What Happened to the Doolittle Raiders After China?

Eighty Army Airmen formed the sixteen crews known as the Doolittle Raiders who bombed the Japanese homeland in April of 1942. Many consider this operation to be a turning point in WWII because it boosted the morale of the allies and humbled the Japanese at a time when they had seemed invincible.

After bombing Japan, three of the Raiders died during crash landings and bailouts in China, eight were captured by the Japanese (three were put to death and one died of starvation), five landed in the Soviet Union and were interned until they escaped through the Middle East one year later, and the rest were assisted inland by the Chinese.

So what happened to these airmen after their infamous raid and escape from China?

Crew Members of the Ruptured Duck

Pilot Ted Lawson who was severally injured during the crash landing of the Ruptured Duck survived after Doc White of Plane 15 amputated his leg at a remote missionary hospital in China. The Chinese escorted White and Lawson and his other injured crew members to safety, often just ahead of the Japanese pursuing them. Lawson was flown to the United States where surgeons at Walter Reed rebuilt his jaw and performed additional surgery on his leg.

One year later Lawson published Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a book about the Doolittle Raid and his experiences in China. A Hollywood movie by the same name was produced and released by MGM in 1944. The black-and-white movie was a hit and won an Oscar and is still available for purchase today. Lawson died at the age of 75.

When MGM needed a stunt pilot for the movie A Guy Named Joe, the army sent former co-pilot Col. Dean Davenport. Davenport also served as technical adviser during the filming of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. He completed his WWII service in Alaska and lived to the age of 81. 

Lt.Charles McClure convalesced with Ted Lawson at Walter Reed Hospital and was hospitalized until June of 1943. He became a navigator instructor but retired with a physical disability in June of 1945. He lived to be 82.

Lt. Bob Clever recovered from his head and face injuries from the Ruptured Duck’s crash landing, but was killed on November 20, 1942, the day his flight group departed from Fort Wayne, Indiana. His “airplane spun out climbing up through the clouds.” He was 28. 

Sgt. David Thatcher, only 20-years old when he served as gunner on the Ruptured Duck, was the only crew member able to walk after the crash landing. He kept his fellow crewmates alive by tending to their injuries and collecting and giving them rainwater. He was the only Doolittle enlisted man to receive the Silver Star for his gallantry and courage. Thatcher was sent to North Africa and Europe and survived 26 bombing mission. He contracted hepatitis and malaria with ended his military career. He died in 2016 at the age of 94.

Crew Members of the Hari Kari-er

The crew members of the Hari Kari-er bailed out in Japanese controlled territory eighty miles from the coast. Thanks to the help of the Chinese, they each made it safely out of China.

In early June of 1942, Pilot Ross Greening flew back to the states on the same plane with the 

Ruptured Duck wounded airmen. Along with many other Raiders he was sent to North Africa later that year, and he was based in Marrakech, Morocco. By July of 1943 he had completed 125 hours of combat, and on July 17th, he took part in a five-hundred-craft run on the Naples, Italy, shipyards. 

Greening’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, the cockpit crashed open, and pieces of the plane fell off. The fuselage ripped apart, the plane burst into flames and the men ran to the bomb bay to bail out. The plane was thrown sideways by another burst, and the men were tossed out. Greening floated into the line of fire and “yanked his cords in every direction to” get away. He landed in the smoking crater of Mount Vesuvius and was knocked unconscious. He woke up with his hip out of joint, and the Nazis popped it back in place before carrying him out of the volcano piggyback. Despite his many injuries, he was forced to crawl from a truck to the inside of a jail while an Italian mob spat and threw stones at him.

After Italy surrendered on September 8, 1943, the Wehrmacht loaded the POWs from Greening’s prison on a northbound train. The Allies attacked the train and Greening “was blown out of the carriage by a direct hit, and in the chaos he took off.” He wandered in the mountains for a few days and then hid on a train until he reached Verona. An Italian family who had lived in the U.S. for many years aided him until it became too dangerous.

Greening hid in a cave near Venice with two escaped POWs from New Zealand until a German patrol searching for partisans found them by accident. He spent the rest of the war at Stalag Luft I, 125 miles north of Berlin where 9000 POW aviators were held. Greening “gave the prisoners art lessons and taught them to make their own supplies.” He became commanding officer, and “when the Red Army finally liberated the camp in 1945, the Nazi prison chief surrendered to Greening to spare himself the Soviets’ known brutality.”    

Greening’s former co-pilot Ken Reddy died in an airplane accident near Little Rock, Arkansas on September 3, 1942, at the age of 22. The three other Hari Kari-er crew members were assigned to the China-India-Burma Theater. 

Lt. Kappeler and Sergeant Gardner were sent on a mission from India to bomb Burma and then land in Kunming, China. After they dropped their bombs, “they were immediately attacked by Japanese planes and ducked into the clouds to evade but weren’t familiar with the area’s mountainous terrain.” They tried to cross the hump (the Himalayas) at too low an altitude, and only Lt. Kappeler’s plane, out of the six, made it to China. Sgt. Gardner was killed in action on June 3, 1942 at the age of 22.

Lt. Kappeler survived to fly fifty-three combat missions out of England, France, and Belgium and died in 2010 at the age of 96. After the Doolittle Raid, Bombardier 

Second Lt. Bill Birch was sent state-side and participated in War-Bond-selling drives and completed flight training in Texas. As a result of an airplane accident, he spent almost two years in a hospital and didn’t have an opportunity to fly again before the war ended. 

After dropping their bombs, all the crews made it safely out of Japan but encountered numerous difficulties later. 

• 3 Raiders died in crash landings and bailouts over China
• 8 Raiders were captured by the Japanese – 3 went before a firing squad and 1 starved to death
• 5 Raiders landed in the Soviet Union and were interned – they escaped through the Middle East one year later
• 64 Raiders were assisted to safety in Free China by Chinese soldiers and civilians

So what happened to the Raiders after they escaped from China?

Plane #1 – Piloted by Jimmy Doolittle

After spending the summer of 1942 traveling the U.S. on war bond drives, Jimmy Doolittle was appointed commanding general over the 12th Air Force in North Africa under General Eisenhower. In March 1943, Doolittle became commanding general of the North African Strategic Air Forces. On the one-year anniversary of the Tokyo Raid, Doolittle and the other Raiders also serving in North Africa held the first Doolittle Raider reunion.

The Japanese notified the U.S. that the eight captured Raiders had been sentenced to death, but some lives had been spared. They refused give names. When the American military released this information, Jimmy Doolittle replied from North Africa that he and his Raiders were ready to go back to Japan and finish the job they had started. The Japanese responded in a radio address from Tokyo. They stated that “Doolittle, commander of the raid on Japan one year ago, failed to do anything, so we have the pleasure of offering him the title of “Did-little'” (The First Heroes). 

After pushing the Germans out of Africa, Doolittle went on to command the 15th Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater and the 8th Air Force in Europe and the Pacific. He ended the war as a lieutenant general and reverted to inactive reserve status in May of 1946. He returned to Shell Oil and served as vice president and later director. In 1985, the U.S. Congress promoted Doolittle to full general on the Air Force retired list, and he became the first four-star general in Air Force Reserve history.

Doolittle was married to Josephine, “Joe,” for seventy years, and he lived to the age of 96.

After Doolittle’s crew members bailed out over China and located each other on the ground, Doolittle and his gunner, Paul Leonard, visited their destroyed plane at its crash site on a mountainside. Doolittle sat beside his plane and wondered about the fate of the other 75 men and their aircraft. He “felt lower than a frog’s posterior.” This was his first combat mission, and he was sure it would be his last. He told Leonard he expected to be court-martialed and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. At the very least, he “would sit out the war flying a desk.” Leonard disagreed and predicted that Doolittle would be promoted to general, be given a new plane, and receive the Medal of Honor. Leonard was correct on all three counts (The First Heroes).

Leonard was so impressed with Doolittle that he asked to fly as Doolittle’s crew chief on his next mission. Doolittle agreed, and Leonard went with him to North Africa. When Doolittle was called away from the airfield for a meeting with the ground commanders at Youks-les-Bains, Algeria, he left Leonard to look after their airplane. The Germans bombed the airfield that night, and Leonard manned the top turret machine gun until the batteries ran out. He then took refuge in a nearby bomb crater, but a bomb meant for the plane landed in the bomb crater. When Doolittle returned to the field, he only found Leonard’s left hand with his wristwatch still in place. Doolittle stated that losing Leonard was his greatest personal tragedy of the war.

Dick Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot, served in the China-Burma-India Theater and then became a test pilot with the Douglas Aircraft Plant for the remainder of the war. He served in the military for twenty-six years, rated as a command pilot, and retired as a colonel. Cole was the last living Doolittle Raider. He died on April 9, 2019, at 103 years of age.

Hank Potter, Doolittle’s navigator, served stateside after the Tokyo Raid and later in Germany in the 1950’s. He earned the rank of colonel and lived to be 83.

Fred Braemer, Doolittle’s bombardier, served in the China-Burma-India Theater and then attended bombardier, radar, and observer training schools and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant. He served in Korea, retired in 1969 and died at the age of 71.

Former Plane #5 pilot Davey Jones participated in the invasion of North Africa.Leading a dozen P-38 fighters in a B-26, he landed at the airfield in Oran, Algeria, during fighting. They had to land from every direction, straddling bomb craters and avoiding wrecked airplanes. Two or three hundred planes parked there, and the men lived by their airplanes and built fires for cooking. After a few days they all moved to Algiers. From there they ran bombing raids without ground crews. They refueled with five-gallon tins and loaded their 250-pound bombs by sheer muscle.

In November of 1942, Eisenhower started the offensive against Tunis, which was defended by thirty thousand German troops. Davey Jones led a raid on the port of Bizerte, twenty miles north of Tunis. They were forced to bomb at twelve hundred feet because they didn’t have any bomb sights. Jones’ plane was hit and the left engine knocked out. He also lost the trim and engine instruments and was forced to land along the coast between two little sand mounds which took their wings off.

The crew set off walking and ran into a line of German skirmishers. Jones pointed at his pistol and one of the Germans pulled it out. He said, “‘For you, the war is over.'” He and another guy were taken to the command post where the blond, Aryan-type commander who spoke reasonable English gave him a deck chair, cheese, and wine and asked him not to run away that night.

Jones was sent to Sicily and on to Rome for interrogation where he was in solitary for two weeks. From there he traveled by train in a group to Stalag Luft III, 125 miles southeast of Berlin. He arrived on his birthday. The camp was run by the Luftwaffe instead of the Gestapo or SS and grew to hold around 10,000 captive Allied aviators. In camp, Davey Jones was given the moniker “Tokyo” Jones because of his Raider experience.

The POWs put each other to work “‘building things, hiding things or ‘working to escape’-type things.'” In the spring of 1943, Davey and others moved to the north camp where they built the big tunnel featured in the book and movie, The Great Escape. The dug the tunnel thirty feet down through sand, using their hands or a small trowel and shored up the tunnel with bed boards. They used a little tin with margarine for a lamp but had to keep sending it up to be relit before they realized there wasn’t enough oxygen to support it. They had “a guy word a pump to bring air into the tunnel with beg bellows, and eventually they ran electric lights.”

The Nazi’s built more prisons to accommodate the rising number of captured Allied airmen. The Americans were moved out of Stalag Luft III, so they didn’t participate in the actual escape. Being moved likely saved Jones’s life because many of those who escaped were recaptured and executed. Jones stayed in the service after the war ended and later had the opportunity to test fly the Mach-2 supersonic bomber in 1955. He lived to be 95.

After the capture of Davey Jones and Ross Greening, U.S. Army officials worried that the Germans would hand over any captured Raiders to the Japanese, so they stopped most of the Raiders from flying and sent them home. Plane #14 navigator/bombardier Herb Macia from Tombstone, Arizona, missed the recall and crewed more than seventy sorties all the way to April 1945. He amassed more WWII combat missions than any other Raider. He lived to 93.

Former Plane 2 pilot Lt.Travis Hoover was assigned to train crews for a new squadron of B-25s. Before they were combat ready, they were sent to North Africa to bomb the tank forces under Rommel. Hoover flew missions over Sicily and Italy and then volunteered to fly B-24’s, “doing runs on Romania’s Ploesti oil fields, which were the major source of fuel for the Nazis.” Instead of being sent home after flying about fifty missions, Hoover received permission from Doolittle to stay on as a fighter pilot. He survived the war and lived to the age of 86.

Sources: 

Funeral Held for David Thatcher, World War II Doolittle Raider.” Military Times, June 28, 2016.  

The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid—America’s First World War II Victory by Craig Nelson (Viking, 2002)

“General James Harold Doolittle,” The Official United States Air Force Website.