Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

middle of the night. The admiral appeared on the bridge within minutes.
    “Who made that signal?” King barked.
    “I did,” Low answered.
    King exploded, accusing Low of usurping power and undermining his authority. The shocked subordinate escaped to a wing of the bridge, his pride wounded. King cooled down and tried to apologize. “Low,” the admiral began, putting his hand on his shoulder. “Don’t feel too badly about this.”
    But Low turned on his boss.
    “Admiral,” he fired back, “aside from asking for my immediate detachment, there is not one goddamn thing that you can do to me that I can’t take.”
    That bold move had earned King’s respect.
    “What is it, Low?” the admiral asked this January evening.
    Low had what he later described as a “foolish idea,” but given the dark early days of the war felt it was at least worth a mention.
    “I’ve been to the Norfolk yard, as you know sir, to see the progress made on the Hornet ,” the captain began. “At the airfield they have marked out a strip about the size of a carrier deck, and they practice take-offs constantly.”
    “Well,” King replied, baffled by the direction of Low’s comments. “That’s a routine operation for training carrier-based pilots.”
    “If the Army has some plane that could take off in that short distance,” Low continued. “I mean a plane capable of carrying a bomb load, why couldn’t we put a few of them on a carrier and bomb the mainland of Japan? Might even bomb Tokyo.”
    Low waited for the irascible admiral to brush him off—or worse—but to his surprise King leaned back in his chair. This was precisely the bold concept that appealed to the admiral’s desire to go on the offensive. “Low,” King answered, “thatmight be a good idea. Discuss it with Duncan and tell him to report to me.”
    Low phoned Captain Donald Duncan, King’s air operations officer. The forty-five-year-old Michigan native, who still answered to his Naval Academy nickname Wu, had graduated just two years behind Low. A trained naval aviator with a master’s degree from Harvard, Duncan had served as navigator on the carrier Saratoga , as the executive officer of the Pensacola Naval Air Station, and later as commander of the first aircraft carrier escort, Long Island. He was also politically connected. His sister Barbara, before her 1937 death of cancer, was married to Harry Hopkins. “One thing I’ll say about you,” King once told Duncan, “you’re no yes-man.” Duncan would never forget that comment: “I always thought that, coming from Admiral King, was a very great compliment.”
    “This better be important,” Duncan warned Low when the two met that Sunday morning at the Navy Department on Constitution Avenue.
    “How would you like to plan a carrier-based strike against Tokyo?”
    Low had piqued Duncan’s interest.
    “As I see it,” Low explained, “there are two big questions that have to be answered first: Can an Army medium bomber land aboard a carrier? Can a land-based bomber loaded down with bombs, gas, and crew take off from a carrier deck?”
    Duncan considered the questions, explaining that a carrier deck was too short for a bomber to land on. Even if it could, the fragile tail would never handle the shock of the arresting gear. Furthermore, a bomber would not fit in the aircraft elevator, making it impossible to stow the plane below to allow others to land.
    “And my second question?” Low pressed.
    “I’ll have to get back to you.”
    Duncan started right away, drafting a preliminary plan. The main question was what, if any, plane could handle such a mission. Low had initially suggested the bombers might return to the carrier and ditch in the water, though Duncan’s study showed it would be better if the planes could fly on to airfields in China. Since intelligence indicated that Japanese patrol planes flew as far as three hundred miles offshore, America would need a bomber that could launch well