65th Anniversary

[Coronel Cool]

Dezrtfish argued:

Of your strategic goals I see 2 and 3 being viable, but I believe that Number 1 was an unforeseeable circumstance.

I believe all these strategic goals, must have been considered very important. You know all this: At the time of the planning of the Doolittle Raid, the war situation was already immensely grave. The Japanese had made landings and assaults practically everywhere in South East Asia, and the ABDA forces in Dutch East India was severely threatened. Anything that could possibly divert the attention of the Japanese commanders was much needed. The Doolittle raid was a perfect such diversion. At the time of the raid, the Japanese was in firm control of mostly all South East Asia, the Imperial Fleet had already completely destroyed the entire combined fleet of ABDA, and had since moved to the bengal and destroyed a good part of the british fleet in the indian ocean. On April 12 The Imperial Fleet, having lost not a single surface warship, was ready to be moved south towards Australia.

I also think blaming Japanese barbarism on a mission like this is unreasonable.

Yes definitely, and that was of course not my point. My hypothesis addressed the increased Japanese pressure on the chinese front (to destroy airfields useful for long range bombing missions).

I think that most Americans were shocked by the inhumanity that the Japanese considered culturally acceptable.

That is words of wisdom from a fine soldier!  :-)

I also don’t believe that they were necessarily “risking” 33% of the Carrier force.  If that was the case they could have done the job with naval bombers.  I’m sure your aware of the contingency plan to dump the bombers overboard if the carrier was detected.

Yes thanx, I know of the decision to overthrow the planes, but I don’t see how this approach in any way eliminates the risk of losing the carrier. I believe Japanese submarines represented a huge threat to the entire mission. A submarine could very well have detected the action force, and there is a considerable risk that the taskforce could have been completely unaware of such detection.

I don’t think you are taking into account the logistics involved in flying the bombers back to the carrier.  The entire task force was on radio silence.  Not to mention the original plan was to land the B24s in china and not crash them.

Well, I believe they could, with not too big a risk, had broken radio silence at the expected time of return of the bombers. At that time USS Hornet would be protected by CAP - the fighter planes that was originally stored below the flightdeck.

But dezrtfish, what really puzzles me is the question: Why exactly China? Why not Russia? (I know of “Guests at the Kremlin” but that plane headed to Russia on emergency only because of lack of fuel). It is a fact that the distance from Japan to Russia is HALF AS LONG as the distance to national China. This means that USS Hornet could have released the planes much earlier if Russia had been the destination. Also the choice of China as destination, severely endangered the life of many crew members (several was killed by the Japanese). Thus China is in no way the logical choice, considering the threat to the carrier and the safety of the crew. So why exactly China? I have never found any acceptable answer to this question.

To gain some better insight try Col. Doolittle’s after action report, it’s a bit lengthy, but it’s strait from the horse’s mouth so to speak.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/rep/Doolittle/Report.html

Ctrl + c !!!
Yes ! I found and studied this Doolittle action report some years ago on the Internet, but for some reason I failed to save it and had even forgot all about it. Thanx Dezrtfish, you are god damn serious!

[Coronel Cool]

balungaloaf also had some comments:

most of their army in the beginning of the war was in china anyways.  we didnt make more japs go to china.  just made the troops their do more action to get rid of bomber bases.  which they could never do.

Let’s take a serious look at this detail. US high command was very much aware of the rivalry between the Japanese fleet and army, and of the Japanese armys reluctance to spread their forces all around the South East Asia. But the Japanese army were under heavy pressure from the navy and Tojo to do just that. All the army needed to follow their own goals was a good excuse to stay in China. Soon after the Doolittle raid the Japanese Army informed Tojo and the Navy that there was no army forces available for large operations in the south (fx. for an invasion of Australia).

The allies must presumably have been aware of all this, since to this very day UK and US insist that there was never a genuine threat to Australia (any sort of possible invasion). This is however a much controversial claim, highly disputed by many Australians who believe this claim in fact is a thin pretext for Mr. Churchill’s “Germany First Strategy”, and his explicit refusal to support Australia.

why would you want the pilots to risk their lives in a very dangerous landing on a carrier.  it might not be impossible, but near impossible. like a 1% chance of actually belly crashing onto the deck and keeping it on there.

Please read my posts more accurately, I pointed out that  “……If they could make bellylanding in China they could just as well have made bellylanding close to CV-8.” (USS Hornet)

its way easier to go to china.

As I believe to have demonstrated in my reply to dezrtfish: This is really not true. At least Russia would have been a much easier and very much safer destination.

i’m gonna have to say guys, once again, some people just try to blame america for everything.  its infused in their brain, its how their synapses work.  you know what i call these people, the L word, which i wont take out of the political forum.  but seriously, its fun to watch their brains in action.  so what else is our fault in WWII.

Right…here we go…   :-P

[dezrtfish]

@Colonel:

Well, I believe they could, with not too big a risk, had broken radio silence at the expected time of return of the bombers. At that time USS Hornet would be protected by CAP - the fighter planes that was originally stored below the flightdeck.

Your talking about launching from a Carrier flying 12 to 14 hours round trip and expecting the carrier to be waiting right where it was planned.  What if the fleet ran into a patrol and had to change position.  There would be 0% chance of the pilots surviving that plan with just one minor snafu.

@Colonel:

But dezrtfish, what really puzzles me is the question: Why exactly China? Why not Russia? (I know of “Guests at the Kremlin” but that plane headed to Russia on emergency only because of lack of fuel). It is a fact that the distance from Japan to Russia is HALF AS LONG as the distance to national China. This means that USS Hornet could have released the planes much earlier if Russia had been the destination. Also the choice of China as destination, severely endangered the life of many crew members (several was killed by the Japanese). Thus China is in no way the logical choice, considering the threat to the carrier and the safety of the crew. So why exactly China? I have never found any acceptable answer to this question.

USSR wasn’t a very cooperative ally at the time.  The US couldn’t spend a lot of time negotiating for safe passage.  In Doolittle AAR he mentions his hope to make a deal and the fact that it did not come to fruition.

[Crazy Ivan]

:-o
  The Doolittle raid did two very important things; first and foremost it proved to the American people ,(and the world ) that we were not completely destroyed in the Pacific, as rumors wanted people to believe. This aleviated the defeatest attitude that was stifulling production at the time.
Secondly, it did cause the Japanese to change direction in there conquest plans and pulled their resources towards American forces and away from India and Australia, buying them precious time to build up, and deny them those important territories.
As far as the attrocities committed by the troops in China and other conqured territories is concerned, had little to do with our or anybody elses military operations. No,They did it to cower the populations to obay the Japanese edicts and as reprisals for Partisan attacks on their troops. Much the same way as the Nazis’ did in France, the Balkans, the Low Countries and in Russia.
  Crazy Ivan  :roll:

[Guest]

I am not sure what planet Col. Cool lives on, but I suspect that it is not the same as the one that I am one.  Or he is trying to see how much trouble he can stir up with a big load of disinformation.

I have done a lot of research at the US National Archives, with part of that time going through the files of the intercepts of Japanese naval messages.  The Japanese knew perfectly well that those planes came off of a carrier, and were frantically trying to get something into position to intercept the US carrier force.  What was a surprise to them was that we were able to get B-25 medium bombers off of a carrier to begin with.  As for landing back on the Hornet, the B-25 had no arrester gear fitted, nor could the landing gear have handled a carrier landing.  As for ditching near the Hornet, that pretty much would have been a death sentence for the plane’s crews, except that given that the Hornet was supposed to head back to Pearl as soon as the planes launched, and they launched about 400 miles further out than planned, the bombers would have been very hard pressed even to get back to the launch position, much less fly even further.

The Japanese Army was already extremely heavily involved in China, and had been since mid-1937, not counting the takeover of Manchuria in 1931.  The whole purpose of the attack to the south was to seize the Netherland East Indies for its oil to support the Chinese war following the cutoff of US oil shipments in July of 1941.  As for the Doolittle Raid increasing Japanese control of China, it did lead to the Japanese taking over those areas where the B-25s that make it to China crashlanded or where the crews bailed out. As for Jermofoot’s inane comment about “supposedly the Japanese made an attack on China for helping the US, killing 250,000 civilians in reprisal.”, there is no supposedly about it.  The Tokyo War Crime trials put the death toll at about 500,000, and that is probably a conservative estimate.  I also notice that Col. Cool does not mention that several of the flyers captured by the Japanese were executed for daring to bomb Japan.  Also, Col. Cool, one plane did land in Russia, with the crew being interned for the duration of the war, and the plane being used by the Russians.  Since the last thing the Russians wanted was a war with Japan, there was no way that they would have let the aircraft land in Russia.

Chiang and Claire Chennault, commander of the US air forces in China, knew that the planes were coming, but the early launch meant that the bombers were also early, and flying at night rather than day as the Chinese Air Warning Net expected.  There was no way for the Hornet carrier group to inform China of the early launch, as they were operating under radio silence.

With respect to a Japanese threat to Australia, tell you what Col. Cool, you spell out in detail, with authors and book titles, the Americans and British who claim that there was no threat to Australia.  Darwin, Australia was being raided on a fairly regular basis by Japanese bombers flying from Indonesia, Port Moresby on the southern coast of New Guinea was the objective of the Japanese task force that turned back as a result of the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Japanese force that advanced over the Owen Stanley Mountains to within a few miles of it.  Milne Bay, on the eastern tip of New Guinea was subject to an amphibious attack by the Japanese, which was defeated by the Australian troops in the area.  The purpose of the air field at Guadalcanal was to support a further move south to New Caledonia in an effort to cut the supply lines to Australia from the US.

Names, Col. Cool, I want names and sources for your claims.  Either give your sources, or stop your posting.

[Yemble]

Yes they could have made a belly landing on the hornet, however are you willing to risk 2 of the 3 carriers we had in the pacific to retrieve 16 medium bombers?  16 B-25’s would not even constitute a fighter in axis and allies, while two carriers would certainly correspond with a carrier in the real game.  Which unit would be more important to you in a game of axis and allies assuming you play.  So no, I do not believe it was foolish, the leadership played it safe.  Both carriers used would play vital roles in the years to come.  If lost would Japan have been stopped at Coral Sea or reduced at Midway.

[balungaloaf]

those bombers could have landed?  news to me.  b/c they couldnt of.  how exactly would you slow down such a huge frame to be able to stop on the carrier.  even belly landing wouldnt do it.

they had no hook to latch on, and that wouldnt work anyways b/c the bomber is too heavy.

belly landing is also dangerous, especially on a carrier.

so how again would it be possible to have the planes land on the carriers.

[Jermofoot]

I don’t know, if those heavy bombers could take off on the short runway, I’d think that they could land somehow if fuel permitted it.  They would be lighter coming back with less fuel (or none, perhaps) and no bombs.

[Guest]

Clearance was the issue.  They had a few INCHES clearance between the wing tips and the superstructure of the Carrier.  There is NO WAY to by that accurate on landing.

Also, taking off from an AC (pre-steam catapult) is very different from landing.  Before the steam catapult, you had to “turn into the wind” and the Carrier ran anywhere from full to flank speed INTO the wind, then the aircraft ran at maximum RPM’s on the engine and the wheel chocks were pulled once they were at full power.

This gave the aircraft the maximum benefit for air flow over the wings for lift (wind speed plus carrier speed plus aircraft speed).  At a dead stop in no wind, WWII FIGs would have simply rolled off the end of the flight deck and gone into the sea.

There is no reverse of that force additive for landing, except a tail hook, which the B-25 was not designed to have (if retro fitted with them, they would have ripped the tail off the aircraft), even if by some miracle 16 crews could have all managed to land more perfectly than an FA-18 with modern avionics.

Lastly, Doolittle’s Raid had to launch earlier than planned due to being spotted by an enemy patrol.  The extra 200 miles of flight time is what doomed the mission, otherwise there actually WAS a reasonable chance for them to reach a safe base in China.

BTW:  An interesting tid-bit (at least to a former Zoomie like me).  The B-25 was named after Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchel who in the 1920’s fought for an increase in US airpower, proved that aircraft could reliably be used to attack naval vessels, and created the concept of Strategic Bombing.  He is a hero of the United States Air Force, and the Cadet Dining Hall at the United States Air Force Academy is named after him.

[Jermofoot]

It’s not so much that the planes we worth retrieving, but the crews themselves.  The planes were mainly skeletons anyway…
Either way, it’s a moot point if getting near the carrier again was impossible.

BG Mitchel…was he the one that bombed two antiquated battleships off the Carolinas to show the potential of airpower?

[Yemble]

yeah,he bombed to german ships confiscated from WW1…one was a battleship one a battle cruiser i think.