Four-Star General Doolittle
Trained to Fly on North Island
By Toni McGowan
The Japanese people had been told they were invulnerable. Proof of this was the fact that Japan had been saved from invasion during the fifteenth century when a massive Chinese fleet set sail to attack Japan and was destroyed by a monsoon. From then on, the Japanese people had firmly believed they were forever protected by a “divine wind”—the kamikaze.
“The Doolittle Raid” was directed at this notion. The strategy was psychological. And Army Lt. Colonel James Doolittle knew it. His actions would earn him the nation’s highest award, the Medal of Honor and the Medal of Freedom.
James Doolittle was born December 14, 1896 in Alameda, California, and was raised in Alaska and Los Angeles. His father was born during the Civil War in New England. A carpenter by trade, he was frustrated, and caught a case of Alaska gold fever that kept him forever chasing the next vein. His mother found raising children in Alaska difficult. When it appeared her husband’s fever was never going to pass, she returned to California with her only child.
As a child, James Doolittle was small and the target of bullying. By his teens, James was a “chunky, rugged, 5 feet 6 inch tall street fighter turned boxer.” In 1910, when he was 14, Doolittle’s school attended the first air show west of the Mississippi, featuring Glenn Curtiss, the “no nonsense motorcycle builder turned airplane” manufacturer. This would spark young James’ interest during a radical time in flight development. Glenn Curtiss Flying School would open on North Island one year later, birthing Naval Aviation.
Doolittle soon “built his own unsuccessful man-sized glider from plans printed in Popular Mechanics.” After his glider was “damaged beyond repair,” he went back to boxing, and earning money under the name of Jimmy Pierce.
His junior year of high school Doolittle met his future wife, Joe, who would not date him if he kept fighting. So he went to Alaska for one year to work with his father, returning as a stow-a-way on a transport ship without a penny in his pocket. He revisited boxing and lost by decision, which turned out to be a good thing because he realized that he needed to get an education.
While studying engineering at University of California at Berkeley, Doolittle suddenly took a leave of absence and enlisted in the Signal Corps at Rockwell Field and began flight training on North Island in October 1917, near the end of WWI. By December, he and Joe were married. Their union would last over 70 years.
A typical day for Doolittle on North Island was bustling with 50 Thomas Morse scouts and Curtiss Jenny’s stacked up in front of multiple hangers at Rockwell Field, with young female visitors dressed up to pose with the pilots and their planes. The flavor would have been festive, if not for the high number of crashes by flying cadets.
“Doolittle’s first flight introduced him to the tremendous hazards of early flying. Two ‘Jennies’ collided over the airfield just as Charles Todd, Jimmy’s instructor pilot (IP), taxied their JN-4 to the takeoff zone. Todd shut down the engine, and even before Jimmy had flown his first military flight, he and Todd were pulling dead and injured airmen from a burning heap.” Then the two completed their intended flight. Jimmy Doolittle wrote about that first flight, saying, “My love of flying began on that day during that hour.”
Doolittle soloed over North Island after just seven hours of training. Then he went on to learn air “acrobatics; loops, rolls, spins, and recoveries; close formation flying; and navigation.” Less than half of those that began flight training completed it. In March 1918, just three months into his marriage, Doolittle was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps. An early assignment was as Border Patrol along the Mexico border.
Doolittle would return to North Island in 1922 after “he made the first transcontinental flight from Pablo Beach, Florida,” a total of 2,163 miles in 21 hours and 19 minutes. Doolittle established numerous firsts and records, including the Schneider and the Bendix in 1931.
Doolittle was recalled to active duty to train volunteer flight crews for a carrier-launched raid on Japan that he personally led. On April 18, 1942, his plane crash-landed in China. “Of the 75 fliers that crashed in China, three died accidentally, eight were captured” by Japanese and three of those were executed as criminals. The Soviet Union detained one five man crew.
Thereafter, Doolittle was promoted to Brigadier General, skipping the rank of colonel. After continued service in England, North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Pacific and Europe, he left active duty in January of 1945. In 1985, Congress promoted Doolittle to full General.
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