Recently there was a reunion of the remaining Doolittle Raiders and out of 80 men that originally took part in the raid only 4 are still alive. There are critical times in American history where America has faced military disasters and at just the right time our leaders would do something to lift the morale of the American people and give them the strength to carry on. The battle of Trenton in the American Revolution following the disastrous loss of New York by American forces. The successful defense of Baltimore by American forces at Ft. McHenry after Washington DC and the White House were burned by British forces in the War of 1812. This battle also inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner. Then there was Doolittles Raid. Americans had seen their fleet severely damaged at Pearl Harbor, the fall and capture of a whole American Army in the Philippines, and the capture of Wake Island. Soon after Pearl Harbor a naval officer thought of the idea of training Army Air Force bomber pilots to learn to take off on a short strip the length of a carrier deck. It was decided that the B-25 Bomber would be the best choice and the men under top secret conditions were trained at Eglin AFB Florida near Ft. Walton Beach. In 1988 I pulled a Guard summer camp down at Hurlburt Field Florida which is near Eglin. We were guarding AC-130 Gunships, Intelligence gathering aircraft and helicopters. While there we were passing what looked to me like an old abandoned airstrip while on patrol and the active duty Airman I was working with pointed at it and told me that it was the runway that the Doolittle Raiders trained on. The intent of the raid was primarily as a morale booster for the American people. The men chosen were all volunteers. As far as they knew it was a suicide mission. Military planners knew that even if the raid was 100% successful very little long term damage could be done to the Japanese. It would be another two years before America would be able to commence strategic bombing raids over Japan. But this raid produced unforeseen strategic benefits for America in addition to lifting American morale. Although the bombers did little damage compared to later raids it took the Japanese completely by surprise and they were greatly embarrassed and angered by it. The raid took place in April 1942 and the Japanese knew that the attack had to have come from an American Carrier. In this case the USS Hornet. The big failure of the Pearl Harbor raid from the Japanese perspective was that they had failed to destroy the American carriers because they were out at sea during the attack. America, at the time only had three functioning carriers. The Enterprise, the Hornet, and the Yorktown which had been heavily damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea. Admiral Yamamoto planned to draw these carriers into an ambush and destroy them by attacking Midway and the Aleutian Islands. America had broken the Japanese military code and was able to ambush the Japanese instead, sinking four of the six carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor. This turned out to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific. Miraculously no Doolittle Raiders died in the raid but eight were captured. Four would eventually be executed as war criminals by the Japanese and the remaining four would languish as POWs for the three remaining years of the war. Ironically Doolittle thought that the raid had been a failure because he had lost all of his planes either by crashing in the ocean after running out of gas or crash landing in China. I felt that this was a good story to post on this Veterans Day.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 17:10:39 +0000
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