Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the most desperate hours of World War 280, volunteers stepped forward to try that which had never been done before. To launch one of the most daring raids in aerial combat history by flying fully loaded medium range bombers from the deck of an aircraft carrier. It was a single mission of only 16 bombers, its primary objective. Was to raise the morale of a nation stunned by their surprise attacks and sweeping conquests launched by the Japanese in December of 1941. By doing what was thought to be impossible at the time, bombing the Japanese home islands, as fate would have it. When they left the deck of that carrier in the nearly Gale force winds of an early April morning, the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders would do far more than boost morale. They would trigger a series of tactical errors by the Japanese High command, errors destined to change the outcome of World War Two in the Pacific. 80 men, 68 years later, only six of them are still with us. Yet their tradition dictates that all 80 of them gather, either in body or spirit, every year on the anniversary of that heroic and historic mission. Richard E Cole, 95, from Dayton, OH, is the oldest surviving Raider. He was Jimmy Doolittle's copilot in the first plane to take off from the deck of the USS Hornet. Tom Griffin from Green Bay, WI was the navigator on radar airplane #9. Following the raid, he was shot down in Europe and spent nearly two years in a German prison camp. David Thatcher of Bridger, Montana is one of two Raiders awarded the Silver Star for distinguished gallantry in action for actions they took to save the lives of the seriously injured crew members aboard his B-25 airplane #7. He is now 89 years old. Robert height. The copilot of airplane #16 was captured by the Japanese after the raid and sentenced to death. He was held for 40 months until liberated by American troops on August 20, 1945. He was born in Odell, TX. Four men. From the heartland. The northern plains. The Mountain West. And the Southwest men whose memories of an America united by the common cause of dire peril. And those gained by flying a mission that would lift the nation's sagging spirits and turn the tide of war are as vivid today as they were in April 1942. When we get together, it seems like. The raid was yesterday. It's great to see the ones that are still living and we pay homage to the ones that have passed on. I'm Gary sinise. And this is missions that changed the war. 27 yard line. We interrupt this. Broadcast bringing this important bulletin from the United Press, Flash, Washington the White House announces Japanese attack. On Pearl Harbor. In December of 1941. Dick Cole was a young second Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps Reserve, assigned to the 17th Bomb Group at Pendleton, OR. On Friday the 5th of December, he had flown to March Field near Riverside, CA on a three day pass. Were given what they used to call an open post or you get like a three day pass. We were in Hollywood at the time. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on getting a notice that that that had taken place. We were immediately reported back to March Field. And. Took off and went back to Pendleton, and from Pendleton they divided the group up. And we went on submarine patrol flying out of. Seattle, Portland, Everett, WA. And we did that until about the first or second week of February. While Tom Griffin was majoring in political science at the University of Alabama, he went through the ROTC program. After graduation, he spent a year with an anti aircraft unit based at Fort Sheridan, IL. In 1940, he transferred to the Army Air Corps and was trained in celestial navigation. In January of 1941, he too was assigned to Camp Pendleton OR. They didn't have room for the officers out at the field at Pendleton. So we went into town and the townspeople rented bedrooms to quite a number of the Air Force officers. And somebody came in about 3:30 in the afternoon and came rushing in the room and said, isn't it awful? And we said, what do you mean awful? And they told us about this attack on Pearl Harbor. That's the first we knew that it's an odd thing. That night we went downtown and went to a movie theater. There's a movie on we wanted to see and while we were watching it, they stopped the movie and a man came up on the stage and said all airmen from the field are ordered to report to the field immediately. But we got up and and departed and went back out to the field where our Colonel gave us a little pep talk. About. What had happened and what was going to be expected of us, you know, that sort of thing. So that was my Pearl Harbor. After graduating from Spring Lake High School in Earth, TX in 1937 and completing 3 years of college, Robert Hight enlisted as an aviation cadet at Lubbock, TX on September 9th, 1940. He got his pilots wings on May 29th, 1941. He too, was assigned to the 17th Bomb Group at Pendleton when Pearl Harbor was attacked. David Thatcher was 19 years old when he went from his father's dairy farm in Billings, Mt, to Missoula to enlist in the US Army because he wanted to get away from dairy for a while. He was in airplane mechanics school in Lincoln, NE on December 7th, 1941. There was a 20 picked from the 17th Group, 5 from each of the four squadrons that went there to go to airport mechanic School. So some of us were in the movie then. That was Sunday, so when they come out of the movie in the afternoon we heard it was had been pumped. No one expected something like that? The December 7th, 1941 was a Sunday and Sundays didn't flying school when I was in advanced flying training at Victoria, TX. Three or four of us decided to go downtown Victoria and have lunch down there instead of eating in the mess hall. The base we were on was brand new, we had to build queues were were primitive and the mess hall was not in good shape. And so we took the chance to go and get a nice lunch downtown. Well, one of the fellows had a car and we were allowed to have them by that time in our training. If you're about to graduate, you could buy a car if you had the money to do it and. We had a radio in it, which I'd never seen before in an automobile. And we were riding around getting back to the base and the thing said that there was. Something had happened in Hawaii. And we just shrugged hers. We didn't know what it was. We never really didn't know much about her. What? CV Glines had been the official historian of the Doolittle Raider Association since 1972. He has authored 3 books on the raid and assisted Jimmy Doolittle in writing his autobiography. He was also a World War Two Army Air Corps pilot. Next morning, on Monday morning and we all went to the base for our flying training and always there was a notice for each of our flights as to what the flying was going to be today. And the instructor had formation flying gunnery and he said in big letters he had written on the bottom of it, there's a war on get on the ball. Follow me. Well, that's, you know that was about the the norm. That was the announcement that we got that there was a war on. We were on wartime. Well our job was to follow him and that's what we did that that day we. Went down to gunnery range, we did our gunnery and then instead of coming back to Victoria. He headed out. To the Caribbean. And while I was sitting there flying, my formation was six ship formation. And I wonder why we're going out. Of golf here, this we're not supposed to going to golf. We don't have life jackets or anything. We followed him briefly of course and and he finally made a turn and went back to Victoria and we got on the ground. One of them had the nerve to ask us Sir, where were we lost after after gunnery that might Agordo Island and he said we were supposed to look for submarines. And he went back and now I think we thought he was kidding and we really didn't understand what was going on. But we kept on with our training. That's all we were supposed to do. In his now memorialized speech to Congress on December 8th, 1941. Asking for a declaration of war, Franklin D Roosevelt called the attack on Pearl Harbor unprovoked and dastardly. In Congress, only Montana Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin, the first woman to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, voted against entry into World War Two. The treachery and success of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th, 1941 wasn't the only bad news Americans had to process. Yesterday. The Japanese government also launched an attack. Against Malaya. Last night, Japanese crosses attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine island. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Three days later, on December 11th, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. In an instant, the hope of avoiding war held so fervently in so many American hearts was pulverized by a coordinated multi front onslaught that had been years in the planning. After Pearl Harbor there was nothing but bad news coming the Japanese with a very small army. I mean we we look back today and wonder how they could possibly have done what they did with the number of troops they employed. But they employed them in such a clever manner in joint operations. The Japanese Army and Navy, which are infamous for not cooperating, were able to cooperate on this sort of island hopping, base hopping trip down through Indochina down to Singapore. Tom Griffin of Cincinnati, OH, was the navigator on the 9th airplane to take off from the deck of the USS Hornet in the Doolittle Raid. The Doolittle Raid was so important because it was the first offensive action of our forces against the enemy. We were in this World War. You know, our allies in Russia were being driven back at this time towards their principal cities of Stalingrad and Leningrad and Moscow in North Africa. The British were being driven back by Rommel and his German forces backs toward Cairo. Things were looking bad there in the Atlantic Ocean. German submarines were sinking our shipping wholesale. We didn't have the organization at that time to go after them. Successfully losing all kinds of shipping in the Pacific after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they went from one victory to another. They took over places like Guam and they went down into the into the Philippines and put a large army in the Philippines and we're in the process of defeating our forces there. That was the springtime of 42. On December 7th, 1941, a complete sense of betrayal consumed millions of Americans who had been arguing and demonstrating against America's entry into wars in either Europe or the Pacific. Many prominent Americans, such as aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, general Robert E Wood of Sears, Roebuck's Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert R McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, and even future President John F Kennedy and Gerald Ford, became active in organizations such as the America First Committee that strongly advocated America's neutrality. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction. The Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war. The undeclared acts of war perpetrated by Japan on the 7th and 8th of December 1941 brought the isolationist movement in the United States to a swift and bitter end. Four days after the Pearl Harbor attack, the America First Committee dissolved itself. Virtually overnight. America found itself at war on 2 fronts. No one was more determined to strike back at Japan than President Roosevelt. Almost two weeks to the hour after the Pearl Harbor attack. Those responsible for planning and directing the mobilization of the country's military forces met with the president in his White House study. General George C Marshall was Roosevelt's army chief of staff. General Henry H Hap Arnold was the chief of staff of the Army Air Forces. Admiral Ernest J. King served as Chief of Naval Operations. On this day, the trio would be joined by Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's special adviser, Admiral Harold R Stark. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Well, I guess the best way to get a joint mission is to have it come from the commander-in-chief. And President Roosevelt was anxious to have some retribution. He wanted to know the people of the United States, to know that we weren't flat on our backs and we could do something. This is early in December, maybe two weeks after Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt emphasized that he wanted a bombing raid on the home islands of Japan as soon as possible. This request, repeated over and over again in the weeks following, was transmitted to the respective Staffs of Marshall, King, and Arnold each time they returned to their offices. The biggest obstacle to a retaliatory bombing mission was that no working Allied Air base was close enough to Japan to allow even our longest range bombers to get there. Ironically, the flash of insight that led to the Doolittle Raid did not come from an aviator. But a Navy submariner? Captain Francis Lowe, the operations officer on the staff of Admiral Ernest J. King, on a trip to the naval yard at Norfolk, VA, noticed that the Army Air Corps twin engine bombers were making passes over an aircraft carrier silhouette which had been painted on the runway. In a rare interview following the war, Lowe gave his account of what he saw. I had occasion to fly from Washington to Norfolk to look into the redness of one of our new carriers and as we took off from the. I asked trip to return to Washington and was circling to gain altitude. I noticed down below me the outline of the county of deck. This was not unusual because we had them painted on many landing fields so that young aviators were going to carriers would learn how small such a deck was. But also making passes or appearing to make passes. Over this Kalia deck with some twin engine bombers that looked like B20 fives or B20 sixes. Fair was born. I would say the the concept of the raid. One might call it fortuitous association because I never would have thought of it had I not seen the bombers passing over the carrier deck. Admiral King had been using the USS Vixen, a gunboat moored at the Washington Shipyard, as his flagship and 2nd office. Several of his staff were working and living aboard the ship. On the evening of January 10th, 1942, after King had retired to his cabin, Lowe decided to share his fortuitous association. King reportedly had a stern demeanor and was not easily approachable. Low was not an aviator. He did not know how the Admiral. Would receive his idea. Lowe told King that though Navy fighters had an operating radius of only 300 miles off an aircraft carrier in Norfolk, he had observed Twin Engine Army bombers, which had a much greater range, practicing over the carrier profile on the runway. What if they could actually operate off a carrier? What if the Navy could give the long Range Army Air Corps bombers a ride within range of the Japanese home islands, setting them up for a sea based strike? On January 10th, 1942, while Francis Lowe was sharing his ideas with Admiral King in Washington, DC, Tom Griffin, Dick Cole, David Thatcher, Robert Height, and the rest of the 17th Bombardment Group were flying out of Tacoma, WA and Portland, OR, patrolling for threats to the West Coast of the United States. At the time of Pearl Harbor, we spent the next six weeks our our group flying out from Tacoma, WA and Portland, OR looking for whatever might show up. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and as far as we knew they would come and attack the West Coast of America. But of course they had other plans. They thought they had done enough damage and they they could go elsewhere in the Pacific. And then more or less take over the Pacific, which they did. Back in Washington, somewhat to Francis Lowe's surprise, Admiral King directed him to talk to Captain Donald Duncan, King's Air Operations Officer, the very next morning about his idea, he added sternly. Don't tell anyone about this. In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt pressed the US military for a plan to strike back against the Japanese homeland, Francis Lowe, a Navy captain. After watching twin Engine bombers making passes over the outline of an aircraft carrier on a runway near Norfolk, VA, suggested a bombing strike might be possible from the deck of a carrier. Admiral King, Chief of Naval Operations, told low to explore the idea with Donald Duncan, his air operations officer, and he told him something else. Don't tell anyone about this. Lowe had two pertinent questions for Duncan. First, can an army medium range bomber land aboard a carrier? Second, can a land based bomber loaded with bombs and crew take off from a carrier deck? The answer to the first question was a quick no. The risk of landing airplanes that size on a carrier was too high, but even if it were possible, the elevator would not be able to get the bombers below decks. To make room for other landings, but a carrier takeoff? That was another matter. In this rare archival footage, Duncan recalls being contacted by Lowe. When Captain Lowe, the operations officer on Admiral King staff, told me that he and the Admiral had been discussing the possibility of launching army bombers from carrier. Decks. To hit Japan. And told me that the animal wanted me to investigate it and write up a concept of operations checked over the various types. Of Army bombers that we might. Use. And came up with the answer that the B-25 was probably the best bet. They looked at a bunch of airplanes. B18, which was a terrible airplane for a bombing mission, and the B26, which had a suspect reputation. But the B-25 seemed to fill the bill in North American B-25. When the B-25 came about, it was like a kick in the pants as far as maneuverability and speed and fun to fly. The Mitchell B-25 was one of the iconic success stories of World War Two. By the end of its production, nearly 10,000 various models of it had been built. It was used by the Allied Air forces in every theater of the war it served across 4 decades. The B-25 is a developed by North American Aviation with very easy airplane to fly. I it was far easier to fly than the Marauder. The B26 Marauder had a much lower wing loading and with the lower wing load it could get off in shorter distances and more outer need. A much longer runways, had to land a lot faster air speeds. But you could take a young pilot right out of advanced training with a couple 100 hours in his logbook put him in B-25 very quickly transitioned. Turn his combat skills and send him off to war as a competent combat pilot. The B-25, properly modified, could carry 2000 pounds of bombs and make a 2000 mile flight if extra gas tanks were installed. Normally, it would take at least 1200 feet of runway with that kind of load. If it were lightened, however, it might be made to leap off in a little over 1/3 of that distance, especially with a forward speed of a carrier and a wind of about 25 knots low, and Duncan knew a test would be required. Under normal circumstances, such a test flight would not be difficult to conduct. But these were not normal circumstances. Both men had Admiral King's words ringing in their ears. Don't mention this to another soul. On January 31st, 1942, Captain Duncan flew to Norfolk. The USS Hornet, the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, was due there to be readied for her first mission. He went aboard the Hornet the afternoon of February 1st and explained the test to mark a mitcher, the Hornet skipper. Duncan had made arrangements with Hap Arnold's office to have 3B20 fives waiting. When the carrier arrived, the Army Air Corps chose Lieutenant John Fitzgerald to head the test crews. He was a 1940 graduate of the Advanced Flying School with over 400 hours in B20 fives. In Norfolk, Fitzgerald and his fellow pilots made several practice runs at an auxiliary airfield before going aboard the carrier. One of the test airplanes lost an engine during these drills, leaving only the two planes flown by Fitzgerald and Lieutenant James F McCarthy to make the historic first takeoffs of Army Air Corps multi engine bombers from a Navy ship. The surprising performance of the B-25 nearly led to disaster when the takeoffs were attempted. Fitzgerald's plane left off the deck so quickly and so high, its right wing nearly flew into the tower that overhung the flight deck, Fitzgerald later recalled. I was surprised to observe that we had been provided almost 500 feet of usable deck and that the planes airspeed indicator showed about 45 mph just sitting there. When I got the GO signal, I let the brakes off and was almost immediately airborne. One thing that worried me though, was the projection of the island. Got over the flight deck. The wing of my plane rose so rapidly that I thought I was going to strike this projection. I pushed the control column forward and the wing just barely passed underneath. I climbed and circled back to watch Lieutenant McCarthy take off. It was now established that the B-25 bombers could indeed take off from a carrier deck. But what would happen when they were weighted with a full crew, bombs and an expanded fuel load? That question would soon become the sole focus of the diminutive, brilliant man whose name would eventually be memorialized by this mission that changed the war. Immediately following the attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, President Franklin D Roosevelt began pressing his military leadership for a plan to conduct a retaliatory air strike against the Japanese homelands. With no Allied air base within striking distance of Japan, two naval officers on Admiral King's staff had successfully. Tested the takeoff of B-25 bombers from the deck of an aircraft carrier. It was something never before tried in the history of aerial warfare to plan the mission and train the crews. Chief of staff of the Army Air Forces, Henry Hap Arnold made a surprise choice. He turned to a man who had once resigned his Army Air Corps Commission in order to enter private business. He chose one of America's most famous aviators, James H Doolittle. In doing so, Arnold tapped a man who is not only a brilliant aviation tactician. History would bear witness that he also identified one of the most revered and visionary leaders of the modern American military. It was very difficult to believe when the rumors started. Then it was led by Jimmy Doolittle. Jimmy Doolittle, the racing pilot. Another impossibility. It would just seem like it was a false rumor, but it it took place. And all of these impossibility things happened through the leadership, the planning. Of the then Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, former racing pilot Devil May care, couldn't care less. We go. It was not that way. He was master of the calculated risk. As a kid growing up in Dayton, OH, Dick Cole used to ride his bicycle to a levy above McCook field to watch the Army Air Corps test pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle. Some of the old pilots like Mccrady, Doolittle and spats. Flew in and out of there when they were testing the area. Earlier refueling and they flew for 26 days, something like that. But anyway, that was one of the the pastimes that I had when I was a kid. For something like this, there is an element of show in it. There's an element of innovation. And they they selected the guy who could combine leadership and innovation and great flying characteristics and Jimmy Doolittle and oddly enough, sort of on the outs Jimmy Doolittle at the time. Had rejoined the Air Force but he had gotten out because after I think was 11 years as a first Lieutenant, he decided he had to make some money for his family and and got out during the 30s. And to the hardcore who had stayed in, including General Arnold, that wasn't the thing to do. You know, he he, he was sort of not in the best favor at the time. James Harold Doolittle was born in Alameda, CA on December 14th, 1896. His father was a Carpenter who went to Alaska in search of gold. After joining his father in Nome at age 11, Doolittle moved with his mother to Los Angeles. In 1917, at the age of 21, Doolittle, who had had a brief career as a professional boxer, enlisted in the Army Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps to train as a pilot. He was quickly promoted to Lieutenant. He served in the Army Air Corps from 1917 to 1930, when he became a major in the Army Air Corps Reserve. Flying was Jimmy Doolittle's passion. In 1922, he made the first cross-country crossing in under 24 hours. He became the first person to win all major aviation racing trophies. He won the Schneider Trophy in 1925 and the Bendix Trophy in 1931. In 1932, he won the Thompson Trophy flying a closed course. Race in Cleveland, an average of 252 mph in the GBR. One racer, Doolittle made aviation history on September 24th, 1929 when he became the first person to take off, fly and land an airplane entirely by instruments. He flew a 15 minute course around Mitchell Field on Long Island in a modified NY2 Husky. In his personal logbook he modestly referred to the watershed accomplishment. As a blind flying exhibition after leaving the military in 1930, Doolittle went to work for Shell Oil Corporation to establish an aeronautical branch. In this capacity, he was given credit for leading the company to develop 100 octane fuel for aviation. Between the two world wars. The Army Air Corps had been relegated to the job of flying the mail. Doolittle knew that it was falling behind the rest of the world's flying forces. New, more powerful engines were needed, but there was number way to efficiently fuel them. In his 1991 autobiography, Doolittle wrote. I was concerned that we were falling behind other nations in military aeronautics and that we should be looking forward to the development of more powerful engines for warplanes so that heavier loads could be carried faster. The Army Air Corps was not even a third rate Air Force compared with the air forces of other nations at Doolittles. Urging Shell made the first delivery of 100 octane rated fuel to the Army Air Corps for test purposes in 1934. When Doolittle traveled to Germany on Shell business, he found a nation bristling with militarism. He saw Boy Scout troops that had been converted to Hitler youth drilling as soldiers and singing Nazi war songs. He met German pilots who openly talked of the inevitability of war in Europe, and who bluntly asked him what the United States would do about it. Jimmy Doolittle knew half Arnold, the chief of the Army Air Force, as well. Arnold had been his commanding officer at Rockwell Field near San Diego following World War One. Doolittle visited Arnold and told him he believed that America's involvement in the war in Europe was inevitable. September 1st 1939 two weeks after Doolittle's conversation with Arnold, the Germans marched into Poland, and 1400 Luftwaffe planes bombed and strafed a stunned population. In May of 1940, the German Blitzkrieg extended into the Netherlands, Belgium and France. On the 16th of May, in a speech before Congress, President Roosevelt called for a program that would. Potentially produced at least 50,000 airplanes a year. A little over two weeks after that, on June 4th, 1940, IRA Acker, General Arnold's executive officer, wrote Jimmy Doolittle asking him to return to active duty. On July 1st, at 44 years of age, Jimmy Doolittle became a U.S. Army Air Corps officer for the second time, beginning a journey whose outcome was far from certain. Jimmy Doolittle was a tremendous man. A big man and a little man's body, you might say. Very intelligent. Never seemed to have any element of fear in his makeup whatsoever. You know, he had, he had occasion to fly the wings off of two planes. He had to bail out of in the 1920s, those old crates. And then of course, over China he bailed out again. And we thought, boy, that old man, 46 years old, bailed out of aircraft. But he was a, he knew No Fear, and he was just an outstanding leader in every respect. Well, I think people don't realize that Jimmy Doolittle. Had a doctorate. From MIT he had earned Dr Science degree in Aeronautical engineering. This man was an educated individual. He had a Masters, a Bachelors, a masters and then a doctrine. Everybody knew who general Doodle was and he was one of the famous pilots and he was going to be the leader of our raid, so everybody in our outfit volunteered to go with Jimmy. Doolittle. Doolittle Re entered the Air Corps as a major. His initial assignments seemed to be directly related to President Roosevelt's goal to make the United States the arsenal of democracy. HAMP Arnold knew that Doolittle's technical knowledge and industrial experience uniquely qualified. And to play a key role in the conversion of domestic manufacturing to wartime production. Captain's Low and Duncan brought the concept of the raid to Hap Arnold on January 17th. The general immediately sent for Jimmy Doolittle. He began with a single question. What airplane have we got that could take off in 500 feet with a 2000 pound bomb load and fly 2000 miles a day later? Doolittle independently arrived at the same conclusion as had low and Duncan. The B-25 was the only alternative. Arnold briefed Doolittle on the concept of the raid and added Jim. I need someone to take this project over, get the planes modified and train the crews. On January 2nd, 1942, Japan captured Manila in the Philippines. On January 12th, Japan invaded Burma. On January 20th, Germany held the Bonsai Conference in a Berlin suburb to find a final solution for the Jews. On January 25th, Japan invaded the Solomons. In the 13th century, Mongolian invaders were driven back from Japan, not by defenses. But by the Japanese typhoon season since that time, the militarists in Japan had told the people that a kamikaze, or divine wind, protected their nation. As the Japanese swept through the Pacific with frightening speed, this long held belief in a national invincibility and the invulnerability of the home islands was mightily reinforced. What the Japanese high command did not know was a half a world away, an aeronautical genius with a gift for leadership and 80 brave souls who had come under his command had a bold plan to shatter that facade. In doing so, they would receive a life. Saving lift from a divine wind of their own. A lift that would allow them to complete a mission that changed the war. When they announced that they wanted volunteers, whole group volunteered, including the the group commander. And everybody in the 17th ball, we were in the 17th ball. Group. Wanted to go with Jimmy Doolittle. Originally we were told to take off on the. Evening Mom in Japan at night and be over reach China the next morning. But it didn't turn out that. Way you don't take off on a mission like this without a light at the end of the tunnel. We all thought that somehow we get out of it. Since the US entry into World War Two on December 8th, 1941, the conflict had gone badly on every front. On January 2nd, 1942, Japan captured Manila in the Philippines. On January 12th, Japan invaded Burma. Germany had aligned itself with Japan and declared war on the United States. On January 25th, Japan invaded the Solomons. America was desperate to do something to slow the access. Juggernaut. President Roosevelt knew that American morale was flagging. He was interested in launching an aerial strike against Japan's home islands. Americans wanted retribution for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Military leaders wanted to demonstrate to the Japanese high command that we had the ability to reach their civilian population. In early January 1942, the Navy and the Army jointly conceived a daring plan. Transport Army Air Corps B-25 Twin engine bombers within striking distance of Japan by aircraft carrier. Launching such a strike from a carrier had never been tried before. The risk would be enormous. To lead the mission, chief of the Army Air Forces Henry H Hap Arnold tapped one of America's most famous aviators. A man who had resigned his Army Air Corps Commission in 1930 but returned to active duty 10 years later at age 44. James H Doolittle. Arnold wrote the selection of Doolittle to lead the nearly suicidal mission was a natural one. He was fearless, technically brilliant, a leader who not only could be counted upon to do a task himself if it were humanly possible, but could impart that spirit to others. Doolittle would impart that spirit to men like Tom Griffin. David Thatcher. Dick Cole. Robert Height and 75 other members of the Army Air Corps, 17th Bombardment Group in order to execute the Doolittle Raid, one of the most daring missions in the history of aerial combat, a mission that was destined to change the outcome of World War Two. I'm Gary Sinise, and this is missions that changed the war. In the third week of January 1942, half Arnold told Jimmy Doolittle that he and Navy Admiral Ernest King had decided on a target date of April 1st, 1942 for the departure of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet for Japan. The Navy's newest carrier would carry up to 20 of the Mitchell B20 fives. Dick Cole eventually became Doolittle's copilot on airplane #1. That's one of the things that I think people should remember about Colonel Doolittle. He actually assumed command of the. Mission on the 17th of January. You know they had already pre selected the launch date of 19 April. During that time he had to plan the mission, get the troops, get the airplanes, get the supplies, get them trained and so forth to to meet that 19th of April deadline, which he did in a couple of days less than the 90 days. In addition that he flew the mission. Doolittle would later write. I had my verbal marching orders from Hap and his authority to get the job done. That was all I needed. I called the assignment Special aviation project #1. After his re enlistment in the Army Air Corps, Doolittle was given exclusive use of a Curtis P40 Warhawk in which to fly himself to his far-flung assignments. Now, he wrote. I took off in my P40 for right field to lay the groundwork for the job ahead. In the Pacific Northwest, the 17th Bombardment Group had been flying submarine patrol since the attack on Pearl Harbor. It would soon learn of its rendezvous with destiny. In order to ensure that a minimum of 18B20 fives would be available for the mission to bomb Japan, Doolittle Requisition 24 of the group's planes. Volunteers for the mission would be sought from among the experienced crews. Assigned to those planes. The 34th, 37th, and 95th squadrons of the 17th Bombardment Group, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William C Mills and the Associated 89th Reconnaissance Squadron under Major John A Hilger, could be released most easily on February 3rd, 1942. Orders. Were teletype to Pendleton OR to transfer without delay all planes and personnel of the 17th Bomber Group to Columbia Army Air Base. In Columbia, SC, Mills and Hillger were told to pass the word among the men that volunteers were being sought for an extremely hazardous mission. The base wasn't complete yet. We lived in tents and we were doing training missions. Because the word was that we were going to be. Go from there to Africa. And when we got there they said they were planning a very unusual, dangerous raid and they wanted to warn us that it was gonna be a dangerous raid and they wanted to volunteers knowing that it was going and the whole group. Volunteered. I put my name on the list that there is in front of the squadron up on the way to to Colombia. I had received my upgrade to 1st pilot. And the pilot that upgraded me came around and wanted to know if we could go together as a crew. Well, we had had our flight training in B20 fives and and we had heard that there was a very special mission being led by General James, A. Studio and everybody. In in the Air Force at that time knew that James H Doolittle was a very special pilot and had broken many records already. And everybody in the 17th ball, we were in the 17th ball. Group. Wanted to go with Jimmy Doolittle. I was just on the ground crew then and I wanted to do some flying so was able to get on the crew. And it just happened to be one of the crews that had picked. Doolittle requested an air base where the selected crews could train in relative seclusion. Ideally, the base should be near water so that navigators could practice over water navigation. There should be facilities for gunnery training and an auxiliary field available where the pilots could practice short field takeoffs. Eglin Field in Western Florida near Fort Walton Beach was assigned. There were all kind of theories or conjecture on what we're going to do. Most of us thought they were going to load us on an airplane on a carrier and take us to some pre selected area where we would take off and go and land at a a place and start fighting the war. I'm sure that. Some buddy figured they were wanted to Japan, but I wasn't one of my of the observant or whatever you want to call it. The plan for the Doolittle Raid was to recover the bombers launched from the Hornet and an airfield near Chow Chow, in a sector of China controlled by Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist Chinese army. If the Navy could deliver the B-25 bombers within 450 miles of Japan, the mission would require them to cover approximately 1900. Miles in the air. To make it to China, Doolittle needed to increase the range of the airplanes to 2100 miles. That meant extending the standard 1300 mile range of the B25B's flown by the Raiders by some 800 miles. Since Doolittle needed the modifications to the planes done before training began at Eglin Field, he flew his P40 to right field in Dayton, OH almost immediately upon receiving responsibility for the mission. There, engineers made drawings for the installation of the fuel tanks and necessary plumbing. On January 22nd, 1942, he wrote a memo requesting 18B25B's be sent to Mid-continent Airlines in Minneapolis, MN to begin the. Work. They took all the air, all await off the airplane they could the bottom to it was removed because we knew we'd be flying so low that no enemy fighter. To get underneath that was. The lower turret on the B-25 was problematic under the best of circumstances. There was trouble with activating the system that extended and retracted the device. The attitude of the gunner and the operation of the site were difficult, making it impossible to train Gunners in time for the raid. Doolittle said a man could learn to play the violin good enough for Carnegie Hall. Before he could learn to fire that thing, the turrets were removed. They took all the oxygen equipment out to. Light in the airplane we wouldn't be needing that. Took most of their radio equipment out because we had to fly silent. And then they replaced that bottom turret that they removed with a 60 gallon leak proof tank. That's one that a bullet will go through and then it'll self seal. Doolittle's plan was to avoid detection by flying the entire mission at extremely low altitudes below 10,000 feet. Oxygen for the crew is not required, therefore the oxygen systems were considered expendable for the raid. There's a crawl away. Between the top of the Bombay and the top of the airplane, just enough distance in there so a person can crawl through there. They put a collapsible rubber tank in there and it held over 100 gallons and we still had room for four or £500 bomb below that tank. In addition to the auxiliary tanks installed in the airplanes, the plan called for 12/5 gallon gas tanks to be handed up to the engineers just before the B20 fives departed the Hornets deck for Japan. How much difference could the five gallon gas cans make? The Doolittle Raiders plan would use fuel mixture at RPM settings that minimize their fuel consumption throughout the mission. At those settings, the B20 fives were likely flying a little more than 150 mph. Using approximately 103 gallons of fuel each out. At that rate of consumption, the 60 extra gallons contained in the gas cans would give the planes an additional 85 to 90 miles in the air. That flying time could well be the difference between landing in a safe haven and ditching in open water off the coast as events unfolded. For most of the Raiders, the gas cans would make the difference. Between life and death. The tanks added in Minnesota, plus the portable gas cans, would add an additional 425 gallons to the 646 gallons in the main wing tanks of each B-25, giving each of them 1141 total gallons of fuel. It made the bombing mission and rendezvous landing in Chu Chou, China possible, but with very little fuel to spare. If you stop to think about it, they were taking 16 airplanes. We're used to operating maybe over 4 or 500 mile range and intending to flame off a carrier which they were never designed to do, fly them a long distance to bomb Japan and inflamed and even equally long distance to get the safe bases in China. I mean on the surface it sounds almost like what would later be called a kamikaze mission. You were there are many many hazards and so the the risk was extremely high and and the risk was not only high to the pilots involved. To the nation, there wasn't one of them that didn't know exactly how risky it was. There was enormous risk, but there were other reasons why the Doolittle Raid was designed the way it was. Top secret reasons. To this day it is not widely understood that the US plan to launch a sea based bombing raid on the home islands of Japan in the spring of 1942. The Doolittle Raid was in fact a multi purpose mission. The raid was one piece of A5 part plan to establish a major fighting air command in the China Burma India Theater by mid January of 1942. The air war. Lands Division had a strategy to establish a new 10th Air Force in Burma to support the Allied effort to subdue the Japanese invaders of the Chinese mainland. This plan to create a nucleus for a buildup of allied air power in the theater was called Operation Aquila. .1 of Aquila called for the Doolittle B20 fives and crews to be flown to Chung King following the raid, then absorbed into the 10th Air Force. 35C-40 Sevens, the military designation of the DC3, were to be provided to create an aerial supply lifeline for the new Air Force 33A20 attack. Airplanes were to be ferried from the factory to the Chinese Air Force and the pilots assigned to the 10th Air Force. 23 heavy bombers, B20 fours were to be the first long range bombers. This unit was named the Halpro Group for its commander, Colonel Harry A Halverson. Its mission was to conduct long range strategic attacks on Japan from bases in China. Finally, 51P40 fighters were to be assembled in West Africa, then ferried to China for Claire Chennault's flying Tigers. Facing the looming deadline of an April 1st departure, Doolittle realized he needed help. The aircraft needed major modifications targets and the flight plans to reach Japan needed to be determined. Bomb sizes and weights had to be calculated and a plan to return crews safely home after refueling and delivering the B20 fives. With the Chinese nationals needed finalizing. Got the necessary procurement and got the pilots and the airplanes and got the thing organized in the 90 days that he had to do it in. I don't think you're gonna get that done today. One key to maintaining secrecy during the planning of the mission was for Doolittle to make all of the various arrangements on a face to face basis. Knowing he would be putting many hours on his personal P40, he solicited a recommendation for a deputy commander who could oversee the training being done at Eglin Field. Major John Hilger was chosen. Hilger was described by Doolittle as a no nonsense perfectionist. He would eventually be the pilot of the 14th B-25 on the raid. Since naval aviators had to be proficient in carrier takeoffs and landings, Major Hilger suggested a Navy flight instructor might be the right person to teach the Army pilots carrier takeoff procedures. Pensacola Flight instructor Lieutenant Henry L Miller was chosen, even though he had never seen a B-25. When Miller got to the B-25 headquarters at Egland, he met Edward Ski York, who would go on to pilot airplane #8 Davy Jones who would pilot. Airplane #5 and Ross Greening, the pilot of airplane #11. Miller later recalled that the three seemed surprised when he introduced himself. I didn't know that the whole operation was still a mystery to them, he wrote. The first thing the pilots had to learn how to get this B-25 Mitchell Bomber, Twin engine bomber, up in the air in less than 500 feet. Now this this was training entirely different than they'd ever been trained. They had to sit at a line with the full throttle, full brakes, full flaps, let go of them, and just bring that plane up in the air as soon as it would get airborne. They first marked out the runway at a auxiliary field. They didn't do it. We did not make any of those fancy takeoffs that the main base because we didn't want anyone to see what we were doing. There was an auxiliary field out in the timber and they marked off the runway and distances of over 1000 feet and then down to 800 and 600 and 400 feet and. And this was the distance. That we were going to have on the deck of a carrier. Of course, this plane now had no gas load of any money. They didn't have a bomb load. It was. In other words, it was an empty plane when we were on the carrier. With the we were gonna have the addition of a big wind and so forth, we hope so. They had to learn to get this plane up in the air as soon as they could. And over a period of two or three weeks practicing this, the boys learned how to get this thing up there, and it was entirely different from the training they had had on the plane, flying it entirely differently. On March 3rd, 1942, less than a month before the targeted departure date for the Mission, Doolittle landed at Eglin Field and assembled the 140 men who had been assigned to the project. He came to Eggman Field. After their the crews were gathered made a speech telling us what we would be doing, but he would not. He didn't discuss the destination or any part of it. He said it was a dangerous mission and that he was satisfied with the training that we had received, and that if anybody wanted to back out, they could with no questions asked. Nobody backed out, as a matter of fact, when they announced. If they wanted volunteers, they. Whole group volunteered, including the the group commander. And the fact that he was who he was. Manner of speaking. He came across to you as somebody as that if if he's going to lead this mission, will want to go because he sounds like a good leader. The first thing he emphasized to us was we were going to train for this very secret mission, and if the word got out that what we were planning on doing, we would never reach our target. That was the main thing he emphasized to us. Secrecy don't talk any place off this base, and I think our boys did a very good job of that all through the whole thing. Most of our people didn't know exactly where they were going to go. They knew that we were going to take off. The deck of a carrier. But we didn't. They didn't know. There was something else. The trainees from the 17th Bombardment Group did not know. Doolittle superiors considered him too valuable to send on such a high risk mission. Jimmy Doolittle was appointed to plan the operation. He was not scheduled to fly on the Doolittle Raid. Most of the dangers faced by the Doolittle Raiders were addressed through planning, adapting and training for the unexpected. However, the most immediate threat to the crews and the mission was the fact that none of the pilots or crews had ever done an actual. Take off from a carrier deck. B-25 owner and pilot Larry Kelly explains. Ticket airborne in 500 foots, the Doolittle Raiders had to use especially different technique than a normal takeoff technique. Once in position, flaps fully down. Now taking off on a full flap down position gave you some advantage. It lowered the stall speed and it deflected some thrust downward to give you some lift, but flaps fully down in position breaks lock throttles up to full takeoff power, washing the deck officer and the deck officer, then gauging the pitch of the deck with signaling for takeoff breaks. They released, they would begin to take off, roll, pull back on the yoke, raise the nose of the airplane and at 85 mile an hour then the airplane would start to fly away. Now the Hornet was making 24 knots in the water. That's 28 miles an hour approximately. And the storm they were in was giving them 30 knots of wind and the Hornet was steaming directly into the wind. So the 30 knots of wind was an additional 35 mile an hour, which gave them 68 miles an hour wind across the wings before they even began. The take off now that means they only had to accelerate about 20 mile an hour to be able to fly away. Doolittle was able to get off into 470 foot deck distance 100 foot early, but that only put them into the next immediately critical phase of flight. They had to reach safe single engine air speed. Remember where they were taking off at 85 miles an hour indicated. Now they had to accelerate the airplane 60 mile an hour to reach a safe single engine speed, safe single engine speed and a multi. An airplane or in a twin engine airplane like the Big 25 is that airspeed which is 145 mile an hour by which the airplane will remain controllable. If you lose 1 engine, the option of the pilot. If you lose 1 engine and you've not reached say single and airspeed, it's reduced power and land or ditch straight ahead. Now the radar situation after they had taken off an 85 mile an hour while they're accelerating to this 145 mile an hour if they lost an engine the pilots only option was reduce power, ditch the airplanes. Straight ahead and risk being ran over by the Hornet. Ted Lawson and Dean Davenport had an especially difficult takeoff. Ted had his flaps down full because it already. Completed the checklist. And the prop blast coming up actually began to push him across his wet deck. Remember, they're on an aircraft carrier. Storm waters. Waves are crashing across the deck. Strong winds, 68 mile an hour wind already. So the prop blast actually started pushing him. So he raised the flaps to reduce that sale effect. The excitement of the moment, Ted starts taxing up into position using his white lines. He's looking at the left. And Dean's looking out the right. The flat lever is down here between and the center. Dean didn't know the flaps were up. Ted forgot the flaps were up. He was signaled off. He began his acceleration. Now he's in a situation where he needs an additional 20 mile an hour. He's got to accelerate about 40 mph before he's going to have enough wind across the wings to be able to stay airborne. If you ever sing the famous video, they drop off the end of the deck. They almost hit the water, but he was able to slowly accelerate. Away and climb out. If they had not had that 30 knots wind across the deck, they wouldn't went off the end of the deck right into the water and been around over by the Hornet. And this was really a test of flying to fly B20 fives off a carrier was unheard of. Nobody would have contemplated it except for this emergency. And in actual fact you you had to be pretty good pilot to get it off of veneer to have lost one or two of those airplanes on takeoff from a carrier. I mean there's no no question that unless you were properly trained and so you needed a man like Doolittle who could see all the parameters of the mission and and and then inculcate in the people following. The desire to make the mission. Though a highly experienced and decorated pilot. Jimmy Doolittle subjected himself to Lieutenant Miller's dramatic flight training regimen. He wrote. I took Hank Miller's course because I was determined to go on the mission. However, if I couldn't pass the course or wasn't as good as the younger pilots, I was going to go as a copilot. Hap Arnold, the head of the Army Air Forces, saw it. Otherwise, he had no intention of risking the priceless asset known as James H Doolittle on such a dangerous mission. When Doolittle raised the possibility, Arnold replied. I'm sorry, Jim. I need you here on my staff. I can't afford to let you go on every mission you might help plan. Half, Arnold said. Go and see channel Harmon and tell him that if he thinks you can go and it's somewhere with me. And at that time he ran down the hole and stuck his head in the door. And I think his name was Miff Harmon. Nickname, but he said myth. Hap says that I can take to the mission if you think it's all right. And. Myth said well. He's a commander. If it's alright with him, it's alright with me. Right away he started to leave. And he heard the Squawk box say, but happy. I just told him he could go. And that's how he got to be commander of the mission. The kid on a bicycle who used to watch the Great Doolittle test flying airplanes in Dayton, OH, explains how he became his copilot on this legendary mission. Midway through our training, the the pilot that we were with became ill and had to drop out. The crew. And I talked it over and they diplomatically elected me to go and talk to the operations. Officer like you, you go. Which I did. The operations officer was a kept in ski Ork, he said. Well, the old man has come in this afternoon. Cure you up with him and if you do OK, well, you got yourself a job. I thought that. I had not heard a captain talk about his commanding officer. By calling him the old man. And I thought, well, maybe that's not such a good idea. Now we get to fly with that old man, and it turned out to be Colonel Doolittle. Dwight D Eisenhower said in preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. In planning an operation that had never before been attempted, countless problems were envisioned. And creative, sometimes brilliant solutions for them abounded. Two such solutions came from the inventor and artist who became the pilot of airplane #11, Captain Charles Ross Greening of Carroll, IA. Greening called his first brainchild the Mark Twain bomb site. It was a device he feared might be rejected because it was so simple. The B20 fives slated for the Doolittle Raid were outfitted with the expensive and highly classified Norden bombsight, such as the one shown on this B17 Flying Fortress. However, the Norden was designed to be highly effective at altitudes of 4000 feet or above. The Doolittle Raid plan called for the bombs to be dropped at altitudes. And 1500 feet or Lower, Ross Greening later recalled. I set about designing a new bomb site specifically for this mission, one that could be effective at altitudes of 100 to 1500 feet. Using scrap metal and the shops at Eglin Field, Greening made this simple sight. As long as the Bombardier knew the altitude and airspeed of the plane, he could compute the angle at which the siding bar should be set when the target passed the line of sight. Bombs were released for low altitude bombing. Greenings site proved to be more accurate than the Norden bomb site at the time. Norden bombsights cost over $10,000 apiece. The materials for the Mark Twain site cost about $0.20 each. All of the Doolittle bombers were refitted. The B20 fives of 1942 were woefully short of defensive armament. They were equipped with highly unsatisfactory top and bottom turrets, both of which contained 50 caliber machine guns. The decision had already been made to refit the bottom turret of the Doolittle Raid airplanes with an auxiliary fuel tank. The nose contained a single 30 caliber machine gun that the Bombardier had to move from one gun port to another. The tail was completely unprotected. The ingenious captain Greening had another idea. Do little put it this way. Much credit must go to Ross Greening for solving our armament problems. He suggested we install 2 broomsticks in the tail and paint them black to simulate a tail gun position which would hopefully deter attacks from the rear. I approved. So this critical mission, which required 16B20 fives, 2 aircraft carriers, 8 destroyers, 4 cruisers and two Oilers, was now highly dependent on 20 cent bomb sites and tail sections bristling with 50 caliber broomsticks. Less than a month before the Doolittle Raiders were going to Bourne the Hornet, the maps that the crews would require and the identifying of the targets in Japan remained to be done, Tom Griffin was the navigator on airplane #9. It just happened that I got a bit of a break, I guess you'd say. Another fellow named Davy Jones and I in early February were sent up to. Abortion DC to work with Air Force intelligence. Now that we worked with two men there, they changed the lock on a door and they were told to just cooperate with us, get where we were asking for, and don't ask any questions. So we spent about 10 days getting all the maps and charts of Japan and China. That 20 crews were gonna need. And we had to know the exact location of potential military and and industrial targets that we might use so we could know just where to send our boys. Davy Jones and I created these all this information these maps and charts and things and and it happened that Jimmy Doolittle flew into Washington, DC that day picked us up and we flew down to Eglin. Filled with our our box full of all this secret information that we were going to disseminate on a carrier later. There was one facet of the planned raid that was seemingly beyond Jimmy Doolittle's control. The plan to recover the bombers and their crews in China. The plan was that a plane was to come from Chung King. The headquarters of the Chinese landed a field called two child with a sufficient gas to gas our planes up so we could take off and fly into interior China. The political and military conditions in China were such that Hap Arnold did not believe he could share the full details of the Doolittle Raid plan with anyone in the country without compromising the mission. Well, there was a great reluctance. By Colonel Doolittle and the Air Staff members that knew about it and the Navy officers that knew about the what they were hoping to do. To communicate to anybody in China because they felt that they couldn't be trusted, that there were too many ears and eyes listening and looking and what goes went on over there, especially on Gen Kaishek's staff. And so they decided to keep it as secret as possible, but to make requests for information or for for for example, having gas available for the aircraft to refuel and. To refuel when they got to China and also to have a a beacon place that that two or three of the bases. And so that they could home in on it, the aircraft when they reached Chinese coast, could home in on radio beacons to find the airport where they could land and be refueled and then proceed to junk king which was the ultimate destination. On March 25th, Hap Arnold sent General Joseph E Stilwell, the ranking American officer in China, a message specifying the stocks of fuel that would be needed and the airfields where they should be available. Stilwell responded that, according to the Chinese, Quilin and Chu Chao were the only field safe enough for heavy bomber operations. Doolittle later wrote I was not too worried about the apparent misunderstandings in China. I thought any problems would be worked out by the time we left the carrier. However, what would eventually befall the B20 fives that made it to China would bear little resemblance to the plan Doolittle believed to be in place when the bombers left the Hornet. In the third week of March, Navy Admiral Nimitz's staff wired a message to Washington that contained a prearranged code phrase. Tell Jimmy to get on his horse. Those 7 words meant it was time for the planes and crews to leave Eglin Field, Florida for the Air Depot at Sacramento for the last minute checks on each airplane before flying on to San Francisco to be loaded aboard the Hornet. On the morning of March 23rd, Jimmy Doolittle called all the crews together and told them to get ready to move out. Those who would not be going on the mission were sent back to Colombia with this admonition from Doolittle. Don't tell anyone what you were doing here at egland. Not your family, your wives, anybody. The lives of your buddies and a lot of other people depend on you keeping everything you saw and did here a secret. 22 airplanes and flight crews had been readied for the mission. Every man who trained to fly the mission was going aboard the Hornet for backup sake and to ensure the security of the mission. In effect, the flight from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida W to the Air Depot at Sacramento, CA was the first leg on the Raiders ultimate Journey to Japan. Sacramento was supposed to be a routine. Stop for minor adjustments and last minute maintenance, but it turned out to be an experience that Jimmy Doolittle reduced to just five letters at Seattle. The mishandling of the precisely tuned B20 fives and the slow pace of the work caused due little to call Washington. He refused to talk to anyone but half Arnold. Though Arnold intervened, the stop in Seattle likely caused 1B25 to burn excessive amounts of fuel. Its crew had to make an unplanned. Standing in Russia, where they were imprisoned on April 8th, the Enterprise and its task force, under the command of Admiral William Bull Halsey, would depart Pearl Harbor for an April 12th rendezvous with the Hornet in the Pacific. At latitude 38 degrees 0 minutes north and longitude 180 degrees 0 minutes from there, they would try to steam through 1500 treacherous miles of enemy controlled waters to get within 450 miles of Japan. Perhaps it was the men of the Doolittle Raid Admiral Halsey was thinking about when he later wrote. There are no great men, only challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet. At the time of the for this activity action took place, we were 650 miles. And having to launch early. Right away, our field became a. Problem. And our best calculations were that after about five hours, we were going to run out of gas and we were going to be short of China by about 100 to 150 miles. So I think all of the planes made some kind of a decision in our plane. We thought, well, we're going to be running out of gas. If we see a ship, we'll ditch next to it and they'll take us aboard. And if it's a friendly ship, fine, we'll sail off with them if it's. Unfriendly ship. We each had 40 fives. Who will pull out our 40 fives and take over the ship? I was in the back of the airplane. The other four fellows were in their front. They were all thrown out through the nose. The pilot and copilot were still strapped to their armor plated seats when they came to in the water. I was knocked unconscious for a little while in the back and sort of came to and and could see water running in what I thought was the battle of the airplane. I finally realized the airplane was upside down. I never. Believed that it would be possible. For. A guy to live on rice, but, you know. You can live on rice. I didn't think it was possible. I think they were very scared. They tortured them brutally. They would take iron rods and put them behind the break of the knee and then they would jump on the thighs. And which cost? You know, obviously a great deal of pain. Outside there was a lot of wind, rain and lightning, and you were going to have to go through that hole into a foreign country and then having any idea where you were or anything about it. Maybe that was the scariest time. On January 17th, 1942, chief of U.S. Army Air Forces Henry H Hap Arnold assigned the responsibility for one of President Franklin D Roosevelt's highest military priorities, a payback attack on the Japanese home islands to one of the most famous aviators in history, Lieutenant Colonel James H. Too little. In a mere 66 days, Doolittle had identified the airplanes that could be modified to launch a carrier based attack some 450 miles from Japan. Had assembled, the volunteer crews modified the Mitchell B20 fives to give them the range to reach a safe haven in free China after the raid and accomplish the mapping and charting the crews would require. Now on March 23rd, 1942, Doolittle assembled the men who had been training for the mission at their training base near Fort Walton Beach, FL. It was time to fly the planes W to the Sacramento, CA Air Depot for final adjustments, as he had before Doolittle offered any man who wanted to the ability to leave the highly dangerous mission without recrimination. None did. You don't take off on a mission like this without a light at the end of the tunnel. We all thought that somehow we'd get out of it. Well, in the training in Florida, we were always flying just above the water all the time. Right down over the over the river valleys and between the trees. And then we just had stopped all the way across the United States to Alameda to. Down as low as apply. Yeah, I think Bill asked me if I would go as his copilot and I said well. Of course, somewhere along the line. They're energetic. The thing that was a suicide mission, I don't think it was anymore of a suicide mission than the guy was taken off from England and went over to Germany. It was just signs of the times and that's the way it had to be. And that's the way it was, and that's the way it was accepted. I'm Gary Sinise, and this is missions that changed the war. The Doolittle Raider B20 fives began arriving at McClellan Army Airfield in Sacramento early in the last week of March 1942. They were already highly modified and carefully tuned aircraft. Doolittle arrived at the Air Depot on March 26th. He made it clear that no one was to tamper with or remove anything from any aircraft. There were specific tasks to be performed by the civilian personnel at the depot. New propellers were to be installed. 60 gallon gas tanks not already installed, were to be fitted where the lower turrets had been removed. New covers had to be fitted for the Bombay Auxiliary tanks. New glass navigation windows were to replace the plexiglass type. Doolittle smelled trouble almost immediately, he wrote, despite my pleas. The civilian maintenance crews went about their assignments at a leisurely pace. This naturally made me very angry. I told my crews to stay with their planes and watch the work being done. Ted Lawson was the pilot of Raider airplane #7 in his now famous book 30 seconds over Tokyo, he wrote. All of us were so afraid that they'd hurt the ships the way they were handling them, yet we couldn't tell them why we wanted them to be so careful. Yet we all kept beefing until Doolittle got on the long distance phone, called Washington and had the work done the way we wanted it done. Then he called General Arnold in Washington. And told them in effect build a fire into these guys for me, because they're not. Answering my feelings for urgency and well, they got the message from General Arnold directly and the but it looks as though one at least one aircraft. The one that went to Russia was the one that had the difficulty with carburetors. The technician that was checking it says these things are way out of whack. They're too, they're too lean and they've got to be written enriched, and so we changed them. And that, apparently, is the airplane that had to go to Russia. Because of fuel overburn. On March 30th, just two days before the Raiders were due aboard the Hornet, Doolittle said he would be going into San Francisco to have dinner with his wife, Joe. She had been in Los Angeles visiting her ill father. Coincidentally, Doolittle had also received a message to meet that evening with Admiral William Halsey, Halsey recalled. Our talk boiled down to this, we would carry Jimmy within 400 miles of Tokyo if we could move in that close. But if we were discovered sooner, we would have to launch him anyway, provided he was in reach of either Tokyo or Midway. With a word from General Arnold, the pace of the work of the Sacramento Air Depot picked up. But when an exasperated Doolittle was ready to depart for Alameda to put the planes aboard the USS Hornet, a maintenance officer presented him with a form for evaluating the work that had been done. Doolittle hastily scrawled the word, lousy across it, and stalked off for his B-25. The young officer turned to Doolittle, second in command, Jack Hilger, and shouted. Who does that guy think he is? He's heading for a lot of trouble, he sure is, hilgar answered. He sure is. Doolittle had originally requisitioned 24B20 fives for the mission. Two had fallen by the wayside during training at Eglin Field. 22 airplanes were now bound for the dock at Alameda to be loaded aboard the Hornet, but the room on the deck only allowed for 16 planes to take off. Doolittle had decisions to make. Seeing how he did that as each pilot. A taxi just is playing up to her Doolittle with Sandy. The boss would shout up to the pilot, is everything OK with your plane? And not knowing what an important question this was, if the man says, well my left engine is a little rough, that's all it took and that's how they eliminated 4 planes. Now the crews themselves. Were put on the carrier with us and went across the ocean with the probably first for security reasons, but actually as we went across the Pacific, Doolittle had the pot, the ability to make some personnel changes that he would have liked to have made and wouldn't have been able to made without these extra crews. On our way to Alameda, Airplane flew under the Oakland Bay Bridge. And flew, got to Alameda and looked down those aircraft carrier there with five or six airplanes on the deck. We landed and taxied right up to the dock right beside the carrier. Then they used 3 eyebolts to screw into the top of the airplane and then use that to hoist the airplane up onto the deck of the carrier. And I had to be in the pilot's compartment to set the brakes when they set down on the deck of the carrier. So I didn't walk aboard your carrier. I didn't. Walk off out either. Well, it has a number of airplanes took up more than more than deck. It became very apprehensive on how much of the deck was left for us to take off from, but. We had taken off from a dry runway in the same distance, fully loaded at Eglin. And in the actual takeoff, we had the carrier speed wind, we had the natural wind and. I think most of us are pretty confident or we can get off. As a matter of fact, Colonel Dudley wrote in his final report that a night takeoff would have been possible. On April 1st, 1942, the men of the Doolittle Raid walked aboard the Hornet. Waiting for them on the ship was the Navy pilot who had trained them on short field takeoff techniques at Eglin Field, Bill Miller. I was proud of those fellas that day, Miller recalled. As each man came aboard, he saluted the national Ensign and then the officer of the deck and said, Sergeant or Lieutenant or captain reporting for duty, Sir. At 3:00 PM on April 1st, the Hornet unmoored from the dock in Alameda and moved to birth #9 in San Francisco Bay. The Doolittle Raiders were getting settled aboard the ship. Well, they've treated us pretty well. We didn't. I was enlisted man, so they we didn't have to sleep in the hammocks. They let us sleep in the. Monks do little called the Raiders together after a brief lecture on security. He surprised them by letting them go ashore for the evening. We were told that we could go in the Doolittle Raider Boys and spend an evening in San Francisco and to meet a a boat which would pick them up the next morning at a certain Wharf and take his back out to the carrier. So we were very happy about that and we later learned that the boss, Jimmy Doolittle, went into town and met with Bull Halsey who had flown in from Hawaii. Halsey was going to be in command of the two carriers and four discreet of our whole task force. From venues like the top of the mark in the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Raiders could look down and see their B20 fives poised for this top secret mission in the middle of San Francisco Bay. A cover story had been put out that the planes were being taken to Hawaii. The Raiders might not have known exactly what they were headed for, but they were reasonably sure it was not Waikiki Beach. The aircraft carrier Hornet steamed out of San Francisco Bay on April 2nd, 1942 with 16U S Army B-25 Mitchell bombers on her flight deck and all 22 bomber crews on board. Had never seen a carrier before and I was really surprised by the size of the thing. 2 cruisers and four destroyers, whose job was to protect the vulnerable and valuable carrier, accompanied the Hornet. The task force also included an oiler, a floating gas station that would refuel the flotilla in mid Pacific. As the Hornet cleared Port Doolittle called the Army crews together, he told them. For the first time, where they were going and what they were going to do, he told them that their chances of getting back to the states were pretty slim and that any crew member who wanted to withdraw could do so. No one did. The Hornet was America's newest aircraft carrier and her crew was as green as green apples, but they were eager for action. Their skipper, Captain Pete Mitcher, had ordered the words. Remember Pearl Harbor painted on the Hornets smokestack? When we first got on the carrier and told in San Francisco Bay, we were very tight lipped. We had been told of course don't tell anybody anything. Now here we were getting on this nice brand new carrier and these Navy boys were naturally very curious. They wanted to know what this was all about and where we were going and we of course wouldn't tell them if we had strict orders not to tell them. And they were very unhappy with us. I think most of them thought that this brand new carrier was going to be used to. Transport a bunch of army boys and their planes to probably Hawaii and they didn't like the idea at all. On April 4, two days after the task force left San Francisco, the bosons whistle sounded aboard the Hornet and Captain Mitcher made an announcement over the ship's loud speakers. Now hear this. The target of this task force is Tokyo. The army is going to bomb Japan, and we're going to get them as close to the enemy as we can. This is a chance for all of us to give the Japs a dose of their own medicine. Mitcher's message was sent simultaneously by Semaphore. Source code to the rest of the task force. There was wild cheering on every ship. And from that time on, the Navy and we got along very well. They were the big cheer went up and and they were of course very happy to hear what we were going to do. And it was they got so friendly then that they invited us into their poker games and most of the Doolittle Raiders took off 18 days later, flat broke. We left our money with the Navy boys. Doolittles crews had plenty of things to keep them busy. The Army bombers were not built for ocean duty and the salt air caused all kinds of problems. Spark plugs, generators and hydraulics failed, fuel tanks leaked, 1 engine had to be completely overhauled and there were continuing problems with the gun turrets. Well, we went up on on deck every every day to check the airplane. You've seen pictures of how the airplanes are tied down on the deck and the the salt air would pipe those ropes up ahead and make make sure they weren't too tight, but then when it got dry then they'd loosen up so. How to check that all the time and every few days they'd have to take those covers off the engines to run them up, make sure they run all right and they had those covers on there to try and keep us all there and getting to the engine. In the evenings, the bomber crews explored the ship, read books, Listen to records, ate ice cream in the ship's mess. The rest of the time we grew up on that and we could to exercise, we'd run the whole circle of the deck. And up and down those stairs, there's a lot of stairs on a carrier. Most of the army crews had never been to sea before, and several of them were seasick for most of the voyage. On April 8th, the aircraft carrier enterprise steamed out of Pearl Harbor to rendezvous with the Hornet. Admiral William Bull Halsey commanded the enterprise. 2 cruisers, 4 destroyers, and an oiler accompanied it as well. Enterprise and Hornet would rendezvous in mid Pacific. From then on, airplanes from the enterprise would provide defensive air cover for the combined task force as it steamed toward Japan on board the Hornet, the sailors were edgy. They knew that a single Japanese submarine, a Japanese battleship, or a Japanese carrier task force could put their precious. Hornet in jeopardy? The original plan was. If we run into an animated house course out there and we were within flying distance on FOIA, we're supposed to take off immediately so that the hardest air the carrier could get his airplane in the year. Or if we were within a distance of Midway, I think it was we could, we would do that. Or if we were in within distance of Japan, who would take off and fly there? If not, then they were going to push the airplanes overboard so that. Aren't going to get the airplanes. In the air, I think this is one of the thing that's often missed is the value of the Hornet at the time was just. The unimaginable to the Navy, because we. Were had, had Pearl Harbor where? Our fleet was gone and we were down to very, very few aircraft carriers and to risk one on a mission like this was just really significant. On April 9th, the day before the Hornet and Enterprise joined up, Allied ground forces fighting on the Bataan Peninsula and the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese Army. The next day, 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war began a 60 mile week long forced March that would leave 12,000 dead from starvation, thirst and Japanese brutality. It would be known as the Bataan Death March. As the combined task force made its way toward Japan, Doolittle's B-25 crews were kept busy, but they still had plenty of time to think about the mission that lay ahead. It was not a serious suicide mission. In the sense that everybody knew they were going to be lost. That it was, there was a one way trip for them. None of them ever felt that way. As far as I know, they were following their leader. And that leader, if he could do it, we could do it. And that's why he was in the number one airplane. No, it was. We did not consider it a suicide mission later as we as we had to take off 250 miles earlier than we had planned and things didn't look so good. We thought, well this is going to be pretty rough, but I think you more or less always feel sorry for this other guy. He's gonna get it. But I'm gonna get through this somehow. And you, you don't take off on a mission like this without a light at the end of the tunnel. We all thought that somehow we get out of it. Halsey's Task Force and the entire mission was in much greater danger than anyone imagined. The Japanese Navy had intercepted a radio message on April 10th, but they knew Halsey was heading east toward Japan with two carrier groups. They began planning the destruction of the American carriers, but the Japanese did not envision the Americans putting bombers on an aircraft carrier. They believe the planes to be Navy fighters, planes that would have to launch within 300 miles of Japan in order to reach the islands. They thought the Americans would be close enough to attack by April 14th. They prepared to strike Halsey's task force with land based bombers 600 miles from Tokyo, then to follow up with torpedo planes sinking the American carrier. Groups would complete the destruction of America's Pacific fleet, but there were no more radio intercepts and bad weather kept Halsey ships hidden from the Japanese. When April 14th, the expected invasion date, came and went, Japanese officials relaxed and assumed Halsey was headed somewhere else. At 3:00 in the morning on April 18th. Radar on the enterprise picked up two small ships about 12 miles ahead. They were part of an early warning network ringing the Japanese islands. The task force went into full alert and changed course to avoid being seen. At 0340, Enterprise signaled all clear. 4 hours later, a lookout on the Hornet cited another enemy boat. Soon after, Hornets radio operator intercepted a message in Japanese. Halsey's Task Force had been spotted. April 18th 1942 Dawn Bright and Clear in Tokyo. Officials prepared for a civil defense drill to be held later that morning. But no one believed that American bombers could reach Japan, and most people just went about their business. Early in the morning, our task force went between 2 Japanese picket ships 650 miles out actually. They were fishing vessels equipped with radios to report just the sort of thing they saw that morning, 2 carriers and four cruisers heading for Japan. And before they were sunk, our people realized that they had been able to radio into the main islands of Japan that this task force was heading for. Halsey wrote. Although we were 600 miles from Tokyo instead of the 400 that we had hoped for, the fact that our task force had been reported left me no choice. At O 800, I sent Pete Mitcher a signal launch planes. And to Colonel Doolittle and his gallant command, good luck and God bless you. Halsey ordered the cruiser Nashville to sink the Japanese picket ship, the Nitto Maru, in Rough Seas. Nashville's crew fired 924 six inch shells, but scored just one hit on the picket boat. The Japanese raised a white flag and their ship promptly sank. Early in morning, most of us were probably below deck. We could hear them, the guns going elsewhere, and almost immediately it seemed like they announced all the speaker that. Army pilots, my man, your planes. So they had to. Pack up or. Bag and get up to the airplane as soon as possible. Like everybody else, he was around I think 6:00 o'clock. When we got up, some of us were down in the having breakfast. The first. Real notification was when the Nashville opened up on the Needham area. I, for one, want to make sure that I arrived at the airplane before Colonel Doolittle. Well, if I was a second Lieutenant and he was a Lieutenant Colonel and I didn't want to get the verbally lambasted for being late. And the other thing is that I wanted to get up in the airplane and go through the checklist and have a lot of the things that I could do that he wouldn't have to worry about. We're pretty much in take off. Position when Colonel Thurlow came. Doolittle called all the crews on deck and went over their instructions one more time. He offered the men one more chance to step down. There were no takers. Several backup crew members begged for a chance to take someone's place on the mission. Again, no takers. One of the backup pilots did find a place on the mission. Robert Heights plane had been left behind at Alameda in San Francisco. I always thought that dad was copilot playing 16. Well, originally he was pilot of one of the four planes that couldn't fit on the on the aircraft carrier. And that Bill Farrell didn't, apparently didn't get along with his copilot or his copilot decided that he didn't want to go, and Bill came and and asked my father to fly with him. Robert height. Copilot of plane #16 would be captured by the Japanese and would spend 3 1/2 years in captivity. Mitcher turned the Hornet directly into the wind and ordered full speed ahead. Well, the the weather there was. The ocean was. Very. Very rough there. Water was coming up over the deck of the carrier. Launching early meant the planes would have farther to go and need more fuel, but their fuel tanks were already full. After I got in the airplane, they handed me up. A dozen 5 gallon cans of gasoline. Then before we got to Japan, they used the gasoline. Now that turret tank first, then I was able to. Dump the gasoline out of the wasn't a dozen cans into the turret tank. Then it cut a used it crash shack. To cut a hole in each end of the empty cans, and I kicked them out the window. I did that so they would sink immediately instead of leaving a trail across the ocean from direction we'd come. Doolittle's plane was the 1st to take off. It was at the start line brakes locked, engines running at 8:20 that morning. That's Navy signalman was curling his flag to given that signal. But when to take off? They'd run the engines up full power, and the signalman could tell from the sound of the engines when they were at full power. So then when a bow of the carrier was at the lowest spot closest to water, he dropped, dropped to the deck and and flung out flag forward. And that's when they're supposed to start rolling. And by the time the airplane got to the end of the bowl or the the the carrier, the bowl, the carrier was as far as far as from the waters could be. So that gives them that much distance. Between the water and the value of the carrier. I was in plain #9. There was probably 200 feet or more of clear deck ahead of us, but each one of us were pulled up to that same line. We all had 400 feet to take off, and one reason that they did that was because our right wing tip just missed the island by about 6 feet, and her left wheel then was about 6 feet from the edge of the carrier deck. So if we veered to the right or left in a longer takeoff run. We might hit the right wing or the left or the left wheel overboard. So we all took off from the same place and we all got airborne as as planned. And it was. It was a little exciting at first, but plane #9 that I was on, by the time it was our turn, we were feeling pretty brave about the whole thing. Eight planes had successfully negotiated the takeoff ahead of. Us. But I would bet that. The top the average flight time for the pilots on the on the mission was probably about $500.00 and in the B-25 maybe $100. So it was they were by modern standards terribly under trained. But by their standards they were good, they were proficient, they could fly instruments, they could fly formation and they they knew the nature of the mission. I I I think that all of them went in knowing exactly what was at risk. Their lives are at risk, but it was worth it. It was the mission they were assigned to do. In his autobiography. Admiral Halsey wrote the wind and sea were so strong that morning that green water was breaking over the carrier's ramps. Jimmy led his squadron off when his plane buzzed down the Hornets deck at O 825. There wasn't a man topside in the task force who didn't help sweat him into the air. 1 pilot hung on the brink of a stall until we nearly cataloged his effects, but the last of the 16 was airborne by O 924. And a minute later, my staff Duty Officer was riding in the flag log, commencing retirement from the area at 25 knots. Here, let me say that in my opinion, their flight was one of the most courageous deeds in all military history. When the aircraft carrier Hornet turned into the westerly wind to launch the bombers, it pointed almost directly at Tokyo Bay. Now each plane went in on assume it took takes gas and and time to to form information. So each plane was on its own. We didn't have gas to waste in in getting together in formation so we were about four or five minutes apart which meant that in most cases we never saw another B-25 on that day. Now well when we took off 650 miles out there was a solid overcast and. High winds and as we proceeded towards Japan about 2 hours, all that cleared up and we had a nice sunny day for the rest of the day. Way into late afternoon it was nice and sunny so we got a big break there, but we went in right on the deck so the radar couldn't pick us up so easily. Flying inbound to to Japan, they they were had no idea of what the Japanese intercept capabilities were. They knew that they had been detected and so they were obviously cautious. The the technique would be to fly low and fast, but the faster you go the more fuel you use. So they had to compromise and in their cruise control techniques to to fly at a reasonable speed to get them and get them over Japan and subsequently over China. I think that the average pilot flying it was probably exhilarated because it's it's fun to fly at relatively low levels and the average copilot was probably concerned a that he wasn't getting enough stick time. And be that he had to make sure that the engines weren't getting too hot because he's running the mixtures too late. The mixture is extremely important when you're trying to get. Mileage out of your airplane you're not carrying. You don't care anymore about speed particularly, you're caring about getting a distance out of the engines, so they all practice cruise control in that sense. The fuel situation was made even worse by the additional fuel tanks, one in the belly and one over the Bombay of each bomber. The tanks had been poorly designed and poorly built, and they leaked from every corner and from every connection on every one of the 16 planes. Fuel critical to the mission was leaking away. Once they were off the carrier, the crews faced about 3 1/2 hours of flying time to Japan. They were barely flying 150 to 160 mph, just above stall speed. They were flying 15 to 30 feet off the water. As the excitement of the launch wore off, they thought about the mission ahead. Most of the crews agreed that they didn't have enough fuel to reach China aboard plane #9. Navigator Tom Griffin calculated just how far their fuel would take. Them, and our best calculations were that after about. Five hours, we were going to run out of gas and we were going to be short of China by about 100 to 150 miles. So I think all of the planes made some kind of a decision in our plane. We thought, well, we're going to be running out of gas. If we see a ship, we'll ditch next to it and they'll take us aboard. And if it's a friendly ship, fine, we'll sail off with them. If it's an unfriendly ship, we each had 40 fives and we will pull out our 40 fives and take over the ship. Those. You'd have to have a light at the end of the tunnel and that was the light we had. Spread out over some 500 square miles of open ocean. The 16 bombers were heading for targets in Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya and Kobe. The Japanese people had been told that they were invulnerable. Months of victories had demonstrated that destiny, the gods, and military might were on the side of the emperor. Above all, they believed their homeland was safe from attack. 16 American planes and 80 brave men were about to prove otherwise. Dick Cole was the copilot of plane number one, which was piloted by Colonel Doolittle. We launched at about 8:20 in the morning. And put us over Tokyo at right around noon. We short ended Japan about 20 miles north. You could see Tokyo Bay, and we turned S and took us on a course over Tokyo, east of the Imperial Palace. We had incendiary bombs. And the reason was that? Since we were supposed to launch a desk on the 19th, arrive over Tokyo, dropped the incendiary bombs and light up Tokyo so that it would cause a big fire. Also it would give the following airplanes a some kind of a reference to where they wanted to go. But having the lunch early put us over Tokyo in the middle of the day. On the 18th couple of things that may have helped us. The Japanese had just practiced an air raid exercise and they had a bomber called the Betty that had two tails. And for the first airplane we feel that a lot of the people on the ground thought it was one of their airplane when they saw the B-25 because we were not jumped by any other airplane. We flew low level till Fred Bremer recognized from photographs that they had given us on a carrier. At that time, Colonel Doolittle pulled up to 1500 feet. Then we dropped our incendiary bomb and immediately went back down on the deck. The heck opened up on us and it was pretty intense, but was not accurate. Of the 16 Mitchell bombers, only two made landfall where they expected. Inaccurate compasses, overcast skies and a 40 knot headwind made accurate navigation impossible. Once the planes were over Japan, all 16 navigators were able to lead their planes to their targets. But getting lost, even briefly, burned precious fuel and the Japanese. Knew they were coming. Picket boats guarding the coast and patrol planes sent out to search for the Needham Maru had spotted the inbound Raiders several 100 miles out. When we were over Tokyo, we had counted 37 airplanes above us. And they did not see us. Civilians who saw the Mitchells mistook them for Japanese planes. The morning air raid drill had been ignored by most of the populace and they assumed that the low flying bombers were just part of the exercise. As we came over the coast, it was Saturday, right at noon. Beautiful day. There were a lot of people on the beach. They were waving to her. And we were flying so low I could see the expression on their faces. They were cheering. I'm sure they thought we were jumping the airplanes. We followed Japanese coast all the way SW until we got to the tip of Japan and then they went to China. #8 still burning too much fuel, hit its target, a factory north of Tokyo. As they speed away on the deck, pilot Ski York copilot Robert Emmons and navigator Nolan Herndon discussed their options. The Russian city of Vladivostok was 600 miles north. Although Doolittle had ordered that no one landed in Russia, the crew of plane #8 felt they had little choice. York turned the bomber. North and when we got over the city of Tokyo itself, we went in at rooftop level till we got to what we call our initial point where we pulled up to 1500 feet to make our bombing run on our assigned target plane #9 happened to just fly. Right over Hirohito's house at about 50 feet. And then we proceeded down to the northern section of Tokyo Bay and headed across to Baymark Target, which was a factory in the Kawasaki district of Tokyo, making tanks, and we made our bomb run. The Bombardier in the nose and the top turret gunner could see what our bombs did. The pilot. Copilot and I couldn't tell, so we had to take their word for it. But they said that we really flattened that target. There was Flack in the sky everywhere, and there were Japanese heroes flying around. And we went in right at rooftop level, which made it very difficult for them to attack us. And they had flak towers and they had to depress their guns to shoot at our people. And I actually saw their shells exploding in the street as as we went across the city. As they were shooting at us. Despite clouds of anti aircraft fire and swarms of Japanese fighter planes, all 16 Mitchells hit their targets and raced away undamaged. Getting lost on the way in had an unexpected benefit. The bombers hit Tokyo from every possible direction and the Japanese defenses were thrown into chaos. 15 Mitchells and their crews now headed for China across the China Sea. Most of them doubted that their remaining fuel would get them there. Behind them, Tokyo burned, Admiral Halsey later wrote. We had our radios tuned to Tokyo. One of their globest liars came on and began describing in English the wonders of life in Japan. Of all the warring countries in the world, he said, Japan alone was free from enemy attack. It would continue. So indeed, Japan was blessed among nations. And right there we heard the air raid sirens. Jimmy'z boys had arrived. We were captured by the Japanese and they carried us back to Japan. And and so they gave us a court, martials and all of that, and they condemned us to death. And then they decided to let us live. They executed three of the pilots. And so that left the rest of us with the with the. Possibility that we could be later on could be executed anytime. So I kept walking and it dust. I came out on a Cliff and I'm a little I saw a little cantonement of a couple of buildings that had a Chinese nationalist. Flag flying up above now on the table was a sketch of a on a piece of paper of A2 tailed airplane with five pursuits coming out of it. And the pilot had a deep gash in his left leg and one in his left arm, and most of his teeth had been knocked out. The copilot had a gash in his right right leg and I had used. And they get you some old dirty rags to try to close up the cuts on the the other. Wounds. So when we knew we were over the the rim of the China, we pulled up to 11,000 feet or 10,000 to clear any mountains in that part of China. And then as we ran out of gas we just bailed out. By the time we got up there going into China we could not let down. It was night time. We were in a big storm and their mountains below us. So all we could do. Just to head into that storm, run out of gas and bail out. That's what 11 of 55 men bailed out of 11 planes. On April 18th, 1942, just 132 days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Tokyo was burning. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon when the 1st B-25 flown by the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders dropped its first bomb. The Japanese High command and the civilian population was caught off guard. As the Raiders approached the coast of Japan, they saw smiling civilians waving at them from fishing boats, beaches and baseball parks. They were so convinced their island home was beyond the reach of the Allied bombers, they didn't imagine that danger was imminent, even though U.S. Army Air Corps bombers were screaming overhead, just above the treetops. It was one of the most brilliantly conceived operations in aerial combat history. All 16 Mitchell B20 fives found their intended targets and delivered their payloads. What the enemy did not know was the Doolittle Raiders were nearly 12 hours and 250 miles early for their rendezvous with history. The USS Hornet and the B20 fives had been spotted much farther out than their planned launch distance. Early this morning, 80 Doolittle Raiders had scrambled aboard their airplanes, knowing they did not have adequate fuel capacity to reach any safe haven. It was an act of valor rarely matched in modern military history. Before it was over, a despondent Jimmy Doolittle, not knowing the location or the fate of his gallant cruise, would sit atop the wreckage of his airplane and predict his own court martial. He didn't know the raid he had led would play a pivotal role in turning the tide of events in the Pacific in favor of the Allies. That he had in fact, just completed a mission that would change the war. I'm Gary Sinise, and this is missions that changed the war. 27 year old Richard Cole was seated in the copilot seat of Doolittle Raider B-25 number one. As a young boy in Dayton, OH, he used to ride his bicycle to a levy above McCook Army Airfield to watch the legendary pilots of the Army Air Service test flying the leading edge airplanes of the day. One of those pilots was James H Doolittle. Now Doolittle was seated inches away on Dick Coles left as they lowered their bomber down to rooftop level in Tokyo's western suburbs. They had hit their targets and were high tailing it for a planned landing field in eastern China near Chu Chao. We flew low level to Fred Bramer, recognized from photographs that they had given us on their carrier at that time Colonel Doolittle pulled up the. 1500 feet. Then we dropped our incendiary bomb and immediately went back down on the deck. The attack opened up on us and it was pretty intense, but was not accurate. We flew maybe 100 miles South. I would lower level. And not wanting to turn toward China and alert them of over the possibility that they would recognize what we were going and we returned on a SW heading and flew open water just strictly by magnetic navigation. But they had been bucking headwinds since they had left the carrier with the extra distance they had been forced to fly. They did not have the gas to make landfall. Then the weather began to change. It had been severe, clear over Tokyo, but now the ceiling was dropping and the wind was swirling. By the time they reached Yakushima, on Japan's western coast, visibility was down to 600 feet. The bad news was night was falling and they were in a serious storm. The good news was. The headwind was now a 25 mile per hour tailwind. It just might provide enough push to get them to the China coast. Tom Griffin was the navigator in the airplane #9. Now according to the anticipated wind, we were going to have a headwind which was the normal wind at that time of the year, in particular across the China Sea. And our best calculations were that after about. Five hours, we were gonna run out of gas and we were gonna be short of China by about 100 to 150 miles. And there was another, bigger problem. There was supposed to be. A portable homing station there, so we could use our radio compass and arrive there, land and gas up and fly on into Western China. But the fact that we arrived when we did in the middle of that big storm, there wasn't any chance of trying to make an approach into one of the fields. The other thing is that. That homing station was in an airplane that crashed on the way to get there, so it was not there. The other thing was that the Chinese hearing our engines thought it was a Japanese air raid and they shut off all the electricity, so. We were in limbo. After 13 hours in the air and flying 2250 miles, the right front fuel tank was showing empty. Doolittle told his crew to bail out. It was about 9:30 PM. Pay the most. Scared and worrisome and whatever other adjective you want to use. Of the whole mission was standing in the airplane looking down at that black hole. Because we ejected. The Hatch and outside there was a lot of wind, rain and lightning and you were going to have to go through that hole into a foreign country and then having any idea where you were or anything about it to maybe that was the scariest time. After putting the B-25 on, automatic, pilot Jimmy Doolittle shut both gas cocks off and left the airplane. He landed in a rice Paddy in a sitting position. He was neck deep in knight soil. The Chinese had had been for centuries, had been. Nurturing their crops and fertilizing their crops was what they call Knight soil. This is human waste and animal and and human waste to fertilize their crops. Following a cold, wet night, an elderly farmer he had met on the road took Doolittle to a local Chinese military headquarters. There were some tense moments when Doolittle refused to surrender his sidearm to the soldiers, but he eventually convinced them he was an American ally, and they began to help him. At about 9:00 PM, airplane #7 was nearing an island off the coast at Sang Chao. Pilot Ted Lawson thought he could spare the crew the risk and trauma of bailing out by affecting a controlled landing in shallow water. Not dark it was raining. Finally spotted a some land and and the pilot spotted a strip of beach and he thought he could land on their beach there. The engines have been running so cool all the time. That stopped at the last second when his landing and he had a wheel down. We hit the water with the wheel down and it immediately turned us over. I was. I was in the back, the airplane. The other four fellows were in the front. They were all thrown out through the nose. The pilot and copilot was still strapped to their armor plated seats when they came to in the water. Were knocked unconscious for a little while in the back and sort of came to and and got sea water running in what I thought was the battle of the airplane. Like finally realized the airplane was upside down and the plexiglass on a turret had shattered and that's where the water was coming in. So then I was able to open the escape hats on the bottom of the airplane and crawl out there. By that time I got out of the airplane. The other four fellows had were already up on the beach. In one of the countless acts of Chinese heroism performed in the wake of the Doolittle Raid, the resistance leader operating in the area helped Thatcher create bamboo pallets so the injured could be transported. We found out later that they, the Japanese, landed 65 Jap soldiers on that spot where we crashed, came looking for us, but we had a head start on them got across the island. Airplane #15 had scored a direct hit on the steelworks in the northeastern part of Kobe. It was making its way to the Chinese coast at Sandmen Bay as the weather closed in. It was nearly 9:00 PM. The left engine was backfiring and the right one was generating very little power. The pilot, Donald Smith, had decided on a water landing about 400 yards offshore. It went well. There were no injuries. In the roughly 8 minutes that the plane remained afloat, the engineer gunner, Lieutenant Thomas White, scrambled to recover some critically important tools. Thomas White was not an average gunner. Well Doctor White was a flight surgeon, but he when he found out about the raid, he asked Colonel Hilger, who was the 2nd in command. Um, and Doc White was about his age, the same age as Hilger, in other words, older than the normal or the average reader. And he said, well, I'd like to go on a raid. And Colonel Hilger said, well, you can't go, Doc we we've got five men on each airplane we can't find another seat for. You just wouldn't be right. So he said just. If you would, if you want to be a a gunner. You you can. Maybe go as a gunner, but you're not a gunner, you're a flight surgeon, he said. Well, I could, I could be a gunner. Let me have a chance to try. So he went down and shot the guns and did. I think he came off second best in making a score compared to some of the other. Gunners. And so he got the job as a gunner. And so here this. It was a fortuitous choice to have him go on those on that mission because. He certainly was helpful when he got to China. After a night in a fishing village, friendly Chinese rode doctor White and the rest of the crew to the island of Nandiyan. Again, the locals put their lives on the line, hiding the crew in a Buddhist temple while 65 Japanese soldiers swept through the area looking for them on nandiyan, doctor White learned of the injuries suffered by David Thatcher's crew. According to Lieutenant Smith, from the moment he did, he seemed to have only one desire, which was to reach them as soon as possible. It was the ideal providential meeting of these two crews with Doc White. It's saved. Uh. One of the Raiders, Ted Lawson. Saved his life. Because Lawson was about to lose his leg. And dark white. Amputated it. He gave Lawson blood from his own arms. But Doc himself when it got too bad of it. The loss was about to go. Then he gave blood from his own himself. Which is, I imagine, difficult thing to do. The day began badly for the crew of airplane #16 as they sat with propellers turning on the deck of the Hornet. A sailor on the deck crew slipped the prompt last from airplane #15, blew him backwards into 16's left propeller. His arm was so severely injured it required amputation. The crew members were Lieutenant William G Farrell, pilot. Lieutenant Robert height, copilot. Lieutenant George Barr, navigator. Jacob de Shazer, Bombardier and Harold A Spatz, engineer gunner in Nagoya. The crew found their targets, a battery of oil storage tanks and an aircraft factory. So far, George Barr wrote. All had gone well. I gave the pilot a new heading and we started our last leg of the trip. Like the other 15 Raider B20 fives #16 encountered the curse of the storm and the blessing of the tailwind. And like every other airplane, they experienced the sinking sensation of getting no response from Chow Chow on 4495 kilocycles. Landfall and nightfall arrive together just as the fuel warning lights came on. A break in the overcast revealed the lights of a city navigator bar quickly figured it was Nanchang. They were over an area believed to be in Japanese control. There was no choice now. All hands took to their parachutes. When they landed, it was nearly 1:00 AM. By daylight, all five would be in Japanese hands. For Robert Height, George Barr and Jacob Deshazer, it was the first day of 3 1/2 years of hell on Earth. Bill Farrow and Harold Spatz would never see their homeland again. The targets for airplane number three were industrial buildings and docks on the east side of Tokyo. Once again, the 20 cent bomb site designed by Ross Greening at Eglin Field performed flawlessly #3, which was nicknamed Whiskey Pete for pilot Bob Grey's Pinto Pony back in Texas, made its run for the Chinese coast. At 10:00 PM, flying in thin overcast, both fuel gauges registered empty. The crew went out in the usual order, engineer, followed by the Bombardier, then the navigator and the copilot. The pilot left last. Jacob Manch, the copilot, spent a cold night in driving rain. His parachute gathered about him. For two days he wandered, trying to find a railroad the Raiders were told operated in this part of China. On the third day, tired, hungry and scratched by thick briars, he sat waist deep in a stream. Suddenly the thicket parted and a smiling Chinese man with several companions confronted him. With sound effects and hand gestures, they indicated they knew where Manches plane had crashed. They led him to a village where he saw Chinese guerrillas carrying parts of Whiskey Pete. He found something else, the body of his crewmate, engineer Leland de Factor of Plymouth, IA. Factor had either struck the plane after leaving it, experienced a parachute failure or just hit the ground excessively hard. He appeared to have died instantly. Sadly, airplane #6 suffered the highest casualties of the raid. Dean hallmark. The pilot delivered his bombs on a steel mill north of Tokyo. The airplane, nicknamed the Green Hornet, was running on fumes when the coast of China was still 10 minutes ahead of them. A water landing loomed. The navigator, chase Nielsen remembered. It was a very hard and fast landing that left him temporarily unconscious. When Nielsen awoke, he realized he was in immediate peril. The wreckage of the plane was being pounded by surf. It was sinking fast, though. He was bleeding, and his nose was broken. He climbed up through the windshield, inflating his May West life preserver. He joined Bob Meeder, the copilot, on top of the submerging plane while the crew struggled to inflate their malfunctioning life raft. William Dieter slipped off the wing at nearly the same moment. A huge wave washed the rest of them off the now fully submerged B-25. Though they tried to maintain voice contact in the dark, each man was now left to his own fate, chase Nielsen would later write. I couldn't do a thing but ride the waves. I half swam and half floated for what seemed like hours. I thought about my family, the fellows back at Columbia, SC, who did not go on the raid. The wonderful. Navy men who brought us to the launch point and were probably now being chased by the whole Japanese Navy. I wondered where the crews of the other 15 planes were and whether Jimmy Doolittle's first combat mission might have been his last. I fear the worst might happen to Dieter and Fitzmorris because they seem to be so badly hurt. Nielsen made it to shore the next morning from a hiding place in the stand of trees, he saw villagers and two Chinese. Soldiers looking at 2 bodies on the beach. It was William J Dieter from Vail, IA, and Donald E Fitzmorris from Lincoln, NE. The local Chinese did all they could to hide chase, Nielsen, Dean Hallmark and Bob Mader, the surviving crew members of the Green Hornet, though the area was swarming with Japanese soldiers. After one Japanese patrol left, the three returned to the beach where the Chinese had hidden the bodies of Dieter and Fitzmorris. They placed their comrades in two wooden boxes. Chose a spot high on the beach and buried them. The three officers prayed silently over the two enlisted men who had given their last full measure. I bailed out and left Colonel Doolittle. He was the last one out when I should open properly and looking down. And they were Ripcord. I pulled the thing so hard that I gave myself a black eye. I was fortunate that my shoot drifted over a pine tree and I ended up about 12 feet off of the ground, so it was like jumping, jumping in a feather bed. It was raining very hard. So I pulled part of the shoot in and made kind of a hammock affair and spent the night in a tree. When Daybreak came and I could see the ground, I had a compass and started walking West and it just came out on a Cliff. And I'm the law. I saw a little cantonment of a couple of buildings that had a Chinese nationalist. Flag flying up above. And the only reason I knew. There was a Chinese nationalist flag was that the same emblem was painted on the avg P 40s that I had read about before. Anyway, I walked down there and I was accosted by a young lad and he took me to a building that was empty except for a table. On the table was a sketch. Of on a piece of paper of A2 tailed airplane with five parachutes coming out of it. So I finally got him to take me where he took whoever drew the sketch, which he did. And I walked into this building and it was Colonel Doolittle. He is the one who had drawn the skill. I said, boy, am I glad to see you. But Doolittle was far from happy. He recalled the days after the crash landing. When the soldiers found our plane, Paul, Leonard and I went to the crash site to see what we could salvage. There is no worse sight to an aviator than to see his plane smashed to bits. This was my first combat mission. I had planned it from the beginning and had led it. I was sure it would be my last. As far as I was concerned, it was a failure and I felt there could be no future for me in uniform now. Even if we had successfully accomplished the first half of our mission, the second-half had been to deliver the B20 fives to our units in the China Burma India Theater of Operations. My main concern was for my men. What had happened to my crew probably happened to the others as I sat there. Paul Leonard took my picture. And then, seeing how badly I felt trying to cheer me up, he asked. What do you think will happen when you go home, Colonel? I answered. Well. I guess they'll court martial me and send me to prison at Fort Leavenworth. Paul said no, Sir. I'll tell you what will happen. They're going to make you a general and they're going to give you the Congressional Medal of Honor. Colonel, I know they're going to give you another airplane. And when they do, I'd like to fly with you as your crew chief. It was then that the tears came to my eyes. It was the supreme compliment a mechanic could give a pilot. 16B20 fives left the deck of the Hornet on the Doolittle Raid. Every one of them reached Japan and bombed their targets. It was true that all the airplanes were lost. Airplane #8. The airplane that seems to have had its carburetors either changed or reset at the Seattle Air Depot was forced to seek the quickest landing opportunity available. It went to Vladivostok in Russia, where it was confiscated by the Soviets. The crew was interned for over a year until the five men affected their own escape. As for Doolittles men, three Raiders. Died the night of the raid. Leland factor, the engineer gunner on airplane #3, did not survive his bailout. William Dieter, the Mama deer on airplane #6, was too severely injured to survive the ditching of the airplane off the coast. The same was true for his crewmate Donald Fitzmorris, the engineer gunner. On the same airplane, 8 Raiders became prisoners of the Japanese. Lieutenant Dean Hallmark, Lieutenant Robert Meader, and Lieutenant Chase Nielsen, all crew members of airplane #6, were captured. The entire crew of airplane #16 Lieutenant William G Farrow, Lieutenant Robert L Height Lieutenant George Barr, Corporal Jacob Daniel Deshazer. And Sergeant Harold A Spatz became POW's. The treatment of the prisoners was horrendous. Interrogated us and all of that, you know each one individually, and there was two airplanes of us that had been captured. No. They condemned us to death and the emperor reprieved us to life imprisonment. Our sentence was to be kept in solitary confinement. I think they were very scared. They tortured them brutally. And they don't talk about that in any of the books. We're going to put a rag over their face and they would pour water until you almost drowned and pass out. And and then they would go on slaps, beats, socks, punches coming every day, bamboo shoots between the joints. They would take iron rods and put them behind the break of the knee and then they would jump on the thighs. And which costs, you know, obviously a great deal of pain. By April 24th. Six days following the raid. All of the captured Raiders had been flown to Tokyo. Their mistreatment continued unabated until August 28th, when they were made to stand trial. The trial was conducted in Japanese. The men had no idea what was being said. A record of the trial concluded that the eight had been found guilty as charged and are hereby sentenced to death for reasons unknown. Dean hallmark. William Farrell and Harold Spatz. Were sentenced to be executed. On October 14th, 1942, Hallmark, Pharaoh and spats were informed they were to be executed the next day. They were given paper and pencil and told they could write to their family and friends, Hallmark wrote to his father, mother and sister. I hardly know what to say, he wrote. They just told me I am liable to execution. I can hardly believe it. I wanted to be a commercial pilot, and would have been if it wasn't for this war. To his mother, he wrote. Tried to stand up under this and pray. Bill Farrow wrote his widowed mother. Don't let this get you down. Just remember that God will make everything right and I will see you again in the hereafter. My faith in God is complete, so I am unafraid. Harold Spatz wrote to his widower father in Leibo, Kansas. If I have inherited anything since I became of age, I will give it to you and dad. I want you to know that I love you and God bless you. Want you to know that I died fighting for my country like a soldier. The next day, on October 15th, 1942, the three Doolittle Raiders were executed by firing squad. Swallows were tortured, they were starved, they were put in solitary confinement and they were beaten repeatedly and nothing they could do about it. I mean, they they just lived it very. Tortured. Existence. Each was growing steadily weaker and Bob Meter was the weakest of the five. Meter looked like a walking skeleton on December 1st, 1943. It's sturdily built athletic meter. Died quietly in his cell. The Japanese were completely incensed by the Doolittle Raid. They had been concerned that such a raid might originate in China. General Claire Chennault, head of the celebrated Flying Tigers who were operating in China, recalled that the Japanese drove 200 miles into East China to seek revenge. Chennault wrote one sizable city was raised for no other reason than the sentiment displayed by its citizens in filling up Jap bomb craters on nearby airfields. A quarter million Chinese civilians and soldiers were reportedly killed in the three month campaign. The Chinese had been at war with the Japanese since 1937. They knew well the brutality they employed against those who opposed. Yet time and again, they risked all to try to help the lost American Flyers get to their ultimate destination, the wartime capital of Chung King. Their legacy is typified by a story of Tongcheng Liu, a Chinese engineering student who was pressed into service to help airplane #2 escape. At the time, he risked his life for the American Flyers and undertook this most hazardous of journeys. Lou had a young pregnant wife Man, Ming Wang Lu, he was leaving behind. During our whole trip, under loose guidance, our treatment was superb, Navigator Lieutenant Carl Weidner was quoted as saying. He had risked his neck for us. After World War Two ended. Lou came to the US to study aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He maintained lifelong friendships with the airmen he helped in China. Lou became a U.S. citizen in 1954. Four years later, he began work as a civilian aeronautical engineer at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH, where he helped develop the C5 military transport aircraft. Only two men have been named honorary Doolittle Raiders. One is Hank Miller, the naval aviator who taught the Doolittle crews how to pull a B-25 off the deck of an aircraft carrier in less than 500 feet. Tongue Shang Lu. Is the other. He died May 3rd, 2009. He was honored at the 2010 Doolittle Raider Reunion. His children, Tom Sheridan and Melinda Liu, attended. Since 1988. Melinda Liu has been the Beijing Bureau chief for Newsweek magazine. I think it's very hard for people of our generation to understand what our parents went through and the environment that that they went through. That was a very special time. My father was basically like millions of other Chinese trying to get through the war and just happened by happenstance to be in a certain situation that that propelled him to heroic actions and very unusual circumstances, and it changed his life forever. It began as a boost for the sagging morale of a shocked and Angry nation, but the Doolittle Raid turned out to be so much more. And it looked like their next big step well might be Australia, drive down and take over Australia. And that was just the time when we hit and the Japanese decided they were going to put an end to that possibility in the future. And six weeks after our raid on Japan, they got together. A huge fleet and headed across the Pacific. They had four carriers, they had cruisers and battleships and they were going to take over midway first, possibly Hawaii next. And our intelligence had broken their code, knew they were coming and. We had our ship, the Hornet and the enterprise, the other carrier that was with us and 1/3 carrier, the Yorktown. And they had, he had us sitting up north of Midway and waiting. And when the Japanese struck midway, we flew down there and the rest is history. What happened? Our Navy boys sunk all four of those carriers and it was a tremendous victory for our side. And from that time on, if you analyze the Pacific War. Instead of being on the offensive everywhere, they were back on the defensive until we were just within easy striking distance of Japan in the summer of 45. Following the Battle of Midway, the Japanese never scored another victory in the Pacific. All 80 Doolittle Raiders received the Distinguished Flying Cross. For this mission. The Chinese government decorated all of the Raiders. Those imprisoned and tortured also received the Purple Heart. David Thatcher was awarded the Silver Star. Doctor Thomas White was awarded the Silver Star. James H Doolittle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor every Doolittle Raider who was able to fly at the completion of the raid. Did so. So I went back overseas with the first Air Commando group. Had made the aerial invasion of Burma later on in 1944. Who came back to Billings on on furlough? For a couple of weeks and then went through. Macdill Field at Tampa, FL. And began training in B20. Sixes was a. Twin Engine bomber with a single tail. And then we were flying submarine patrol between Oran, Algeria and and the coastal Spain until about the middle of April 1943 and we moved up to the front and we were bombing the Italian and German forces until they finally chased him out of North Africa. I was on 26 bombing missions over there. And we all got two weeks leave before we went to our new group. In my case it was that B26 group at Hardingfele, Louisiana captured this. This happened in the summer of 43 on the 4th of July. Now we had a whole big flight of B20 sixes and we flew over to Sicily and they hit us big time. And down we went. And we were on fire, so I bailed out. And pull my ripcord. A little later when I was when I got to the ground. I was captured immediately by the Germans down there in this field. 13 Raiders would ultimately lose their lives later in World War Two in China. Jimmy Doolittle made a promise to his men. Colonel Doolittle promised the group, he says. If we. You 5 survived the mission. And I'm going to throw you the biggest party you've ever had. After it's all over after the war anyway, we had the first reunion and it everybody had a good time. It was all fun and games and so forth. And somebody said, why don't we do this again and. Jimmy said. Hey, wait a minute, fella. Is. This cost me a pretty penny to have this party, he says. I can't afford to do it. And some of the other aviation interests the sponsored. Yeah, and the city itself. And after that, it was kind of like Topsy. We began to receive invitations every year. It's great to see the gang. Every year. After 10 years, Mrs Doolittle said, he she put her foot down and said from now on the waves are going to go to these realities. And that changed the whole tenor of our activities, yeah, I assure you. But from that time on it was a big improvement because we couldn't have kept on the way we were. It's not just what they did, which was extremely important for the nation at that time, but how they've lived their lives since really, and they have put together. Foundation, which supports youngsters coming up in aerospace engineering and so they continue to make contributions wherever they go, whatever communities they visit, and so they that they are continuing as an inspiration to the next generation of airmen. It seemed like there was a guiding hand favoring us on that whole mission, because when you analyze the whole mission, everything went our way and we did the maximum damage that. We could do against our enemy with 16 planes each carrying a ton of bombs. We we really accomplished our our mission. And of course we upset them so much that their plans brought on the the big defeat of Midway later. So this this little raid accomplished quite a bit in the in the war. After we started having these annual reunions, the city of Tucson had invited us there, and when we got there we found that they had. 80 cups, silver cups engraved with our names on them, in this case, those who had, who were deceased. The cups were upside down. And so for the years that went on in all of our reunions, some cadets from the Air Force Academy brought this case of cups to our reunion, and we had a regular ceremony drinking to those that had passed on this that year, and the cups were turned over. Gentlemen. The toast. To those who are gone. When we get together, it seems like. The raid was yesterday. It's great to see the ones that are still living and we pay homage to the ones that have passed on the mysteriousness of the thing. The way it was designed was that the in this case that holds a goblet, there was a bottle of Courvoisier. It was laid down in the same year Doolittle was born, as the story goes. At the end of the trail there will be 2. Raiders sitting together. With their goblet and some of their covaciu and in their cup. And that would be then of the Doolittle Raiders. 80 men, 68 years later, only six of them are still with us. Yet their tradition dictates that all 80 of them gather, either in body or spirit, every year on the anniversary of that heroic and historic mission, a mission that changed the war.
Wasn’t this considered a suicide mission, because the odds of returning were so low?