Jimmy Doolittle: the airman who struck Tokyo

Four months after Pearl Harbor, America struck back at the heart of Japan. Sixteen army bombers, never meant to fly from a ship, lumbered off the deck of an aircraft carrier and headed for Tokyo. Leading them in person was Jimmy Doolittle, already one of the most famous pilots in the world.²

The boy from Nome

James Harold Doolittle was born in Alameda, California, on 14 December 1896. He spent part of his childhood in Nome, Alaska, before the family moved to Los Angeles.³

Flyer and scientist

He enlisted as a flying cadet in the Army Signal Corps during World War I and became an army pilot, serving in the United States as an instructor.⁴

In September 1922 he made the first cross-country flight across the United States within a single day, for which he received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Over the next decade he set numerous speed records and became one of the most famous racing and test pilots of his time.⁵

Flying blind

His most important flight was the slowest. In the late 1920s pilots still could not fly in fog: they had to see the ground to land. At Mitchel Field on Long Island, the Guggenheim Fund tested new radio beacons designed by the National Bureau of Standards together with new instruments, including an artificial horizon, a directional gyroscope and a precise altimeter. On 24 September 1929 Lieutenant Doolittle, under a hood that kept him from seeing outside his NY-2 biplane, took off, flew a 15-minute circuit and landed on instruments alone, with a safety pilot in the front cockpit. It was the first "blind" flight, and it proved that instruments, not instinct, were the key to flying in bad weather.⁶

The plan

After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt pressed his service chiefs relentlessly for a way to strike Japan. The Navy proposed launching Army bombers from a carrier, too far out for Japanese defenses, and landing them in China or the Soviet Union. General Henry "Hap" Arnold gave the job to Doolittle, who had returned to active duty in 1940.⁷

The raid would use the new twin-engine B-25 Mitchell. Volunteer crews practiced short takeoffs at Eglin Field in Florida under a Navy instructor, Lieutenant Henry Miller, and sixteen B-25s were loaded aboard USS Hornet at Alameda at the start of April 1942.⁸

18 April 1942

Hornet sailed from San Francisco and met Admiral William Halsey's Enterprise north of Hawaii; Enterprise's aircraft would cover both carriers. On the morning of 18 April the task force ran into a Japanese picket boat, the Nitto Maru, which was sunk, but not before it had reported the American ships.⁹

Doolittle and the task force commanders launched at once, far short of the planned point: about 150 miles short according to the Navy's historians, some 250 miles according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The bombers would no longer have the fuel to reach the airfields in China. All sixteen got off safely.¹⁰

Japan was caught by surprise, and none of the bombers was lost over Japan. They struck targets in Tokyo and other cities, then flew on toward China.¹¹

China

One bomber turned for the Soviet Union and landed near Vladivostok; its crew was interned for more than a year before Soviet agents smuggled them out. The other fifteen reached the Chinese coast at night, and their crews bailed out, crash-landed or ditched. Doolittle came down in China near Chuchow.¹²

Three raiders died in the crashes. Eight were captured, tried by the Japanese and sentenced to death; three were executed, one died in captivity, and the rest survived to be freed at the end of the war.¹³

Chinese soldiers and villagers helped the raiders to safety, and the Chinese paid a terrible price for it. In retaliation the Japanese army devastated the areas that had sheltered the Americans, and the number killed has been put as high as 250,000.¹⁴

Why the raid mattered

The raid lifted American spirits when almost all the war news was bad. In Japan it was a humiliation, and it helped Admiral Yamamoto win approval for his plan to trap the American carriers at Midway, an operation that ended in a decisive American victory. Doolittle received the Medal of Honor for planning and leading the raid.¹⁵ › Battle of Midway, 1942

Commanding the air war

Promoted to general, Doolittle went on to command the Twelfth Air Force over North Africa, the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean and, from January 1944 to the end of the war, the Eighth Air Force in England, as a lieutenant general.¹⁶

Command style

Doolittle led from the front. An engineer as well as a daredevil, he planned the raid and then flew in it himself, in a bomber, his citation says, whose crew faced the near certainty of landing in enemy territory or perishing at sea.¹⁷

Later life and legacy

After the war he helped found the Air Force Association and served as its first president, and he advised the Air Force on the scientific work that led to its ballistic missile and space programs. In 1985 Congress advanced him to full general on the retired list, the first person in Air Force Reserve history to wear four stars.¹⁸

He died at Pebble Beach, California, on 27 September 1993, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 7A.¹⁹

Read the full story of the Doolittle Raid, see how it led to the Battle of Midway, explore World War II, or see what else happened on 18 April.