Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A twin-engine Mitchell B-25 bomber which saw duty in the Mediterranean during World War II, was on display at the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Airport for three days over the weekend.
The airplane, the result of a 28-year restoration effort after being recovered from dry storage in the Arizona desert, was flown to Lewiston by the Commemorative Air Force for the fourth annual Lewiston Air Fair.
Although the Mitchell B-25 saw service in most World War II battle zones, its most memorial mission credit was the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo over 69 years ago. Led by Jimmy Doolittle, the bombing raid hit Tokyo less than five months after Pearl Harbor.
Sixteen of the bombers were loaded on a carrier and taken across the Pacific. It’s hard to imagine the logistics and flying skills which went into the revenge attack. It’s hard to imagine how the sailors and flight crews managed to accommodate 16 bombers on the cruise across the Pacific and get them all in the air.
Compared to the toll taken over two years later when US Bombers, then B-29s, struck the Japanese Islands, the damage inflicted by the Doolittle Raiders was not extensive. However, it provided a major morale boost for the United States after the losses in the early months of the war at Pearl Harbor, Guam, Wake Island, Singapore, and the Philippines. President Franklin Roosevelt, who pushed his military leaders for a strike mission, called in reporters three days after the April 18, 1942, raid and confirmed unofficial news reports that Tokyo had been bombed by US airplanes, crews flying Mitchell B-25 bombers.
According to James Bradley’s 2003 book “Flyboys,” FDR put a mystical cap on his news conference when he said the bombers took off from Shangri-La, the fictional Himalayan land described in the novel Lost Horizon.
The Doolittle Raid actually launched off the deck of the USS Hornet. The B-25 crews had practiced getting the bombers in the air over short distances during special training at Elgin, Fla.
“This airplane isn’t like the ones flown by Doolittle,” Bill Croutch explained Friday as he welcomed visitors to the B-25 display next to the Stout Flying Service gate at the airport.
The airplane at Lewiston, “Maid in the Shade,” bristled with guns which were used to counter fighter attacks during its bombing missions which were flown out of Corsica.
Doolittle’s B-25s were stripped down. Space and load capacity were used to carry fuel for the mission’s long flight. Most of the guns and ammunition had to be removed. Also, the B-25 on display at Lewiston, like most of the restored World War II bombers, was a later version as engineers made design upgrades during the war.
Todd Joyce of Louisville, Neb., keeper of the official Doolittle Raiders web site, noted in an interview Tuesday just the top turret guns were left on the Doolittle B-25s. His site noted the total fuel payload on the airplanes was 1,141 gallons which included 10 five gallon gas cans that were added during the flight to a tank that had been installed in the lower gun turret. The 1,141 gallons were intended to give the bombers a range of 2,000 miles.
Todd’s father, Richard Joyce, was pilot for the number 10 crew to fly off the Hornet.
Croutch Friday noted the Mitchell B-25s were named after Billy Mitchell, the legendary early advocate of air power. Built by North American, the bomber was the only US warplane to be named after a person.
The mission, which was finally revealed to the flight crews once the Hornet had left San Francisco Bay, was to take off from the Hornet, locate targets in the Tokyo area for an afternoon raid and then fly southwest around Kyushu and land in China.
In 1942 most of the coastal regions of China were in control of the Japanese, so the 16 B-25 crews aimed to land inland at Chuchow, China.
None of the crews actually landed at Chuchow. Most of them crash landed or jumped out of their airplanes during a stormy night over inland China.
An account written by Joyce’s dad noted he spotted the wreckage of his number 10 airplane about a mile from the steep hill where he landed with his parachute in a rain storm in the middle of the night.
Bradley and others explained adverse flying conditions and a sooner-than-planned launch from the deck of the Hornet reduced the chances of the crews even making it to China, let alone locating Chuchow and making a successful landing.
Strong headwinds, which helped provide lift over the wings of the bombers as they roared down the flight deck of the Hornet, also meant precious fuel had to be consumed just getting to Tokyo.
After the raid, Doolittle’s navigator informed him they would run out of fuel 135 miles off the coast of China. However, the crews received a break when the headwinds subsided and were replaced by tailwinds which helped them make up the air miles.
The other factor was the early takeoff which was ordered by Doolittle. The B-25s made the takeoffs 200 miles short of the intended launch zone after they were spotted by Japanese picket boats who were believed to have radioed a warning to Tokyo.
The Hornet needed to get its 16 bomber crews into the air and then make a run for it. It had to get out of the range of Japanese warplanes which were expected to launch in response to reports from the picket boats.
Of the 80 men who took part in the raid, two drowned in a crash landing off the China coast, one died in the bailout of his plane, eight were captured by the Japanese and four of them survived 40 months of captivity. Three were executed. One died of beri beri and malnutrition.
One of the airplanes actually landed, in Russia. At that time, Russia was not officially at war with Japan. They were held captive and eventually made it back to the United States over 13 months after the raid, according to the Doolitte web site.
Few of the people who visited the Mitchell B-25 at Lewiston last weekend were members of the World War II generation. Most were children or grandchildren of the men and women who served.
The advance of time means fewer and fewer visitors with direct knowledge of the roles the restored airplanes had in the war which started over 70 years ago. That’s a concern for the volunteers who restore and show the airplanes around the country.
The Doolittle web site notes five of the 80 raiders survive today. They participated in the 69-year reunion which was in April at Omaha.
Three of them died in 2010.
The site noted 13 of the crewmen who survived the Doolittle raid died later during World War II. Four of them survived after being captured and held as POWs in Germany.
The “Maid in the Shade” B-25, which departed Lewiston for a stop this week in Centralia, is one of 25 of the bombers still around today. Total production of the planes was about 10,000.
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