Found this colour photo of Hornet leaving San Fran with the Doolittle Raiders on deck. .Posting link .
That does not look like a real photo. Looks more like some sort of painting or digital artwork.
Blowing it up, there is a signature on the lower left area… definitely some sort of artwork.
Here are some actual official USN color photos of USS Hornet in summer 1942. You can see what the limitations of color film of the era are.
That is not a color photo but an artist painting. You can tell that’s a painting.
It’s a painting by William S. Philips titled " Approaching the Gate to Destiny."
http://www.greenwichworkshop.com/phillips/approachingthegate.asp
I used to drive across that bridge twice a day, when I didn’t take the ferry.
Kind of a lovely painting, although I would question the types and locations of aircraft.
Anyhow, a nice painting of a great moment. April 2 will be here in a couple of days.
Sorry…I was looking at it on a small screen…my bad. Nice painting however.
I think it is a great post actually. It gives me a chill to think about it.
As I said, I’ve driven over the bridge probably 8,000 times. Before the base closures, it would be very common to see submarines headed for Mare Island and carriers headed for Hunter’s Point and Alameda.
I for one learned something from your post. I had no idea that B-25’s were launched from carriers. Bad on me.
So, I was going to be critical of the artist for painted the bridge out of level, then I looked some more…
Is the bridge really that much uphill/downhill? I didn’t pay much attention a couple years back when we crossed it both ways.
According to the Bridge District website, the difference between the elevations of the South abutment and midspan is a little over 84 feet.
Really? You’ve never read or seen “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”? I think I was 8 or 9 the first time that I read that book.
It is a lovely painting. I can only imagine what the Bay area was like at that time. So much history there.
These are a couple of photos from the same locale, pre war, showing probably the best actual work color photos could do from an aircraft at that time…
That’s pretty substantial grade, thanks. I guess the artist had it right and I jumped to a bad conclusion.
No, and being such a poor student of history and especially war history becomes an occasional embarrassment for me here. But I’m slowing learning some stuff from all of you.
Yes, it is. And so are the pictures you posted above. It always fascinates me when an image can invoke feelings of nostagia for a time when I didn’t even exist yet.
“Thirty Seconds Over Toyko” is the classic book to start with. It was written by Ted Lawson, who flew the seventh bomber to take off; “Ruptured Duck”. It was also a pretty good movie.
Follow with “The First heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid”. And Doolittle’s autobiography “I Could Never Be So Lucky Again”, which IMO (see also Boyington, Fosse) illustrates the point that it’s hard to be good at more than one thing at a time.
It’s a long and complicated story, what the painting shows is the USS Hornet, CV-8 which was a Yorktown Class carrier (along with Yorktown and Enterprise), leaving San Francisco Bay at 8.30 in the morning on April 2, 1942 enroute on the mission.
The ship in the background is an escort, I suppose USS Nashville. Actual photos taken while under way show the sixteen bombers, as well as a group of Wildcats up at the bow.
The bridge was flat on May 24th 1987, the 50th Birthday Party. I was there and am in the crowd somewhere between the last concrete abutment and the south tower in the foreground.
There were also SBDs spotted aft at some points of the journey
Except the Yorktown and Enterprise were busy in different areas of the Pacific, and Enterprise made a mid ocean rondevous for the final runin to the launch point.
Poor grammar on my part. Yorktown and Enterprise were sisters in the class, not in the group that sailed from Alameda and as you said, Enterprise joined them while underway.
There are a couple things I don’t quite understand.
With all those bombers on the deck how was there enough room to get to speed for takeoff?
If the answer is somehow that they “put” some down below deck (not sure what else the answer could be), why not leave port that way?
I would imagine such a sight, bombers crammed on a carrier, would be quite noteworthy to anyone observing- say, someone on the Japanese payroll. Seems like a good way to blow your cover.
I understand there was no internet but I imagine a message could get back to Japan faster than a carrier. ALERT! Something looks fishy over here!
I’m sure the google machine has the answer but figured I’d ask here instead.
T e d
Leading up to launch the bombers were farther back. All 16 were on deck the entire trip. Originally one was supposed to fly off and land back on land, but Doolittle decided to keep all 16 for the Raid.
They launched from about even with the island, every plane taxied up to the same point. I don’t remember but it was something like 480 feet of takeoff on an 800 some flight deck.
Stiks SBD always fascinated me. Did it come up on the aft elevator? Probably. All of Hornets air group was below when the Raid was launched. Hornet had a hangar level catapult, but it wouldn’t be something to launch an air group with. That was Enterprises role.
Hornet did bring the planes up once the bombers were gone. I’ve never seen any pictures of that. Frankly it’s kind of unusual that we have so many photos taken up to the launch.
Ted… and Greg… please read up on this mission. It is one of the most daring stories of WWII. It has been portrayed in writing and on screen historically and fictionally. And due to its’ circumstances, fairly well documented.
Long story short, a group,of Army aviators we’re trained to take off a B-25 in about 400some odd feat from a standing start. B-25s were stripped off excess weight and given extra fuel for range. They were to be shipped to within a certain distance of Japan aboard USS Hornet while USS Enterprise rode shotgun, launched in the late afternoon and fly a night strike on Japan, then land in friendly held areas of China the next morning. Things went wrong. The task force was discovered at dawn on the day of launch by a picket boat (quickly sunk) hundreds of miles short of the launch point. The raid was launched early, and the results are now history.
As far as shipping out of San Francisco in the morning in broad daylight… well the internment of all those of Japanese descent, American citizens or not, put a crimp in that network. And shiploads of aircraft had departed from the ports of both coasts for the war zones since Pearl Harbor, so that was not completely out of place. And pretty much, the Japanese did not expect medium bombers to be launched from carriers. They expected, if anything, standard USN carrier planes of the time with their known radius of action.