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Vanishing Act: The Enduring Mystery Behind The Legendary Doolittle Raid Over Tokyo · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

0:09
Welcome to the third hour of The Morning Show with Preston Scott Show number five
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seventy eight. Because I completely you'd think i'd get better at this job by
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now, but because I totally mismanaged my time. The answer was headline two,
0:26
Florida man arrested while trying to pick the neighbors. So anyway, So
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now you're not going to spend your day wondering which was the right headline,
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Preston, anyway, We're going to transition to better things now. I have
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been looking forward to this for quite some time. Dan Hampton is not just
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a hero because he served our country in the United States Air Force, retired
0:52
lieutenant colonel with a lot of distinguished accomplishments. But he's a best selling author
1:00
and the book is Vanishing Act, The Enduring Mystery behind the legendary Do Little
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Raid over Tokyo. Dan Hampton joins us right now. Dan, first,
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thank you very much for your service to our country. How are you,
1:10
sir, Preston, Good morning. It's good to be back. Thanks.
1:15
This is subject matter that a lot of people are fascinated in because I think
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a lot of us, whether it's through our parents that served in World War
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two grandparents. World War two is just something different. It just it marks
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a different time in our country. What was it that drew you to this
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particular story, because I'll be honest with you, I didn't know there was
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an enduring mystery behind the dol Little raid. Well, that's kind of what
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it was. I mean, you study these things, you write books about
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them, and I'm always amazed, like you just said, about things that
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I find out I don't know. And you know, I was always aware
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that one of these airplanes didn't go on to try to make it to China,
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that it, you know, kind of turned right at Albuquerque and and
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and headed towards the Soviet Union. But I always believed the cover story,
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and the cover story was that it was low on fuel and so they didn't
2:15
have any other choice and that was the reason behind it. But as a
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pilot, once I started to map it out and get some more specifics,
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it just didn't add up. And so to me, the writer part of
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me, anyway, that is like waving a red flag, and so I
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had to dig in and find out what exactly went on there. I'm always
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intrigued by where the push comes for a story like this, where the curiosity
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begins for you. You mentioned you were a pilot, but but what drew
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you to even looking at you know, play number eight? Where how did
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you get there? Okay? So I was I was going through a couple
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of reports, old military intelligence reports from the Dolittle raid, and then I
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read Doolittle's book. And these guys were very tight lipped about all this,
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because that's just the way they were. But they inadvertently let a few things
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slip. And the thing that caught my eye was that Doolittle had to replace
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a plane that had gone through all the training, and you know, everybody
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knew what they were doing, and the plane ran off the runway, and
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so he said, well, the pilot obviously isn't when we went along,
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and instead of using one of the six or seven trained backup aircrews that he
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had available, all of a sudden, Ed York finds himself flying the eighth
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plane. Now Ed York was like the operations officer for this group. He
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was in charge of logistics and training. He was never intended to go on
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the raid. Why did he all of a sudden end up in the cockpit
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of that plane and not one of the other guys that had already been trained
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to do it. Dan tell our listeners who may not be as familiar with
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the Do Little Race as others, just a quick snapshot. Why was it
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put together and what was its purpose? Are you sure? I mean I
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got a whiny review the other day about somebody who said, everybody knows about
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to do a Little Way, why write another book? Yeah? Well that
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person can never mind. Yeah, okay, So here's the deal. This
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is four months after Pearl Harbor. So it's a really black time in American
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history. I mean, we're getting kicked all over the Pacific. The Germans
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are running wild in Europe, you know, everybody's the Allies are sort of
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reeling back on their heels, and no military, at least combat military officer
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wants wants to do that. We always want to strike back if we can,
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and that that was echoed by President Roosevelt, who did not want to
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be on the defensive, and so he was looking for a way to strike
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back at Japan, which is good for a lot of reasons. It's good
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for morale for the United States. It's good to derail momentum on behalf of
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the Japanese, you know, get them to reacting to get them direct us,
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even in a small way. And so this raid, the big raid,
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was dreamed up actually by a Navy sub mariner and then he took it
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to a naval aviator and the chief of Naval operations and they said, yeah,
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it's a good idea. Check with the army though, because we don't
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have planes that can do this, which was true the army did, but
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the Army didn't have any way to get the planes close to Japan. So
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they compromised. They said, well, why not put army bombers on a
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naval aircraft carrier and get them close enough to launch against the home islands of
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Japan. They don't have They can't land on the carrier, but they can
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land in China. And so that was the genesis of this raid. And
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then somewhere before all this happened, right at the beginning, another idea was
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circulated amongst hap Arnold and a few other people. As long as those planes
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are going to be over there anyway, we have something that needs to be
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done in Russia, and let's get one of these planes to go to Russia.
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And that's that's the impetus behind the story. Continuing our chat with author
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Dan Hampton. He's lieutenant colonel retired from the United States Air Force, and
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Dan, I want to kind of sort of use that as a springboard to
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my question. You know, you flew one hundred and fifty one combat missions.
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Can you even relate to the decision? I mean from a tactical and
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from a practical just an aeronautics perspective of taking B twenty five bombers off an
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aircraft carrier at the time. Yeah, I can, up to a point.
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Obviously, you know, I flew jets, not sure pissed in airplanes.
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But you know, a challenge is a challenge, and we tend to,
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you know, if there is a problem to be solved, we tend
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to find a way to do it. And that's that's what these guys did.
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They didn't have a choice, as I said earlier than Navy didn't have
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anything that had the range that could do that, and the Army didn't have
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anywhere close to launch these bombers from. So the compromise was really fairly unique,
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and it worked. You know, they just had to pick the bomber
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and then and then figure out how to make short takeoffs off of a carrier.
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Deck and then and then go do it. And that's what they did
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in pretty quick time, as a matter of fact. So we learned that
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that you you got the tip on this by reading Doolittle's book. You get
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a little snippet of something here and there, But how do you find enough
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information to fill the story out because you know, obviously we're not going to
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give away the the entirety of your book here, but man, that's tough
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digging well. You know, that's one thing that surprised me about writing,
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at least nonfiction that I really enjoyed was the was the research, because it's
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a lot like detective work. You know, you get you get a little
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bit here, a little bit there, and then you got to kind of
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put it into context and link them all together. What I found that usually
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works is I'll get a whole old of survivors if there are any. I've
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done that with a couple of books, and I'll talk to them directly or
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their descendants, because you never know what's with hiding in dad's old trunk up
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in the attic and things like that. And that's what I did with this
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to get started. I found a couple of descendants from hap Arnold, and
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actually the co pilot's son is still very much alive, and they were of
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tremendous help. And then there was a Japanese researcher who made who has made
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the Dolittle raid his hobby, and he spent years roaming around Tokyo finding out
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where these bombs really hit. Okay, not where reports said they were,
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not where the movies said they hit, but where they really hit. And
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he also had been intrigued by this eighth airplane and he was able to help
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me considerably. Yeah, I was going to say, what other sources outside
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United States sources could you have? You mentioned a researcher or somebody at least
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a buff of history in Japan. But I'm curious, where do you go
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when the story is seemingly kind of almost a covert mission story. Well,
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and you know, that's an excellent point, Preston, because even more so
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than just a covert mission, this was one that had no documentation. There
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was there was nothing written down, you know, telling Doolittle go do this.
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It was all done verbally. I mean, these were those kind of
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guys. And and even more so with this subset of the mission which was
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ed York's, you know, flight to Russia. That was all done verbally,
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so there's no there's no smoking gun to find, per se, as
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far as a document that said, yes, go to Russia and do this
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all right, there's a lot of circle circumstantial evidence though, which I again
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I had to dig through quite quite a few volumeous reports and other things to
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find a line here and there that that made sense and kind of tied the
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store together. WFLA on your phone with the iHeart radio app and on hundreds
10:03
of devices like Alexa, Google Home, Xbox and Sonos and Ihearts radio station.
10:13
The book Vanishing Act The Enduring minis mystery behind the legendary Doolittle rate over
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Tokyo. Obviously you can get it at all the book outlets and of course
10:22
on Amazon and Dan Hampton, the author would love your reviews of it if
10:28
you get that book, and I hope you will. Dan. Let's talk
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a little bit about this plane eights potential optional sets of missions here, I
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mean, did you narrow it down to Okay, this is where what it
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likely was was tasked with doing. Yes, yes I did, because I
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eliminated some things that it couldn't have been okay, and then and was left
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with a couple of choices of what it probably was doing. And then with
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some extra information that I uncovered and learning a little bit more about the two
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pilots involved in Half Arnold, I figured out what the plant had been.
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Take me through the process of kind of figuring out. Let's start with one
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of the most fundamental things that came to my mind, which was range.
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I mean, that was the whole issue here with these B twenty fives.
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They didn't have the range. They couldn't land back on an aircraft carrier,
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so they had to figure out where they could ditch these planes and try to
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get the crew down. What did you learn about plane number eight, Well,
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you know, that's an excellent point. They intended the main group,
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I mean, and what was publicized was after they hit their targets in Tokyo
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and other cities, they were going to head more or less southwest towards the
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Chinese coast and overfly the part that was occupied by the Japanese and get to
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the part that was controlled by China. The problem was the aircraft carrier was
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discovered by a picket ship about six hundred miles off the Japanese coast, and
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Doolittle and the navy guys decided, well, he's radioed in our position,
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we got to launch. Now. In fact, he hadn't, and the
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ship was sunk before he could do that. But they didn't know that,
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so they ended up launching even earlier than they had intended to, and fuel
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was already going to be tight. These planes had all been modified with extra
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fuel bladders and some other things, and their carburetors the part of the engine
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that actually meters the fuel more or less, you know, and decides how
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much fuel is being used for different throttle settings. Those had all been specially
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modified. And yet when these planes flew west and they landed in Sacramento before
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heading down to be loaded on the carrier, one of the planes carburetors was
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un you know, it was for no reason at all on the surface back
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to the original setting, and that that happened to be Plane eight. Now,
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why would that plane be the only plane that had these modified carburetors,
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you know, readjusted. And what that means is it's going to burn more
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even more fuel, which means they're going to be even shorter of fuel than
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everybody else, which means they had a plausible reason to go to China or
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I'm sorry to go to Russian instead of to China right from the beginning.
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So that was another thing that I latched onto and said, Okay, hang
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on, I don't believe in coincidences. And if of all the planes to
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have this done accidentally, heavily italicized there, why was it this one?
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Well, it wasn't an accident. Okay, it was done on purpose so
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that they would have a plausible reason to go to Russia. Wow, plane
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A pilots, York and Emmons. What happened to them? You mean after
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the war. Did they survive the raid? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
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they survived the raid. All five guys in the crew survived the raid.
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Interestingly, the navigator, who was not part nobody else in the crew was
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part of it, just the pilots. The navigator always had doubts because he
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could obviously read a map, and he realized that these guys, oddly enough
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had maps of the Soviet Union, which he didn't have another big clue,
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and so he always had doubts about this, and for decades after the war
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he kept saying, hey, look, this was an accidental. Nobody listened
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to him. In fact, two weeks ago, right after the book came
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out, his granddaughter got a hold of me and thanked me for getting the
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story out because it vindicated her grandfather, which was kind of cool. York
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and Emmons both ended up taking careers in military intelligence. So you can read
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that for what it is, right, did either of them ever talk write
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anything about this mission? Well, Bob Emmans wrote a book called Guests of
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the Krimlin, which is more like a travelogue. It was kind of interesting,
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especially as observations of the Russians and what barbarians they are. He wrote
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that book, but he never he stuck with the cover story. Okay,
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these guys never let on that there was anything else going on. They never
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revealed anything. They'd made a promise. I mean, they're serving military officers,
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and they took an oath and made a promise, and that's important,
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and so they stuck with it. They never said a thing, Dan,
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last question without revealing what you believe the purpose, the motive, the reason,
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the destination was in your mind looking at it now from your view with
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what you know, was the decision to send Plane eight to the Soviet Union
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a justified mission at the time that they went, it was definitely justified.
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By the time they had gotten out, things had changed considerably, so the
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original reason didn't necessarily exist anymore. But these guys, these guys provided a
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lot of behind the scenes information on the Soviet Union because they were deep inside
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of it while they were being interned, and that was an enormous help to
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folks. So it wasn't. It wasn't by any means of wasteedmission. Great
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great book. Cannot wait to read the rest of it. Thank you Dan
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for the time today. I appreciate it my pleasure. Preston as always,
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thanks, thank you, sir. It's Dan Hampton, and again his accolades
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are incredible. One hundred and fifty one combat missions twenty years as a member
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of the United States Air Force. Retired as a lieutenant colonel and author of
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the book Vanishing Act, The Enduring Mystery behind the legendary Doolittle Raid over Tokyo.
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I thought I knew about this raid. I I'm a pretty good student
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on some of the World War II stuff. This is all new stuff for
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me and I cannot wait to read it. I hope you get the book
16:55
and write a nice review. Twenty eight minutes after the hour, It's the
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Morning Show with Preston's Guy,