Tokyo Raid by Gordon Elmer Douglass
My ship, the USS Oklahoma (BB 37) was sunk by Japanese torpedoes during the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th, 1941. I requested to be sent to an aircraft carrier and was given duty on the flag allowance of the USS Enterprise (CV6). This was a super assignment as I was now working with and for Admiral Halsey. The ship had a captain, but also there was Admiral Halsey aboard who was the flag officer and was in command of all of the ships in the task force. Supposedly the flag had its own coding room and radio room. Admiral Halsey however felt that it was more efficient to have us work right with the ship officers and men in the same rooms.
Our task force went out on a few "hunting parties." We would go as close as we could towards a Japanese held Island and launch aircraft then we turned tail and ran leaving the aircraft to bomb the island before returning to the ship. We hit the Marshall-Gilberts on Feb. 1, 1942 and Wake on Feb. 24, 1942 and Marcus on March 4th 1942. These missions were morale builders for the men, because we felt we were taking the fight to the enemy. Yet, we could foresee years before we would be able to get close to Japan.
April 8, 1942 - Our Task Force number changed with each operation that we undertook. As Task Force 16 we departed Pearl Harbor today. With USS Enterprise are cruisers USS Salt Lake City and USS Northampton and destroyers Balch, Benham and Fanning. We sailed northwest and at sea we rendezvoused with another destroyer the Ellet and an oiler the Sabine.
April 13, 1942 - This morning we rendezvoused with task group 16.2 which included the USS Hornet. I was sitting in the wardroom eating a sandwich before going on my coding room assignment when Ensign Horner came in and said to go topside and look off to the port side and I'd be suprised. I ran up and looked. I saw the Hornet and other additions to our task force. With the Hornet were the following ships: the cruisers: Vincennes and Nashville, the destroyers: Gwinne, Grayson, Monssen and Meredith, and the oiler Cimarron. This was the biggest task force I'd ever seen. The Hornet had 16 army B-25 planes to be seen on the flight deck. I wondered what was going on. Scuttlebut was running rampant. After some time I went down to the ward room and could hear loud speakers in other parts of the ship and all of a sudden I could hear a spontaneous cheer from all over the ship. I wondered if the war was over or if we had won a tremedous victory somewhere. Then the speaker came on in the wardroom and as near as I can remember the voice said: "This is Admiral Halsey speaking. As you can see we have rendezvoused with the USS Hornet which has 16 army B-25 airplanes aboard. You may wonder why army planes are aboard a navy aircraft carrier. Well, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle is aboard the Hornet for transportation. As you may know, Colonel Doolittle has received medals and citations from many kings, presidents and heads of states. Some of these medals were given to him by Emporer Hirohito of Japan and Colonel Doolittle wants to return the medals, but since December 7th our mail service has been cut off. (laughter). Colonel Doolittle has attached his medals to the noses of several 1000 pound bombs and is going to drop the medals right into the lap of Hirohito on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. (tremendous cheer).
All the ships officers and men that I knew including myself were enthused and excited to be taking the war to Japan. I have always believed in being agressive in order to win fights and never saw anyone win a fight by being defensive.
We had two observers whom I met aboard, though, who were very pessimistic. The first was a LCDR (Lieutenant Commander) in the reserve, who was also a congressman. Somehow he was able to come to oberve the war under actual combat. I started talking to him regarding the Tokyo raid and he was absolutely terrified. He said that we would all be killed, but if by some miracle he came out alive that he would dedicate his life to the court martial of Admiral Halsey and any other morons who were responsible for this foolhardy venture. He said that we would lose two very valuable aircraft carriers and we couldn't afford to lose them this early in the war. The other observer was an army air captain. He was on the forecastle deck and looked lonesome so I introduced myself and asked him what he thought of the impending attack. He said that of all operations of which he had heard this was the most stupid. Despite my naivety and after much prodding, he complained that the B-25s would get to the end of the flight deck and plunge into the ocean due to lack of speed.
I said, "well you have to figure that the ships speed will be about 30 knots and the ships will be heading into a 30 mile per hour wind and then there is the speed of the airplane." I didn't mention the fact that the planes were held back by brakes to keep them stopped until the props reached the maximum allowed speed. The Captain said that the planes needed a runway six times as long as this flight deck for take off. Further, he said he was an aerodynamics engineer and according to the laws of physics it was impossible for those planes to get airborne. I didn't know enough about flight to argue so I took my leave of him.
When the signal was given for the planes to go I was on the catwalk where I had a bird's eyeview of the bombers takeoffs. One of the planes did go down low toward the ocean, but the others made fine takeoffs. Later, I found out that the low flying plane forgot to put his flaps down. One bomber, after a short run, looked as if it went straight up. The Captain I had spoken to earlier, the alleged expert, spent the rest of the time in his stateroom so that he wouldn't have to anwser a lot of embarrasing qustions about how the planes managed to take off thereby defying the laws of physics.
April 17, 1942 - I'd wondered if we would ever get to Tokyo at all. We'd been being refueled at sea under some terrible weather. I went out to the starboard side of the ship to watch the refueling process. I was certain that the oiler was going to crash right into us, but it finally got into position. We shot a gun like a regular rifle across the oiler's bow, which had connected to it a line. A larger rope was then tied to the small rope and pulled back over to our ship. This line attached the two ships together, but it was allowed to expand and contract because the Enterprise (my ship) would roll to the port and the oiler would roll to the starboard causing them to roll toward each other. It also carried the oil hose. The oil came to us in a large (about 6 inch in diameter) flexible hose. When we had taken on almost all that we needed the hose pulled loose and after a little discusiion it was decided to cease fueling and forego the remainder of the fill up, because an aircraft carrier being oiled is a vulnerable target. In that respect, maybe we were lucky to have bad weather, because it was bad for the enemy to operate in as well. The bad weather also kept our planes abourd ship and this was a blessing to us. (I'm not sure if he meant to see their planes here)
April 18, 1942 - I was standing the midnight watch in the coding room (next door to the radar room). Even the word "radar" was at this time supposedly top secret but I guess everybody knew what radar was by this time. Radar picked up a couple of small craft on their scope. G.Q. (General Quarters) was sounded and as usual the lazy Ensign Lovelace was the first one up to his battle station. He was always lazy, except when he was scared. His eyes were as big as saucers and he was anxiously inquiring, "What is it? What is it? What is it?"
The weather was so murky that Admiral Halsey simply had the task force turn north for a short time and then west again. We evidently evaded the ships. Later in the morning one of our scouting planes (a Douglas Dauntless) spotted a small craft and the pilot knew that he had been seen. Since we were operating under strict radio silence, the dauntless pilot flew over the Enterprise and dropped a beanbag on the flight deck. The beanbag had a message attached which alerted the Enterprise of the sighting. Shortly after this the lookouts on one of our ships spotted a patrol craft about 14,000 yards away. Bull Halsey (everyone on our ship called Admiral Halsey Bull) sent our new little light cruiser the USS Nashville out to sink the patrol craft. The seas were so rough that the little boat was going up and down with the waves and the shells were going over, under and wide of the craft. 924 shells were fired in one and 1/2 hours before the boat got so scared that it just turned bottom side up and died of fright. We heard later that none of the shells hit the boat. (grandpa wrote something addendum here which I can't read).
We had a new marine major on the flag allowance as the Flag Intelligence Officer. He and Admiral Halsey and Commander Dow the Flag Communications Officer were in the passageway by the coding roomand I heard Commander Dow say that the boat was so small that it probably didn't have a radio transmitter aboard. The major however said that boats of that size carry transmitters and that was probably the reason the boat was so far from shore. It was probably a guard ship as well as a fishing vessel.
Halsey kept a course toward Tokyo for about a half hour during which time he sent a visual signal to the Hornet telling General Doolittle that the ships were turning back but he wasn't going to order the launching. Each plane crew would have to volunteer because of the great distance and associated danger. All of Doolittle's crews volunteered and in fact some of the backup crews were upset that they couldn't participate. Sometimes it was difficult to understand how these American fighting men could be so brave. It was similar to the fanaticism of the Japanese, except the Americans were defending the liberty of their fellow man while the Japanese did it for their own glory.
As soon as the B25 bombers took off, we headed east as fast as we could economically travel. Halsey had already earned himself the uncouth adage "Let's haul ass with Halsey." So we were now returning to Pearl. I know that our scouting pilots were happy now, because the Hornet fliers could share scouting assignments with us. Up to the time of launching Doolittle's bombers the Hornet couldn't launch or land planes.
April 19, 1942 - Early morning we are joined by a group of destroyers. This will protect us from submarines which is one of our greatest fears. President Roosevelt had had said that the planes had come from Shangri La. It was hoped that the Japanese would think that the airplanes had come from an island rather than from an aircraft carrier. Later intellignece revealed that the little boat the Nashville fired at sent back the report of our presence so the Japanese were aware of what happened.
This attack on Tokyo was a great morale builder for the navy as the country. I was hoping that we could continue to wage the war against the homeland itself intead of against all the little islands that would take years and years. If we could have enlisted the cooperation of the Soviets we could have won the war by concentrating on Japan instead of all the islands. Actually all of us, the junior officers, felt that we made a big mistake by including Russia in all the agreements. In the dicussions that I took part in almost everyone agreed that Russia was our great real enemy instead of Japan and Germany. One officer prophetically stated that Russia would stand by and back the winner and then take over the winnings for Russia. Back in 1942 and 1943 President Roosevelt was perceived as perhaps our greatest president next to Washington and Lincoln, although, the junior officers saw him as weak and helpless in his dealings with Stalin. I personally saw him as the instigator of the great spending and inflation periods which would plague our country and start us on the road to bankruptcy. As a naval officer though I was expected to follow orders and support him as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces.
One of my assignments as a Communications Watch Officer was to take the decoded messages to all the Staff Flag Officers so that they could read them. I noticed that Admiral Halsey had red blotches on his hands and face and was contantly scratching himself as he read the messages. He appeared very uncomfortable. Not long after we arrived in port he was sent to the Naval Hospital. We were sorry to lose him from the Big E. The gesture of giving the men the choice of accepting the assignment or not was just one of Bull Halsey's qualities of greatness. All of the officers and men that I knew loved and admired him. He was firm but fair and we felt he was concerned about our welfare.
On Nov.15, 1942 the USS Enterprise receivved the Presidential Unit Citation. The Big E was involved in every carrier action in the Pacific Ocean, except for the Battle of Coral Sea.
My ship, the USS Oklahoma (BB 37) was sunk by Japanese torpedoes during the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7th, 1941. I requested to be sent to an aircraft carrier and was given duty on the flag allowance of the USS Enterprise (CV6). This was a super assignment as I was now working with and for Admiral Halsey. The ship had a captain, but also there was Admiral Halsey aboard who was the flag officer and was in command of all of the ships in the task force. Supposedly the flag had its own coding room and radio room. Admiral Halsey however felt that it was more efficient to have us work right with the ship officers and men in the same rooms.
Our task force went out on a few "hunting parties." We would go as close as we could towards a Japanese held Island and launch aircraft then we turned tail and ran leaving the aircraft to bomb the island before returning to the ship. We hit the Marshall-Gilberts on Feb. 1, 1942 and Wake on Feb. 24, 1942 and Marcus on March 4th 1942. These missions were morale builders for the men, because we felt we were taking the fight to the enemy. Yet, we could foresee years before we would be able to get close to Japan.
April 8, 1942 - Our Task Force number changed with each operation that we undertook. As Task Force 16 we departed Pearl Harbor today. With USS Enterprise are cruisers USS Salt Lake City and USS Northampton and destroyers Balch, Benham and Fanning. We sailed northwest and at sea we rendezvoused with another destroyer the Ellet and an oiler the Sabine.
April 13, 1942 - This morning we rendezvoused with task group 16.2 which included the USS Hornet. I was sitting in the wardroom eating a sandwich before going on my coding room assignment when Ensign Horner came in and said to go topside and look off to the port side and I'd be suprised. I ran up and looked. I saw the Hornet and other additions to our task force. With the Hornet were the following ships: the cruisers: Vincennes and Nashville, the destroyers: Gwinne, Grayson, Monssen and Meredith, and the oiler Cimarron. This was the biggest task force I'd ever seen. The Hornet had 16 army B-25 planes to be seen on the flight deck. I wondered what was going on. Scuttlebut was running rampant. After some time I went down to the ward room and could hear loud speakers in other parts of the ship and all of a sudden I could hear a spontaneous cheer from all over the ship. I wondered if the war was over or if we had won a tremedous victory somewhere. Then the speaker came on in the wardroom and as near as I can remember the voice said: "This is Admiral Halsey speaking. As you can see we have rendezvoused with the USS Hornet which has 16 army B-25 airplanes aboard. You may wonder why army planes are aboard a navy aircraft carrier. Well, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle is aboard the Hornet for transportation. As you may know, Colonel Doolittle has received medals and citations from many kings, presidents and heads of states. Some of these medals were given to him by Emporer Hirohito of Japan and Colonel Doolittle wants to return the medals, but since December 7th our mail service has been cut off. (laughter). Colonel Doolittle has attached his medals to the noses of several 1000 pound bombs and is going to drop the medals right into the lap of Hirohito on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. (tremendous cheer).
All the ships officers and men that I knew including myself were enthused and excited to be taking the war to Japan. I have always believed in being agressive in order to win fights and never saw anyone win a fight by being defensive.
We had two observers whom I met aboard, though, who were very pessimistic. The first was a LCDR (Lieutenant Commander) in the reserve, who was also a congressman. Somehow he was able to come to oberve the war under actual combat. I started talking to him regarding the Tokyo raid and he was absolutely terrified. He said that we would all be killed, but if by some miracle he came out alive that he would dedicate his life to the court martial of Admiral Halsey and any other morons who were responsible for this foolhardy venture. He said that we would lose two very valuable aircraft carriers and we couldn't afford to lose them this early in the war. The other observer was an army air captain. He was on the forecastle deck and looked lonesome so I introduced myself and asked him what he thought of the impending attack. He said that of all operations of which he had heard this was the most stupid. Despite my naivety and after much prodding, he complained that the B-25s would get to the end of the flight deck and plunge into the ocean due to lack of speed.
I said, "well you have to figure that the ships speed will be about 30 knots and the ships will be heading into a 30 mile per hour wind and then there is the speed of the airplane." I didn't mention the fact that the planes were held back by brakes to keep them stopped until the props reached the maximum allowed speed. The Captain said that the planes needed a runway six times as long as this flight deck for take off. Further, he said he was an aerodynamics engineer and according to the laws of physics it was impossible for those planes to get airborne. I didn't know enough about flight to argue so I took my leave of him.
When the signal was given for the planes to go I was on the catwalk where I had a bird's eyeview of the bombers takeoffs. One of the planes did go down low toward the ocean, but the others made fine takeoffs. Later, I found out that the low flying plane forgot to put his flaps down. One bomber, after a short run, looked as if it went straight up. The Captain I had spoken to earlier, the alleged expert, spent the rest of the time in his stateroom so that he wouldn't have to anwser a lot of embarrasing qustions about how the planes managed to take off thereby defying the laws of physics.
April 17, 1942 - I'd wondered if we would ever get to Tokyo at all. We'd been being refueled at sea under some terrible weather. I went out to the starboard side of the ship to watch the refueling process. I was certain that the oiler was going to crash right into us, but it finally got into position. We shot a gun like a regular rifle across the oiler's bow, which had connected to it a line. A larger rope was then tied to the small rope and pulled back over to our ship. This line attached the two ships together, but it was allowed to expand and contract because the Enterprise (my ship) would roll to the port and the oiler would roll to the starboard causing them to roll toward each other. It also carried the oil hose. The oil came to us in a large (about 6 inch in diameter) flexible hose. When we had taken on almost all that we needed the hose pulled loose and after a little discusiion it was decided to cease fueling and forego the remainder of the fill up, because an aircraft carrier being oiled is a vulnerable target. In that respect, maybe we were lucky to have bad weather, because it was bad for the enemy to operate in as well. The bad weather also kept our planes abourd ship and this was a blessing to us. (I'm not sure if he meant to see their planes here)
April 18, 1942 - I was standing the midnight watch in the coding room (next door to the radar room). Even the word "radar" was at this time supposedly top secret but I guess everybody knew what radar was by this time. Radar picked up a couple of small craft on their scope. G.Q. (General Quarters) was sounded and as usual the lazy Ensign Lovelace was the first one up to his battle station. He was always lazy, except when he was scared. His eyes were as big as saucers and he was anxiously inquiring, "What is it? What is it? What is it?"
The weather was so murky that Admiral Halsey simply had the task force turn north for a short time and then west again. We evidently evaded the ships. Later in the morning one of our scouting planes (a Douglas Dauntless) spotted a small craft and the pilot knew that he had been seen. Since we were operating under strict radio silence, the dauntless pilot flew over the Enterprise and dropped a beanbag on the flight deck. The beanbag had a message attached which alerted the Enterprise of the sighting. Shortly after this the lookouts on one of our ships spotted a patrol craft about 14,000 yards away. Bull Halsey (everyone on our ship called Admiral Halsey Bull) sent our new little light cruiser the USS Nashville out to sink the patrol craft. The seas were so rough that the little boat was going up and down with the waves and the shells were going over, under and wide of the craft. 924 shells were fired in one and 1/2 hours before the boat got so scared that it just turned bottom side up and died of fright. We heard later that none of the shells hit the boat. (grandpa wrote something addendum here which I can't read).
We had a new marine major on the flag allowance as the Flag Intelligence Officer. He and Admiral Halsey and Commander Dow the Flag Communications Officer were in the passageway by the coding roomand I heard Commander Dow say that the boat was so small that it probably didn't have a radio transmitter aboard. The major however said that boats of that size carry transmitters and that was probably the reason the boat was so far from shore. It was probably a guard ship as well as a fishing vessel.
Halsey kept a course toward Tokyo for about a half hour during which time he sent a visual signal to the Hornet telling General Doolittle that the ships were turning back but he wasn't going to order the launching. Each plane crew would have to volunteer because of the great distance and associated danger. All of Doolittle's crews volunteered and in fact some of the backup crews were upset that they couldn't participate. Sometimes it was difficult to understand how these American fighting men could be so brave. It was similar to the fanaticism of the Japanese, except the Americans were defending the liberty of their fellow man while the Japanese did it for their own glory.
As soon as the B25 bombers took off, we headed east as fast as we could economically travel. Halsey had already earned himself the uncouth adage "Let's haul ass with Halsey." So we were now returning to Pearl. I know that our scouting pilots were happy now, because the Hornet fliers could share scouting assignments with us. Up to the time of launching Doolittle's bombers the Hornet couldn't launch or land planes.
April 19, 1942 - Early morning we are joined by a group of destroyers. This will protect us from submarines which is one of our greatest fears. President Roosevelt had had said that the planes had come from Shangri La. It was hoped that the Japanese would think that the airplanes had come from an island rather than from an aircraft carrier. Later intellignece revealed that the little boat the Nashville fired at sent back the report of our presence so the Japanese were aware of what happened.
This attack on Tokyo was a great morale builder for the navy as the country. I was hoping that we could continue to wage the war against the homeland itself intead of against all the little islands that would take years and years. If we could have enlisted the cooperation of the Soviets we could have won the war by concentrating on Japan instead of all the islands. Actually all of us, the junior officers, felt that we made a big mistake by including Russia in all the agreements. In the dicussions that I took part in almost everyone agreed that Russia was our great real enemy instead of Japan and Germany. One officer prophetically stated that Russia would stand by and back the winner and then take over the winnings for Russia. Back in 1942 and 1943 President Roosevelt was perceived as perhaps our greatest president next to Washington and Lincoln, although, the junior officers saw him as weak and helpless in his dealings with Stalin. I personally saw him as the instigator of the great spending and inflation periods which would plague our country and start us on the road to bankruptcy. As a naval officer though I was expected to follow orders and support him as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces.
One of my assignments as a Communications Watch Officer was to take the decoded messages to all the Staff Flag Officers so that they could read them. I noticed that Admiral Halsey had red blotches on his hands and face and was contantly scratching himself as he read the messages. He appeared very uncomfortable. Not long after we arrived in port he was sent to the Naval Hospital. We were sorry to lose him from the Big E. The gesture of giving the men the choice of accepting the assignment or not was just one of Bull Halsey's qualities of greatness. All of the officers and men that I knew loved and admired him. He was firm but fair and we felt he was concerned about our welfare.
On Nov.15, 1942 the USS Enterprise receivved the Presidential Unit Citation. The Big E was involved in every carrier action in the Pacific Ocean, except for the Battle of Coral Sea.
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