The Charlotte News

Saturday, April 18, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page greets the news of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and Yokohama, Nagoyo, Yokosuka, Osaka, and Kobe, respectively the capital, key port and industrial centers of the main island of Honshu in Japan. Details were as yet sketchy, though the source of the attack had been confirmed by Domei, the Japanese official press, as American. The reports, however, claimed falsely that the raids targeted churches, hospitals, and orphanages, while inflicting little damage on major centers of commerce and industry. The reports also falsely claimed nine bombers were shot down. None were.

The actual raid, involving 16 modified B-25 long-range bombers flown off the aircraft carrier Hornet, had been in preparation since mid-January, first in Norfolk and eventually, by early March, at Eglin Field in Florida, and by the end of March, the bombers transported to California for final lightening to enable increased fuel capacity and take-off in spite of it from the short deck of the Hornet. The planes finally were loaded onboard at the Alameda Naval Air Station next to Oakland and the long 6,000-mile journey began across the Pacific from San Francisco Bay on April 2.

The Task Force accompanying the carrier included the carrier Enterprise, eight destroyers, three heavy crusiers, one light cruiser, and two oil tankers. As with the Japanese Task Force commanded by Vice-Admiral Nagumo in November-December headed for Oahu, this American Task Force, under the command of Admiral Halsey, maintained radio silence to afford maximum surprise.

On the morning of April 18, with the attack scheduled to be launched ten hours later in the afternoon, the Task Force was spotted by a Japanese maru which, before it was fired upon and destroyed, was able to warn Tokyo of a pending attack. At the time, the Task Force was still 650 miles from Honshu and intending to get within 500 miles before initiating the attack. The decision was then made by Lieutenant-Colonel James Doolittle, leader of the raid and trainer of the pilots involved, to expedite the attack and begin straightway. For an hour after 8:20 a.m., the sixteen bombers took off seriatim, each negotiating the short runway without mishap.

As reported in The News, the planes began arriving over Japan at high noon and the combined raids on the six cities lasted for about a half hour. The Japanese, despite the early warning, were caught quite as flat-footed as the Americans at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7.

After the successful bombing raid, the bombers, having been refused landing privileges at Vladivostok by the Soviets out of fear of triggering a retaliatory attack from Japan, had to negotiate a 600-mile longer course into Chinese territory. That, plus the 170 miles added to the original flight plan, resultant from the early detection by the maru, caused the planes to run out of fuel prior to reaching their destination airstrips in China.

The crews of fifteen of the bombers therefore either ditched the aircraft or bailed out. The remaining B-25, so low on fuel that it had to fly into Soviet territory anyway, became the only plane which landed in a regular fashion, some forty miles from Vladivostok. That crew was interned by the Soviets, presumably to maintain face with the Japanese and not provide the appearance of violation of the mutual non-aggression pact.

Thirteen of the five-man crews survived intact without capture by the enemy or death; one man from another crew died during his parachute attempt; another lost two men during the ditching after which the other three of that crew were captured; and another had all five of its crew captured. Of the eight captured airmen, three were tried before a Japanese tribunal in August and executed; the other five, originally sentenced to death, had their sentences commuted to imprisonment. Four survived the war and were freed in August, 1945, the fifth having died of disease and starvation while in captivity.

The Chinese helped secret the downed airmen of the other thirteen crews. Raids were conducted in China by the Japanese searching for the 64 crewmen, resulting in some 250,000 Chinese killed.

Doolittle was given the Medal of Honor and promoted to Brigadier General for the raid. All eighty crewmen were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

The impact on American morale was immeasurable, the raid providing the first cold vengeance for the attack at Pearl Harbor. The American people, after over four months of daily bread of bad and worse news--of failing lines, capture, retreat, bombing raids on American positions in the Philippines, the abandonment early on of Manila, the capture on April 9 of some 70,000 prisoners on Bataan, the previous taking of British-American-Dutch-Australian positions in Malaya, in Singapore, in southern Burma at Rangoon, in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, and Java, with consistent raids on points in the north of Australia around Darwin, on Ceylon, at Calcutta--, this singularly dramatic event provided a breath of fresh air, the first concerted offensive strike of the war on Japan.

Heretofore, successes had been measured in late reports of enemy ships sunk, such as in the Macassar Strait in January, or the heroics of fighting to a stubborn surrender while overwhelmingly outnumbered, as with the determined Marines who held Wake Island for two weeks in December and the forces who held Bataan for nearly four months. No more would such gymnastics be required to vault over the pessimism and find within some ray of hope peeking through the gimlet-hole.

The raid itself, while reaching most of its targets, did little damage. Nevertheless, the boost in spirit which it provided to the Allies, as well the strategic consequence of necessitating the recall of numerous fighter wing squadrons to Japanese home waters in recognition of the domestic vulnerability thus exposed, gave the raid a significant place in the history of the war.

"So Sorry" on the editorial page revels in the glory of the moment, reflecting back to a report made in the column July 29 and repeated July 31, quoting the President, after his having viewed a film chronicling the bombing by the Japanese of Chungking, asking what America’s Flying Fortresses would do to the paper city of Tokyo, whereupon, receiving the reply that it would go up like a torch, the President reportedly had responded with a voice full of grave forecast: "That is what I thought."

And we suppose we could not allow the memorialization of this flight to pass without recognizing a bit of coincident irony from the editorial column of July 1, 1941, the day Cash died, the day after the "flytrap method" hit the news, the day in Tokyo that the Imperial Conference took place which set the skein of events in motion, the decision of Premier Tojo and his generals and admirals, receiving the imprimatur of the Emperor, to move south into French Indochina and Thailand, ultimately--Tojo's own post-war self-serving, neck-saving claims of the more limited immediate thrust of the meeting to the contrary notwithstanding--with the design to conquer Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, leading in turn to the necessity of the attack on Pearl Harbor, to attempt to sidetrack the American Navy and Air Corps for at least six months and thus neutralize the U.S. threat to the plan to achieve the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere--Empire.

Just what precisely, in the realm of the living and sensate, that particular ironic coincidence means or from whence it derives, only the Shadow knows.

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