stating, âWeâre gonna need volunteers for a dangerous mission that will be of great importance to the American war effort.â Nobody could figure out where he wanted us to go or what he wanted us to do when we got there, but if Jimmy Doolittle was going, we wanted to be there.
He sent us to Eglin Field in Florida, where the pilots learned how to take off at short distances and the rest of us got the additional training in navigation, bombing, and firing machine guns. I donât think that any one of us had any lack of confidence that weâd be able to make it. After all, we were flying with the premier pilot in the Air Corps at that time. If he couldnât do it, it wasnât going to be done.
USS HORNET
NAVY TASK FORCE 16.2
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
1 APRIL 1942
Finally, after more than a month of arduous training exercises and flight maneuvers, the planes and men were ready. Doolittle sent the armada of B-25s from Eglin Field to McClelland Field, not far from Sacramento,
California. From there, on 22 March, the B-25s flew to Alameda Naval Air Station near Oakland, on San Francisco Bay.
During the nearly 3,000-mile trip to California, Doolittle had told his high-spirited aircrews to practice low-level flying. The young daredevils flew at practically cornstalk level, skimming over farmhouses, âhot-doggingâ it across the country. They flew down through the Grand Canyon, and up and down the Sacramento Valley at an elevation of ten feet above ground level, sending farmers and fruit pickers scurrying for cover.
April Foolâs Day, 1942, was the date picked for having everything ready. The following morning, the carrier and its seven escort ships, designated as Task Force 16.2, sailed from San Francisco Bay. Once well out to sea, the skipper of the Hornet, Captain Marc Mitscher, with Doolittle beside him, announced over the shipâs PA system their objectiveâuntil now top secret information. The captains of the escorts did the same, telling all hands: âNow hear thisâthis task force is going to Japan.â Those who were there remember the cheering that reverberated across the decks.
Northwest of Hawaii, the Hornet and her escorts rendezvoused with Task Force 16.1, consisting of the carrier USS Enterprise , with Admiral Halsey aboard, and eight escorts. Together, the seventeen ships raced northwest across the Pacific, heading for the spot in the ocean 412 miles from the Japanese coast that Doolittle and the Navy planners had chosen as a takeoff point for the B-25s.
It was, for this high-risk mission, a sensible plan. U.S. naval intelligence officers knew that the Japanese had positioned picket ships along a perimeter 400 miles from their homeland. The warlords in Tokyo had done the mathâthey figured that the Americans would have to be no more than 300 miles from Japan in order to carry out any kind of attack with carrier-based aircraft. The U.S. Navy code-breakers also knew from intercepts of Japanese communications that the 26th Air Flotilla, with more than sixty bombers on alert, could take off on short notice and attack any U.S. vessel that the pickets sighted as far as 600 miles outâwell before carrier-based task forces could launch an air attack on Japan.
Halseyâs fleet steamed west maintaining total radio silence, hoping that the 10,000-man task force could make it to within 412 miles of the Japanese coastline without being detected. Doolittleâs aircraft needed to be close enough to hit their targets and still have enough fuel to make it 800 more miles to recovery fields in China. After launching the bombers, the task force ships would turn and race south, hoping to be out of the area and beyond the range of any Japanese aircraft by the time they arrived at the launch site.
It was a superb planâon paper. But the fliers were taking a huge risk. So were the aircraft carriers and their escorts. The Hornet and the Enterprise made up half of the
He sent us to Eglin Field in Florida, where the pilots learned how to take off at short distances and the rest of us got the additional training in navigation, bombing, and firing machine guns. I donât think that any one of us had any lack of confidence that weâd be able to make it. After all, we were flying with the premier pilot in the Air Corps at that time. If he couldnât do it, it wasnât going to be done.
USS HORNET
NAVY TASK FORCE 16.2
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
1 APRIL 1942
Finally, after more than a month of arduous training exercises and flight maneuvers, the planes and men were ready. Doolittle sent the armada of B-25s from Eglin Field to McClelland Field, not far from Sacramento,
California. From there, on 22 March, the B-25s flew to Alameda Naval Air Station near Oakland, on San Francisco Bay.
During the nearly 3,000-mile trip to California, Doolittle had told his high-spirited aircrews to practice low-level flying. The young daredevils flew at practically cornstalk level, skimming over farmhouses, âhot-doggingâ it across the country. They flew down through the Grand Canyon, and up and down the Sacramento Valley at an elevation of ten feet above ground level, sending farmers and fruit pickers scurrying for cover.
April Foolâs Day, 1942, was the date picked for having everything ready. The following morning, the carrier and its seven escort ships, designated as Task Force 16.2, sailed from San Francisco Bay. Once well out to sea, the skipper of the Hornet, Captain Marc Mitscher, with Doolittle beside him, announced over the shipâs PA system their objectiveâuntil now top secret information. The captains of the escorts did the same, telling all hands: âNow hear thisâthis task force is going to Japan.â Those who were there remember the cheering that reverberated across the decks.
Northwest of Hawaii, the Hornet and her escorts rendezvoused with Task Force 16.1, consisting of the carrier USS Enterprise , with Admiral Halsey aboard, and eight escorts. Together, the seventeen ships raced northwest across the Pacific, heading for the spot in the ocean 412 miles from the Japanese coast that Doolittle and the Navy planners had chosen as a takeoff point for the B-25s.
It was, for this high-risk mission, a sensible plan. U.S. naval intelligence officers knew that the Japanese had positioned picket ships along a perimeter 400 miles from their homeland. The warlords in Tokyo had done the mathâthey figured that the Americans would have to be no more than 300 miles from Japan in order to carry out any kind of attack with carrier-based aircraft. The U.S. Navy code-breakers also knew from intercepts of Japanese communications that the 26th Air Flotilla, with more than sixty bombers on alert, could take off on short notice and attack any U.S. vessel that the pickets sighted as far as 600 miles outâwell before carrier-based task forces could launch an air attack on Japan.
Halseyâs fleet steamed west maintaining total radio silence, hoping that the 10,000-man task force could make it to within 412 miles of the Japanese coastline without being detected. Doolittleâs aircraft needed to be close enough to hit their targets and still have enough fuel to make it 800 more miles to recovery fields in China. After launching the bombers, the task force ships would turn and race south, hoping to be out of the area and beyond the range of any Japanese aircraft by the time they arrived at the launch site.
It was a superb planâon paper. But the fliers were taking a huge risk. So were the aircraft carriers and their escorts. The Hornet and the Enterprise made up half of the
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