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Page 7 text:
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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
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Page 8 text:
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S 1 1 1 1 f 1 1 I 1 1 1 1 1 1 740 miles away. The raid, though only a token of things to come, served to bolster American morale as the United States and her Allies commenced the long journey to victory over a road made treacherous by twenty-three years of neglect and appeasement-a road where the bridges of isolationism, hasty dis- armament, politics, and labor disputes threatened permanent repair. Returning to Pearl Harbor, the Hornet crew heard the late President Roose- velt in one of his Ufireside chats relate the story of the raid on Japan from the mythical Shangri-La air base. Por the Hornet, there was more work. A strong Japanese fleet was reported at sea, steaming north and east, for an apparent attack on Midway and the Hawaiian Islands. Sighted June 3rd by a Navy PBY Catalina flying patrol 700 miles from Midway, the enemy force was attacked throughout the day by high-level Flying Fortresses. At nightfall Navy Catalinas commenced successful mast-high tor- pedo runs on the attacking fleet. Enemy search planes spotted American carriers the following morning and quicklycommunicated the news to Admiral Yamamoto aboard the huge, treaty- breaker battleship Yamato. The enemy commander ordered hiscarrier planes rearmed with torpedoes, canceling scheduled Midway bombing raids and turned to give battle to the outnumbered American forces. Caught with their torpedoes and planes down, the Japanese were hit almost immediately, suffering such losses that they were unable to gain the initiative. ' The Homet's Torpedo Squadron Eight led the carrier :flyers inlan unsup- ported attack on the enemy' flat-tops and their battleship-cruiser escort. As the sole survivor of the fifteen torpedo plane crews, Ensign Gay witnessed the balance of the battle from a liferaft in the waters of the Paciflc. Planes from the Yorktown and Entez'pz'is.e joined forces with Navy and Marine flyers from Midway's airstrips to continue strikes through the balance of the day. Deleted from the Jap Navy on June 4, 1942, the carrier Akagi C26,900- ton ex-battle cruiserj, the Kaga Cbattleship converted into carrier in 1928j, and the 10,050-ton carrier Soryu, hit by Enterprise planes and finished off by the submarine Nautilus. Also hit was the Sorytfs sister, the Hiryu, which sank the following morning. The cruiser Mikuma, 14,000-ton heavyweight from the Mitsubishi Yards at Nagasaki, succumbed from damages on June 6th, while sister Mogamz' escaped with heavy damage to go down under air attack off Mindanao, October 26, 1944. Their ranks thinned by the loss of the Yorktown and destroyer Hamman, the American task force returned to Pearl Harbor--the Hornet to fight one more great battle before the warheads of her consort's torpedoes ended her death agonies after Santa Cruz COctober 26, 19425. The Ho-met had scarcely been stricken from the Navy Register before a new namesake Cex-Kearsage, keel laid August 3, 1942j began to take shape on the ways at Newport News. On January 15, 1943, the keel was laid for the Shangri-La, named for the Ho-rne't's alter ego. So it is today that two carriers share the same proud heritage, - The Shangri-La was ordered August 7, 1942, in the midst of a nationwide bond-selling drive to make the Shan-gri-La myth a reality. The Bureau of Per- sonnel received a record number of requests for duty aboard even before her keel -fe-1-i F ly lfig 2.i 'EEZ up lf .,4, 'it iz. if S Q is 1? ls , 1 1 1 I 4 I 1 1 1 4 G J .4 7. re 5
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