell, an early and outspoken proponent of strate-gic air power who was, ironically, court-martialled by the U. S. ArmyAir Corps in 1925.12. Horace S. Mazet, "On the raid that electrified America — andForetold Japan's ultimate fate," World War II, March 1992, p. 8.13. James H. Doolittle with Carroll V. Glines, An Autobiography ofGeneral James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle: I Could Never Be So LuckyAgain (New York, 1991), pp. 230-231.14. 1992 Interview; Doolittle, p. 242.15. Carroll V. Glines, The Doolittle Raid: America's Daring FirstStrike Against Japan (New York, 1988), p. 16.16. Doolittle, p. 255.17. Doolittle, p. 255.18. At the outset of the planning, to determine the feasibility of the pro-ject, two B-25s had safely taken off from the Hornet and returned toNorfolk, Va. But the first plane nearly struck the island. The painted linesdescribed in the article were added to prevent an accident like this fromoccurring.19. 1992 Interview; Cox, p. 116.20. Cox, p. 120.21. 1992 Interview; Ben Warner, "The Doolittle Raid Remembered," AirClassics, May 1992, p. 66.22. Glines, p. 22.23. Doolittle, pp. 265, 3.24. Cox, p. 116.25. Duane Schultz, The Doolittle Raid (New York, 1988), p. 81.26. Schultz, p. 26.27. Doolitde, pp. 240-241.28. Doolittle, p. 272.

29. Doolittle, p. 272.30. Doolittle, pp. 246-247.31. Schultz, p. 46.32. 1992 Interview; Schultz, pp. 109-110.33. Glines, p. 75.34. Schultz, p. 14.35. Schultz, p. 84.36. There is some confusion about figures — probably the result of theuse by some of statute miles and nautical miles by others. (A nautical mileis 6076 feet.) The Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, uses the follow-ing: a planned launch from 450-650 miles out, an actual launch fromapproximately 800 miles. Ironically, the report of the Japanese radio shipseems least confusing. It reported "three enemy carriers" at a distance of650 nautical miles from land's end on the eastern tip of Honshu Island —about 800 miles from Tokyo.37. Schultz, p. 103.38. Glines, p. 114.39. Schultz pp. 109-110. In an interesting anecdote, Schultz tells how asurprised Prime Minister Tojo "met the enemy for the first time." Hisplane was approaching an airfield near Tokyo when a B-25 passed by —so close that his secretary first realized that the "unusual-looking" planewas American when he saw the pilot's face (Schultz 159).40. Glines includes an extensive interview with Thomas Griffin on pp.114-118.41. U.S. efforts to keep the mission secret backfired in China. By the timeof the attack, no radio homing beacons, flares, or high-octane aviation gashad been supplied to the forward Chinese air bases. Even more surprising,American planners did not take the international date line into accountwhen they asked that everything be in place by April 20. According to theoriginal timetable, then the planes should have been arriving in China on

A Renner sketch showingplane number two as it skimsover Tokyo Bay, its prop rais-ing spray, illustrates howclose to the water the planesflew. In the background isJimmy Doolittle's plane num-

ber one. (Illustration courtesyRandy Renner)

Li Queen City Heritage

April 19, not April 20. The discovery of the task force caused the planes toarrive at night on April 18. As it turned out, the issue of the deadline wasa moot point. Nothing had been done to prepare the fields. Even had theraiders' planes been able to put down at the airfields, without fuel theywould have been "sitting ducks" for the Japanese air forces operating inthe area.42 1992 Interview; Mazet, p. 66.43 . Doolittle, p. 270.44. Hollywood Director John Ford, an officer in the Navy during the war,filmed the takeoff.45. Glines, p. 94.46. Mazet, p. 11.47. The Soviets, politically embarrassed by the raiders' presence, may havedeliberately looked the other way, allowing them to escape into Iran.During the crews' captivity, the Soviet embassy in Washington presentedSecretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., with monthly bills forroom and board and related expenses. Apparently Morgenthau calledDoolittle a number of times to complain, but none of the bills were everpaid. The Soviets, Doolittle felt, had kept the B-25 anyway.

48. Duane Schultz contends that The Whirling Dervish actually struck theTokyo Gas and Electric Company.49. Schultz, p. 156.50. 1992 Interview; Doolittle, pp. 265-266.51. 1992 Interview; Glines, p. 115.52. Schultz, p. 53.53. 1992 Interview; Schultz, p. 68.54. Schultz, p. 67.55. Glines, pp. 116.56. Cohen, p. 77. Schultz, p. 174. Shultz cites an extensive study by J.Merrill in his 1964 book, Target Tokyo: The Halsey-Doolittle Raid. In thatbook, Merrill records "that six wards of a Nagoya hospital, six schools,and numerous homes were damaged" in the raid (Schultz, 174). Most ofthis (what today might be called) "collateral damage" resulted from firesset by 500 lb. incendiary cluster bombs that scattered upon release. Oneschool boy was apparently struck on the head and killed by one of these.In conversations with the author, former Vietnam War F-4 reconnaissancepilot, Col. Wayne Pittman (editor of the Air Force Museum's FriendsJournal quarterly), points out that the air corps did not yet understandthe extreme difficulties imposed by low-level bombing attacks. ButMerrill's study also contains a "partial list of the military and industrialtargets damaged in the raid [that] includes five electric and gas compa-nies, six gasoline storage tanks, five manufacturing plants, two warehous-es, a navy ammunition dump, an army arsenal, a navy arsenal laboratory,an airfield, the government communication minister's transformer station,

a diesel manufacturing plant, a steel fabricating plant, and the Nagoyaaircraft factory" (Schultz, 174). Schultz also clarifies Hirohito's role in the

executions. The emperor evidently wanted an example to be made, to actas a deterrent against future bombing attacks. Prime Minister Tojoargued against execution. The law justifying the death penalty for theTokyo raid was enacted after the fact (Schultz, 260-261). 1989 Interview.57. Schultz explains in a footnote on p. 158 that most raiders identifiedattacking planes as "Zeros." Few Zeros, he notes, were stationed in thehome islands at the time of the attack. Most home defense aircraft werefixed landing gear, Nakajima Type-97s ("Nates") — highly maneuverableplanes but obsolescent with a top level speed of approximately 270 m.p.h.This explains how the newer Mitchell was able, in many cases, to outrunthe Japanese fighters. In addition, several of the much faster KawasakiType 3 Ki-63 ("Tony") fighters rose to meet the raiders.58. Glines, p. 152.59. Doolittle, p. 551.60. Enquirer, April 19, 1942, pp. 1:1-2.61. John Toland, But Not in Shame: The Six Months After Pearl Harbor(New York, 1961), p. 335.62. Glines, p. 148.63. Doolittle, p. 12.64. Schultz, p. 3.65. Doolittle, p. 12.66. Doolittle's promotion raised some eyebrows and antagonism amongsome regular army officers. In 1930 Doolittle had resigned from the regu-lar army as a first lieutenant. He skipped captain when he assumed therank of major in the specialist-reserves. In 1940 he resumed active duty asa major and soon became a lieutenant colonel. Then he again skipped arank, that of full colonel, when he was promoted to lieutenant general asa result of the Tokyo raid. Paul Leonard became Doolittle's crew chief inNorth Africa. After an air raid, the general found all that remained of hisfriend, his left hand. "It was my greatest personal tragedy of the war,"Doolittle writes in his memoirs (Doolittle, 335). 1992, 1989 Interviews.67. 1989 Interview; Schultz, p. 10.68. Schultz, pp. 112-113.69. Schultz, p. 10.70. Schultz, p. 114.71. John Costello, The Pacific War (New York, 1981), p. 236.72. Costello, p. 236. John Keegan, The Second World War (New York,1990) p. 271.73. Keegan, p. 270.74. Costello, pp. 235-236.75. Layton, p. 357.76. Costello, p. 236.77. 1989 Interview; Glines p. 122.78. Stan Cohen, Destination: Tokyo: A Pictorial History of Doolittle's TokyoRaid, April 18, 1942 (Missoula, 1992), p.78.79. Schultz, p.57.

Four crew members (left toright) navigator Griffin; bom-bardier Wayne Bissell, pilotHarold "Doc" Watson, andbombardier Eldred Scottattended a reunion of TheWhirling Dervish crew in

December 1945, in Miami.Co-pilot James Parker wasnot present.(Thomas C.Griffin Collection)

queen city heritage - cincinnati museum...

Documents