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Air Missions: James Doolittle's Contributions to the US Air Force
From: Columbia University
| By:
Kenneth LeishColumbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
James H. Doolittle, the pilot of the first airplane to cross the United States in less than 24 hours, was always thinking of ways to improve aircraft performance and, in turn, the success of the US military. In this excerpt of an interview with Kenneth W. Leish on behalf of Columbia's Oral History Research Office, Doolittle describes his 1942 retaliatory attack on Tokyo and his gamble on the 100-octane fuel business, which was a pivotal factor in the US Air Force's successful defeat of the German Air Force during World War II. |
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An unabridged transcript of the 1960 oral-history interview with James H. Doolittle from which this excerpt was taken. |
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| Expert aviator James H. Doolittle. | |
Question: Mr. Reynolds said the biggest gamble of your career was on the high-octane business, with Shell. Do you agree? |
James H. Doolittle: That was perhaps the biggest commercial gamble, but there are various types of gambles. I don't think that any commercial gamble can be as great as a gamble with your life, and I don't believe that any gamble with your life can be as great as a gamble with your good name. As far as a commercial gamble was concerned, yes, that was a gamble, because I believed that there was a future for 100-octane fuel, but there were then no engines to use it, and it was like the hen and the egg: Which came first? |
If you waited for engines to be developed for 100-octane fuel, they'd never be developed, because there'd be no fuel for them. So I felt that we had to go ahead with the fuel and make the fuel available, and when the fuel was available at a reasonable price I felt that there would be enough engines developed that required it so that it would be a profitable venture. This turned out to be true, but it was a gamble. However, a commercial gamble is the least of all gambles. |
Q: You felt that the US would get into a war, and a high-octane gas would be necessary? |
Doolittle: At that time, I wasn't sure--I wasn't sure until a month before the war started that there would be a war. I was in Germany a month before the war started, in 1939, and I was sure then that there'd be a Second World War, and I felt sure that we'd get into it. But 100-octane fuel was developed long before that. It was merely that I felt that it would give a tremendous advantage to the US militarily and in our commercial aviation. |
Q: What were your impressions of German aviation when you were over there in '39? |
Doolittle: I was there in '37 and in '39. In '37 I was shown everything they had, and I was tremendously impressed with the strides they had made. In 1939, one of the reasons that I knew war was imminent was that they wouldn't show me anything. |
I went back into the Air Force in 1940. I got out in January '30, went back in July '40. |
Q: Could you tell us about your relationship with Hap Arnold? |
Doolittle: Well, he was my commanding officer in World War I, when I was a second lieutenant and he was a colonel. I have known him since 1918. He is a remarkable character, a truly great man. I knew him when he was in command at March Field here, used to go out to see him occasionally, and that's when I was out of the service. |
When I came back from Germany in 1939, I went directly to Hap Arnold and told him what I had seen. I went to him in 1937 when I came back and reported on what I had seen. He was very interested. I came back to him in 1939 and told him that in my mind war was imminent in Europe and that I didn't see how we could stay out of it; I would therefore like to offer my services, either full-time, part-time, in uniform or out of uniform. |
He said he would like to have me come back full-time in uniform, but it would be a little while before they could do it because as a field-grade officer it was not possible to call me back to extended active duty. It would take an act of Congress to bring that about. That act of Congress was some six months in coming, at which time I was recalled to active duty. |
During the war I worked for him. The first job he gave me after the war started was to go to the Allison plant in Indianapolis. They were not putting out enough engines, and the engines coming out were not very good. I was supposed to participate in straightening that out. Then I went to Detroit to work with the automobile industry while they converted from the manufacture of automobiles to the manufacture of aircraft and engines. General Arnold sent for me, and I came to Washington and was on his staff. |
One of the first jobs he gave me was to prepare for the Tokyo Raid. I went there in December 1941, to Washington, and in January 1942 he  called me in and gave me this chore. I came back, reported to him again, and he was then real busy, did a magnificent job. I still see Bee Arnold, his charming wife, who is up at Sonoma. I think he was one of the truly great men of the war, and, as I say, I knew him from 1918 to the time he died. |
Of course, General Marshall had great confidence in General Arnold and very much turned the aviation side of the war over to General Arnold. He was largely responsible for the excellence of our aviation effort and was the competent aviation right hand of General Marshall. |
Q: The Tokyo Raid is on the record, but could we talk about it from your personal point of view? |
Doolittle: When the idea was first suggested it came, I believe, from Captain Lowe of the Navy. He discussed the idea with Admiral King, Admiral King discussed it with General Arnold, and General Arnold called me in to implement it. So it was not my idea. The implementation required the study of aircraft to determine which aircraft, which airplane was the most suitable for the job; the modification of the aircraft; and the training of the crews. By the time this was half done, I realized that it was to be a carrier operation, and, being a carrier operation, I had a very good idea what it was going to be. |
I then requested permission to lead the flight, telling General Arnold that I knew more about it than anyone else. I had trained the crews and modified the aircraft and I knew more about the people and equipment than anyone else, and I would like to lead it. And he let me lead it. |
Q: What were the crucial moments of the raid? |
Doolittle: Well, the first crucial moment was when our government asked the Russians to permit us to land at Vladivostok. This would have made the flight very easy. It would have shortened the distances, given us a prepared landing field and friendly territory to land on. It would have made the flight very easy. The Russians refused. |
The next decision that had to be made was where we would go in China. We decided to go to the little town of Chu-Cho, which had a prepared flying field. We then asked the Chinese if we could go, and Chiang Kai-shek was not anxious at all to have us go, because he felt there would be reprisals from the Japanese and that China would suffer for that flight. It was decided that we would go anyhow, and as a matter of fact his permission was not asked until the thing had gone so far that it was practically impossible to call it off. |
The flight was made, and when we were ready to land at Chu-Cho we found that the weather was bad. Chu-Cho lay in a little valley between mountains, and the homing device that was supposed to tell us where the field was did not answer. This was the most critical point, I guess, when we found we would all have to either crash-land or jump. |
We found out later that the airplane bringing the homing device and our supplies in and people to run it had crashed and all aboard were killed, and the little homer was lost. So when we arrived that night in bad weather, it was impossible to land at our destination. |
The weather, of course, when we took off, was very rough. None or us had ever taken off from a carrier before. That, however, was good--the fact that the weather was rough--because there was a strong wind blowing, and the only worry we had was that we might have to take off in a dead calm. If so, then it would have been very difficult to get airborne with the very heavy load that we had. So we were delighted to have a rough sea and plenty of wind. |
Each plane had a target, and the target maps were distributed as soon as we put out to sea in the Hornet, and each crew made a very complete study of the target area and all of the terrain in that vicinity so that we could find each target readily, bomb it promptly and get out rapidly. My target was a military plant more or less in Tokyo. Each one of us had our own target. We went in low, dropped our bombs, then stayed on the deck and got out to sea as quickly as we could. After getting out to sea, we turned half right and went to China. |
There was moderate flak, moderate inaccurate flak. The flak was not intense. None of the planes were shot down, though many of them had hits. The fighters chased some of the planes, but none of the planes were shot down by the fighters. In my own case, I saw five fighters converging on me, and there were two little hills. I swung very quickly around the hills, did an S turn, and the fighters turned also but they didn't make the second half of my S, and the last I saw was the fighters going off in the opposite direction, apparently trying to pick me up, not having seen me make the other side of the S turn. So I did not get shot at by fighters, and it was only this one group of fighters that actually formed and were preparing to attack. |
Q: When you reached China and landed, you felt you had not succeeded in your mission? |
Doolittle: I was very distressed. I realized that we had accomplished the first part of our mission, which was to bomb Japan, but I felt very distressed because the second part of our mission was to collect our aircraft and make them available to the CBI people, and I was sure when I got to China that we would all lose our aircraft, because when we got to the coast there was dense fog and we all had to climb up into the fog. |
We had two airplanes that crash-landed right near the coast, in the water. So the likelihood of saving the aircraft was remote or nil. I felt very badly about having lost my entire force of aircraft and having scattered my entire force of men over a considerable area of China. |
Two men were killed in one crew, but the other eight were picked up by Japanese, tried, and three of them were executed, one was starved to death. The other four we got back after the war was over. They were in very bad shape. One of them we couldn't move for six weeks. He just had to be fed until he could get strength enough. He could be moved off his bed, that's all. Another man was killed when he jumped. |
The raid had three advantages, really. The first advantage was to give the people at home a little fillip. The news had all been bad until then. The second advantage of the raid was to cause the Japanese to worry and feel that they were vulnerable; and the third and most useful part of the raid was that it caused a diversion of aircraft and equipment to the defense of the home islands which the Japanese badly needed in the theaters where the war was actually going on. |
The actual damage done was minimal. When you think that we had 16 airplanes with one ton of bombs each--16 tons of bombs--and in the late raids they were dropping 5,000 tons of bombs in one raid, 16 against 5,000 is pretty puny. |
"The Reminiscences of James Harold Doolittle," in the Aviation Project collection of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. Interview by Kenneth W. Leish, 1960 (28 leaves). Copyright 2000 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. |
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