Shangri La (CV 38) - Naval Cruise Book

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SHA GRI-LA T0 BIKINI By E. G. HINES Rolling gently in a mounting cross-sea, a darkened American task force proceeded westward at high speed as greying skies beyond the ships' frothy wakes promised another day of protective rain cover and low visibility. Even as morn- ing twilight reluctantly forced the curtain of darkness from the eastern horizon, the insistent beat of General Alarms called crews to their battle stations. From vantage points high atop gun directors perched on the carriers' tripod masts, trained eyes scanned the horizon to all sides while overhead, the revolving bed-spring antennae of an early radar set sent invisible, inaudible waves in search of enemy forces, afloat or air-borne. An inner screen of cruisers on either bow of the two sheltered carriers dipped deep into each wave, while the outer destroyer screen plunged through whitecaps, occasionally lost to sight as cascad- ing green water engulfed the speeding tin cans. Alert, and primed for revenge against a treacherous enemy, the Task Force continued to swallow up the waters of the North Pacilic, beating toward' the Japanese home islands less than nine hundred miles westward. According to prearranged plan, the Task Group was to proceed to a point approximately four hundred miles from Tokyo before launching a deckload of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers. Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle's flyers were to take off at dusk from the 809-foot flight deck of the carrier Hornet for a night attack on Kobe, Osaka, Tokyo, and Yokohama, landing on China airfields the following morning. Shorn of her own air group, her flight deck crowded by Army bombers, the Hornet was covered by a fighter CAP CCombat Air Patrolj from the Enterprise. At sea, with his flag aboard the Big was Admiral W. F. Halsey, Task Group Commander, fresh from earlier successful American carrier raids on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, as well as Jap-held Marcus Island and Wake Island. The run from Pearl Harbor had been accomplished without incident-heavy weather encountered on April l7th seemed to afford opportunity to slip through enemy patrols to the launching point by the evening of the 18th. On the morn- ing of the 18th an enemy patrol boat ran afoul of the speeding American task group, to be sunk immediately by guns of the Salt Lake City, aided by hastily launched dive bombers from the Enterprise. A hasty conference aboard the flag- ship resulted in the decision to launch all bombers at once. At 0920 Jimmy Doolittle waved a farewell to Captain Marc A. Mitscher and took the controls of the lead plane, to thunder down the flight deck, his right wing passing within arm's length of the island. Within seconds his heavily burdened plane was air-borne, lurching sickeningly toward the threatening wave- tops before the powerful engines pulled the Mitchell from the salt spray to a comfortable altitude. Sixteen times the landing signal officer gave the go signal and hugged the .leck while a wing and a whirling prop flashed overhead to meet the upward surge of the bow in the rising seas-sixteen perfect launches toward a target