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Royden
Stork, Doolittle Raid
Excerpted from interviews
taken for the National Geographic program, Pearl Harbor: Legacy of Attack, on
the National Geographic Channel.
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Photo: Courtesy of
Royden Stork
| We...
had 16 crews that were assigned to the raid. And we had five reserve crews. And,
we moved down to Egland Field, and we were operating off of one of the auxiliary
fields down there, for all the short take off work. And... that's the way we prepared...we
were dragging [planes off] about 550, six hundred feet. And of course this got
us to thinking about short take off a carrier - No, that couldn't be. Because...we'd
never get a B-25 off the deck of a carrier… But it finally became true...we
got on the carrier, and we took off..
... after we headed out the, out
of the Golden Gate, and headed toward Japan… we knew ... speculated pretty
correct that it was going to be Japan. Especially after Pearl Harbor, and what
they did there. Nothing
was definite until the... second day out on the carrier. And ...that's when we
started having all our meetings, and then we'd have a drill every day, just like
we were going to take off …People have asked, “Well weren't you scared...What's
your reaction?” I said well, actually there was no reaction, because we had
been processed and drilled so thoroughly of just exactly what to do... the fact
of taking off in the morning was to our benefit. Because we didn't have the time
to sit around all afternoon and think about it. Most of us were in the mess hall...when
we got the notice... we didn't think much about it until we were airborne, and
we said, “My God, we did it, we did it.” You know. So, that really helped.
For... the matter of fright and everything else, that would set in. But it really
worked fine. ...And
I think back a lot of times, and the way that B-25 jumped into the air...before
they reached the end of the carrier. It was truly amazing. We were number ten
to take off, and Doolittle started down the runway, and the next thing I knew,
he had popped right up in the air. Well,
we were all... holding our breath, and believe me, doing a Hail Mary, because
if he did it, we knew damn well we could do it. And... when he jumped off the
carrier like that, I knew... we had it made then, because boy, oh boy….It
worked ... it was really something…Boy, was that a good feeling. ...the
navigator brought us in right on target, and we pulled up to about 18 hundred
feet, squared away on our target...a big chemical factory...
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| And
our assignment was to fly 50 miles back out to sea, and parallel the Japanese
mainland, and go south, and at the southern tip of the Japanese mainland, fly
west. But... we used quite a bit of extra gas. And, as we turned west across the
Yellow Sea, the navigator called in, and said, “I think we're going to have
to ditch, about 25 miles off the coast, because, we're getting pretty slim on
the gas ... gasoline.” [He] called back about 20 minutes later, and he said,
“Good news, we've picked up a 20 mile an hour ... 22 mile an hour tail wind,”
and that's the only reason on God's green earth we were able to get our planes
in over China... we were lucky, our crew was absolutely lucky, because we got
about 70 [miles] inland before we had to bail out, running out of gas... The two
crews that were captured only got about ten, 12 miles. I
just consider myself as a lucky guy, that I ... got through it, and I did the
best I could. There were plenty of ... fellows I graduated with from flying school
that ended up in the major league in England, where ... they'd send out a hundred
B-17s, and they'd only get 30 back… I think that those guys are just as much
a hero. I mean... we were lucky, because, this one particular raid became a success.
And ... no, I'm not a hero. I just did the best I possibly could. And [I was]
lucky to get through it...
More Pearl Harbor and
World War II Stories
Excerpted from interviews
taken for the National Geographic program, Pearl Harbor: Legacy of Attack, on
the National Geographic Channel.
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