75th anniversary of Doolittle Raid - April 18

I hope that you enjoy it. It is just a collection of memories that I have of being around for so long. Recently I mentioned some of the people that I have met over the years to several of my friends and again, "You should write a book about this." Since it was a part of being around at the right time or being mixed up in things that drew me into situations where I met people, I have never given it much thought . But one sample has given me some ideas that maybe it would be fun to write about certain associations that were more than run of the mill incidents. That sample could be a portly guy with whom I became friends at a small airport south of Seattle. We flew his old biplane occasionally and learned the story behind the P-38 that he kept in the hangar. He shot down 5 FW-190's in less than 10 minutes . Big deal, yes! But many years later reading about his fight that day it turned out to be the biggest aerial fighter to fighter dogfight in history with over 75 airplanes engaged. I worked with Paul Mantz for over a month when they were shooting a movie at the airport where I worked and heard many stories about Amelia Earhart. Also met and swam with Esther Williams on weekends at the pool at Lido Beach casino Longboat Key, she was the star in the film. Just memories of things that happened and no big deal to me but too many people have said, "Write this stuff down." So, here I go again and I hope that I finish some of it before I'm finished.

 

It's going to take a week or two to get here, mail from the States to Canada is still pony express it seems. Stories like that one are exactly why I'm looking forward to the read.

 

Here are a couple of iphone videos of the flyovers if anyone is interested.

https://youtu.be/41bzgEFck5E

https://youtu.be/brIJ5NDxeW0

https://youtu.be/DJPbvVLCinA

 

Mrs Doolittle used to come to my mother's Officer's Wives' Club meetings at March AFB (Riverside, CA) in the early 70s. A real lady according to my mother. Dad met Gen Doolittle several times while at March. A giant in a tiny body.

 

My college roommate was Scott Glover of Mid America Flight Museum. Amazing dedication and great guy. His FB page has some fantastic videos of his B-25, God and Country.
https://www.facebook.com/midamericaflightmuseum/

https://vimeo.com/215361827

 

Got to see a couple of B25's today at the Chino Air Show.
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And a reminder that today, May 8, is V-E Day...

 

I remember that about 15 or so years ago, 4 or 5 B-25's took off from the Constellation (CV-64).

They were filming the movie "Pearl Harbor".

Vintage B-25s.
They were light, carrying no bomb load, heavy fuel, etc.

Assumed they were CGI or ???? and checked. Was the real deal.

 

I have refrained from mentioning that I have been asked to prepare a painting of the take off of Doolittle's plane, showing his co-pilot, Richard Cole in his position in the right seat. I can't show much of Cole but the stage is all set and paint is starting to fly. If the work is acceptable it will be shown at Sky Ball, a celebration presented by the Air Foundation in DFW, on Nov. 11th. I hope to do two pencil portraits of Cole and Doolittle to book-end the painting. Scrambling.

 

T- They definitely had a bomb load. Instead of the Norton carried on normal B-25s, there was a very simple linear bomb sight.

 

Oops, sorry, Taz, I wasn't clear... I was still only talking about the B-25's that took off from the deck of the Connie in 2001, during the filming of the movie "Pearl Harbor".

They were vintage B-25's from museums and collections that were used in the movie.

You could see the Connie's steam catapults in the movie, but the Hornet had no such thing.


Yes, in the original raid, the Norden bombsights were removed because they were heavy, and we did not want them to fall into the hands of the Japanese.

 

We're sure the work will be MORE than acceptable, Bob.

 

I read somewhere that the Norden bomb sight was deemed so top-secret that they removed them from the Doolittle planes to avoid capture of the technology by the Japanese. Also, that they were not effective at low levels. Not sure which, if either, is the true reason...T

replacement


Norden.

 

Probably both. They were considered our Wunder Weapon allowing precision high altitude bombing correcting for wind drift etc. Not really needed and possibly harder to employ at 2000 feet. We put a very high value on the security of the technology.

 

Norton? Must have been late when I wrote that. The Norden bombsight was a drift correcting, automatic ballistic, autopilot connected bombsight that unfortunately could not correct for differential ballistic winds very well. Same problem the B-52s had in Iraq. Wind profile varies with altitude and can introduce large errors into the bomb solution. Because the winds tended to be higher at altitude, the sight overcompensated and the bombs tended to hit upwind of the aimpoint. From 45,000', errors up to 1500' were introduced, and the ones in Europe from the 20s to the 30s would have been slightly less. B-17s had the same problem in the Pacific trying to hit ships. Between the ship maneuvering and the ballistic wind errors, they did not do too well from high altitude, staying out of AAA range. The Norden users manuals and maintenance manuals are available online.

 

Here we go again, learning all kinds of stuff from the members of this forum! I never really understood why the B-17's missed the ships that they were attempting to bomb but Taz answered that one. I posted it before about my friend who was flight engineer on "Dauntless Dottie", lead B-29 on the first raid on Tokyo. Due to several layers of windshear, unknown to them at the time, My friend said that every one of their bombs ended up in Tokyo Bay.

 

Bob- Affirmative, that was the first time the AAF really dealt with the jet stream because of the high altitudes the B-29s initially flew. Differential ballistic winds really caused some big errors. LeMay eventually went to low altitude bombing when the threat deteriorated enough to allow it. They could actually hit something doing that.

We built and tested a LIDAR that could see aerosols in the entire wind column from flight altitude to the surface and that was the first thing that could completely solve that problem. It was tested on the B-52 and the AC-130Q, the latter to give it a precision first shot capability. Neither made it into service, the B-52 because of PGMs and the AC-130Q because it cost too much (~$1M per tail).