The Impossible Mission

By Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

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A man’s character is his fate. [Captain Jay Zeamer] hadn’t been much for philosophy back at M.I.T. He was an engineer, a maker, a builder, with little use for pious pronouncements. But he never forgot that line. A man’s character is his fate. One of the Greeks. Heraclitus? He considered himself a man of character, a pilot of character. He was the captain of a United States Army Air Force bomber crew, a leader of men. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 3-4)

Like Saint-Exupery, Jay discovered that flight released his mind “from the tyranny of petty things,” …

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 20)

When Jay researched the symptoms of his father’s childhood condition he discovered that scrofula infantum could not be passed down through family genes but that general nearsightedness, which also affected his father, could. As angry as he remained at the Navy’s rejection, he was also relieved that his father’s illness had not been the reason for it. Still, whatever the cause of his bad eyesight, he vowed that this obstacle would not end his dream of going to war in the air. Rummaging through the M.I.T. library he found a book describing an alternative therapy for improving one’s eyesight, called the Bates Method. 

The then-revolutionary Bates Method had been introduced by the eye-care physician William Bates around the turn of the century. Bates held that nearly all eyesight problems were the result of a habitual strain on the eyes, and that eyeglasses only worsened the conditions. Such was his disdain for eyeglasses that he kept an anvil in his office to smash those worn by new patients. Bates had died in 1931, but one of the major proponents of his method was the ophthalmologist Dr. Harold Peppard, whose New York City practice drew patients from around the country. In due course Jay began taking the train from Boston to visit Peppard.

Following Bates’s prescribed treatments, Peppard’s controversial process for improving vision included exposing his patients’ eyes to direct sunlight in order, as Bates had written, to change the shape of their eyeballs and alleviate eyestrain. Even at the time professionals in the field of established ophthalmology condemned this as outright quackery, and Bates’s theories were subsequently proved a physiological impossibility in humans. But for Jay these eccentricities were offset by the testimonials of enthusiastic followers of the Bates Method, who included the health and fitness guru Bernarr Macfadden and the noted British writer Adlous Huxley, whose corneas had been scarred in a fire during his childhood and claimed that the Bates Method had improved his damaged eyesight significantly. 

Moreover, Jay had come of age in an era of modern scientific marvels that only a generation earlier would have been considered miraculous. These inventions and discoveries were rapidly transforming a world mechanized and electrified by combustion engines, instant transoceanic communications, power grids, and even the first small steps toward unlocking the secrets of the atom. For many, particularly the American doughboys and the shattered European soldiers and civilians who had survived the horrors of the mechanized killing of the Great War, the interwar period was a time of introspection, of searching for the means to cope with this frightening new world. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 21-22)

To the adventurous young fliers of Jay’s generation, nothing was more captivating than the martial images of World War I’s dashing “Knights of the Sky.” Jay was enthralled by the romance of these early fighter pilots, particularly the several AMericans who had dominated wartime headlines while succeeding one another to claim the coveted title “Ace of Aces.” Two decades later their names still resonated – Raoul Lufbery, Frank Luke, Frank Bayliss, David Putnam. But Jay identified most closely with the greatest of them all, Eddie Rickenbacker. It was the tales of Rickenbacker’s derring-do that he had pored over as boy, and it was not hard to recognize the similarities between the two Airmen. 

Like Jay, Rickenbacker was an automobile buff. In his youth he had competed in the first Indianapolis 500 and set land speed records at the Daytona Raceway. Rickenbacker enlisted when America entered the Great War and, given his background, he was assigned a position as a driver on the staff of Gen. John K. “Black Jack” Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. But Rickenbacker chafed at his role as a glorified chauffeur and within months he fast-talked his way into the recently established U.S. Army Air Service as a pilot in training. Much as Jay would not allow his rejection from the Navy’s flight program to stand in his way of becoming a flier, nothing could stop Rickenbacker from climbing into a cockpit. 

Once aloft, Rickenbacker took his cue from his mentor, the Franco-American ace Lufbery, and honed his reputation as a lone-wolf fighter pilot. It was a habit that served him well as he patrolled the skies deep inside Germany by himself. And though aerial tactics and fighter-plane design had naturally advanced by leaps in the decades between the two world wars, Jay never forgot the solitary aspect of the Rickenbacker legend, and imagined himself following the same flight patterns over the same French and German terrain. 

The comparisons between the two men, however, went only so far. Rickenbacker had been born into poverty, and after his father died in a construction accident he was forced to drop out of elementary school and work at two jobs in order to help support his mother and six brothers and sister. Jay had been fortunate enough to attend a prestigious university while Rickenbacker had settled for a mail-order diploma from the International Correspondence School based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. But like Jay, at heart Rickenbacker was a consummate if amateur engineer who lived by the code “A machine has to have a purpose.” 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 26-27)

Most bombardiers were not hard to find. A B-17 bombsight’s eyepiece was rimmed with a black rubber ring, and as the bombardier sighted his targets the rubber would mix with sweat and rub off, inevitably giving the “rock dropper” what looked like a permanent shiner. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 28)

The American public at the moment was riveted by news reports out of England describing the beleaguered Royal Air Force’s last-stand heroics during the Battle of Britain. With German bombs falling literally outside the radio studios from which journalists like the CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow and NBC’s Fred Bate and John MacVae broadcast, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Army Chief of Staff George Marshall collaborated to use this opportunity to advocate or a stronger role for their own Army’s aviation branch. Consequently, at Stimson’s and Marshall’s decree, in June 1941 the Air Corps was redesignated the United States Army Air Forces. This specification not only provided the air arm of the service with greater autonomy but also was an attempt to curtail the increasingly divisive arguments within the Army over control of aviation doctrine and organization. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 36)

The horrific violence Japan inflicted on its conquered enemies was exhibited most explicitly during what came to be known the “Rape of Nanking,” in which historians estimate that the Imperial forces murdered between 200,000 and 430,000 Chinese, including 90,000 prisoners of war. One American Army general said that the Japanese soldier was “undoubtedly a low order of humanity” whose stole reason for going to war was to indulge a “liking for looting, arson, massacre, and rape.”

Indeed, across Asia the Japanese war machine would subject defeated soldiers and civilians alike to torture, enslavement, and arbitrary murder, which a Japanese fighter considered merely a means to a divinely mandated end. Yet that American general who saw the Japanese race as a lower order of humanity was mistaken, for there was more to these tactics than the diabolical desire to steal, burn, kill, and molest. From early childhood Japanese boys were bathed in a brainwashing Bushida mentality – literally, the Samurai’s “Way of the Warrior” – that invoked a ruthless thos which not only cultivated brutality but celebrated it for its own sake. Conversely, to the Empire’s desensitized young men marching, sailing, and flying into combat, the idea of being taken prisoner was considered, as the Australian author Thomas Keneally noted, a chronic psychological disorder. 

With few exceptions, the Japanese soldier’s goal was combat to the death, either his enemy’s or his own. That aim had the ironic effect of making him, in the eyes of his enemies, the very subhuman creature that he considered all non-Nipponese races to be. Consequently, as the war progressed through the Pacific, American GIs and Marines would resort to a kind of racist, anti-Japanese brutality that would appall their right-thinking countrymen. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 42-43)

Boeing had been founded in 1916, when its designers constructed their first canvas-and-wood aircraft. Since then, the company’s engineers had been responsible for introducing a spectrum of aerial innovations into the U.S. military. Their successful implementation of an aircraft’s tough, then aluminum “skin,” no thicker than a dozen sheets of notebook paper, was a major Leap Forward and aerodynamics. they were also Pioneers in developing landing gear that retracted into a plane’s wings during flight, greatly reducing drag. 

So when the USAAF put out a bid to design a new, multi-engine bomber that could fly a minimum of 250 miles per hour, reach a ceiling of 25,000 feet, and remain airborne for six to ten hours continuously, the planners at the Seattle-based manufacturer intuitively recognized that they were being asked to build not only an aircraft that flew superbly, but a winged weapon to fulfill an International need.They also realized they were putting themselves at serious financial risk in the midst of the Great Depression. The young company had only $500,000 in its treasury, and it was committing more than half of that to build a single plane, which might not measure up to the ambitions of the USAAF. It went ahead anyway. 

One new wrinkle Boeing initiated was to reconfigure the flight deck. To this point the cockpits of all bombers had been built flush with the plane’s propellers. In order to improve the pilot’s visual awareness, the developers of the prototype moved the cockpit forward ahead of its four engines. Then there was the problem of meeting the Army’s speed specifications. At 75 feet long, with a wingspan of over 100 feet, the plane was a behemoth in terms of aerodynamic drag coefficient despite its thin skin and retractable landing gear. 

In order to streamline the ship even further against wind resistance, Boeing introduced a bomb bay that, for the first time in aeronautical history, was moved inside the fuselage between the two wings. This allowed the plane to carry a maximum of 5,000 pounds of ordinance for an incredible 1,700 miles or, on longer round-trips of over 2,000 miles, a still-walloping 2,500-pound load. 

Adding to the unique design was the tail, which went through several iterations. In earlier models it tapered into a bullet-like shape sporting a sleek, relatively small “shark fin.” But this left no room for a backward-facing gun mount, virtually inviting enemy aircraft to attack from the rear. Later designs solved this problem by enlarging not only the tail gunner’s position but the vertical fin itself to a towering 15 feet, prompting some Airmen to dub the plane their “big-ass bird.” In any case, the aircraft now had more lateral stability at altitude as well as a lethal stinger in its tail. 

By the time Boeing won the Army’s competition and the first B-17s were introduced into service in 1938, they had already picked up their iconic designation as Flying Fortresses. The name, attributed variously to admiring Boeing hard-hat workers or newsmen astounded by the aircraft’s five cupola gun stations, was more than appropriate – from the beginning it was obvious that the B-17 would completely revolutionize aviation warfare. 

At first the B-17s rolled off the Boeing assembly lines at an agonizingly slow pace. When Hitler’s forces invaded Poland in September 1939 there were only 13 operational Fortresses in service. But once the craft, destined to become one of the most powerful airplanes ever built, proved itself during trial runs, production went into overdrive. All told, nearly 13,000 Flying Fortresses would be put into action during World War II, and Airmen would come to love the plane for its inexhaustible ruggedness and its ability to absorb massive battle damage while remaining aloft. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 44-46)

Jay’s briefings back in Hawaii had included classes on what was known at the time as an intertropical front¹, known to sailors as the Doldrums; in the equatorial latitudes, this is essentially where the northeast and southeast trade winds converge. But sitting in a classroom studying wind charts was a tame experience compared to flying through the center of the semipermanent weather system he was now traversing. This atmospheric vortex was notorious for its strong, erratic gusts and its violent, lightning-laced thunderheads, which can top out in the lower reaches of the stratosphere at 40,000 feet. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 83)

In the aftermath of what Capt. Jay Zeamer had labeled a “turn-around,” the metaphors flew fast and furious across the United States. This was most apparent in the medium that was perhaps the most popular form of political communication for the era, the editorial cartoon. The Japanese caricatured as subhuman creatures – dogs, snakes, “beastly little monkeys” – were a predominant theme. 

“Well, well, seems to be a slight shifting of the Japanese current,” read the caption to one widely circulated political sketch depicting a worm-like Asian being knocked cold by a brawny American sailor wielding the “Midway Tide-Stick.” Drawn by Theodor Geisel, then the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM, this was one of more than 400 lampoons, many of them breathtakingly racist, produced by the author and illustrator who would soon become known by his nom de plume, Dr. Seuss.² In fact the subhuman Asian being knocked cold in the sketch bears a striking facial resemblance to the title character in The Cat in the Hat.

Diesel was far from alone in his relentless visual attacks on the enemy. American cartoonists could not resist portraying Uncle Sam punching a Japanese soldier, usually bespectacled and bucktoothed, in either the face or the solar plexus with his giant fist. The caption for one such cartoon in the Buffalo News – “Losing Face” – was emblematic, as was the Kansas City Star’s “Jolt the Japs at Midway.” General MacArthur also benefited from the pen-and-ink onslaught. One caricature, captioned “The Exterminator,” depicted his giant hands pumping a bug spray device shaped like an American bomber to kill hordes of the tiny “Japanese Beetle.” And in London, Punch published an editorial cartoon of MacArthur standing in the prow of a boat and spearing enemy-held islands like so many sponge fish as he sailed toward the Rising Sun. The point, however crude, was nevertheless accurate: the United States was indeed lifting itself up off the Pearl Harbor canvas and starting to counterpunch. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 104-105)

Finding Gen. Brett’s replacement was not easy. Few competent officers viewed the prospect of working under MacArthur as appealing. After Chief of Staff Marshall’s old friend and first choice, Gen. Frank Andrews, turned him down flat, Marshall submitted two candidates to the Supreme Commander. One was Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, by now famous worldwide for hsi raid on Tokyo and soon to receive the Medal of Honor for the bombing mission. But the last thing “Dugout Doug” needed in Australia was the spotlight shining on a man who had actually taken the fight to the enemy. And it is doubtful that Doolittle, headstrong himself, would have found the offer compelling. Instead he successfully lobbied for an assignment to the European front. Doolittle was placed with the nascent 8th Air Force, based in England, from where he was rapidly promoted to commanding general of the 12th Air Force, soon to be operating in North Africa. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 113)

At 60, Adm. Halsey was the self-proclaimed scion of “seafarers and adventures, big, violent men, impatient with the law, and prone to strong drink and strong language.” He sailed determinedly in their wake. A stateside headline writer had nicknamed Halsey “Bull,” and newsmen the world over picked up the sobriquet. Though he disliked the epithet – “I got that name from some drunken newspaper correspondent who punched the letter ‘u’ instead of ‘i’ writing Bill” – he tolerated it, and among his admirers he certainly lived up to the snorting connotation. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 166)

MacArthur had never forgiven Admirals King and Nimitz and the perceived “Navy cabal” for depriving him of the unified authority he was certain he deserved as Supreme Commander of the entire PAcific Theater. The general vociferously and publicly dismissed the reliance on U.S. sea power for conducting the war as a panacea and argued instead that the defense of Australia and all subsequent offensive campaigns required an amphibious army supported by a concentration of land-based bombers under his command. He already had his air forces, and in Gen. Kenney a capable officer to command them. Now all he needed were boots on the ground, and to that end he even advocated for the abolishment of the Marine Corps, postulating that its troops could better serve his army – viewpoint not forgotten, nor forgiven, by veteran leathernecks to this day. 

In turn, Navy brass allowed it to be known that they considered the general an unhinged megalomaniac with a corncob pipe. 

(Drury and Clavin 2017, 170,172)

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References

Drury, Bob, and Tom Clavin. 2017. Lucky 666: The Impossible Mission That Changed the War in the Pacific. N.p.: Simon & Schuster.

ISBN 9781476774862

1.  After the war, new technology allowed meteorologists to recognize the significant effect wind field convergence had on tropical weather, particularly near the equator, and the term “intertropical convergence zone” replaced “intertropical front.” ↩︎
2. Jonathan Crowe’s Open Culture reports that Geisel was also a vocal proponent of the internment camps for Japanese-American citizens in the western United States during the war. Geisel’s racialist views took a 180-degree turn when he visited Hiroshima in 1953 and observed the aftermath of the atom bomb’s destruction. The following year, when his book Horton Hears a Who! appeared in print, it was dedicated to “My Great Friend, Mittsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan,” and the narrative’s refrain is a pointed: “A person is a person no matter how small.” ↩︎