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

outside that range, strike Tokyo, and still have enough fuel to reach the mainland. Duncanreviewed the performance data of various Army planes. The Martin B-26 could cover the distance and carry a large bomb load, but it was questionable whether the bomber could lift off from a carrier’s deck. Likewise, the B-23 could handle the demands of the mission, but the plane’s larger wingspan risked a collision with the carrier’s superstructure and limited how many bombers would fit on deck. Duncan realized that the twin-engine North American B-25 appeared best suited for the mission. Not only would its wings likely clear the island, but with modified fuel tanks the B-25 could handle the range and still carry a large bomb load.
    Duncan next turned to ships. The Pacific Fleet had just four flattops, the Saratoga , Enterprise , Lexington , and Yorktown , the latter reassigned from the Atlantic after the attack on Pearl Harbor. But Duncan had another carrier in mind—the new 19,800-ton Hornet , undergoing shakedown in Virginia. Duncan knew the Hornet would report to the Pacific about the time it would take to finalize such an operation. Low had recommended the use of a single carrier, but Duncan realized the mission would require two. With the cumbersome bombers crowding the Hornet ’s flight deck, a second flattop would have to accompany the task force to provide fighter coverage along with more than a dozen other cruisers, destroyers, and oilers. Lastly, a check of historical data revealed a likely window of favorable weather over Tokyo from mid-April to mid-May.
    When Duncan concluded his preliminary study, he and Low presented the results to King. The aggressive admiral liked what he heard.
    “Go see General Arnold about it, and if he agrees with you, ask him to get in touch with me,” King ordered. “And don’t you two mention this to another soul!”
    The men agreed.
    King then turned to Duncan. “If this plan gets the green light from General Arnold,” he said, “I want you to handle the Navy end of it.”
    GENERAL ARNOLD HAD FOR weeks mulled over the president’s demand that America bomb Japan, struggling to determine how the Army Air Forces might best execute such a bold mission. Few people in the nation could top the airpower expertise of the fifty-five-year-old Arnold, whose trademark grin had long ago earned him the nickname Hap, short for “happy.” A 1907 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy,he had learned to fly from none other than Orville and Wilbur Wright, taking to the skies in a primitive biplane that lacked safety belts and whose sole instrumentation consisted of a simple string that fluttered in the wind to indicate the aircraft’s skid. Only after a bug hit Arnold in the eye one day while landing did pilots adopt the trademark goggles. The six-foot-tall Arnold had completed his aviation course in just ten days in May 1911—his total flight time amounted to less than four hours—to become one of only two qualified pilots in the Army.
    An avid prankster who once rolled cannonballs down a dormitory stairwell at West Point, Arnold was one of aviation’s leading pioneers. He not only earned the distinction of being the first military man to fly more than a mile high, but he was the first pilot to carry the mail and even buzz the nation’s Capitol, a stunt he joked in a letter to his mother prompted lawmakers “to adjourn.” But the two-time recipient of aviation’s prestigious Mackay Trophy nearly suffered tragedy in the fall of 1912 on an experimental flight in Kansas designed to observe artillery fire. Arnold’s plane suddenly spun around, stalled, and dove. Only seconds before his plane would have hit, Arnold pulled the aircraft out of the dive and landed. The near crash so rattled him that he refused to fly. “At the present time,” Arnold wrote to his commanding officer, “my nervous system is in such a condition that I will not get in any machine.” To a fellow flier he was more