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Guerrillasy,ininae-r-iceuided airmen toOFrom Page 1Alet-aliltdejft-t-!t1-yl-it11Ythat there was a lot of publicity being made over the raid,” Davenport said, adding that the men were surprised that Americans were making such a big deal of their success. “We put our heads together, and because Ted (pilot Ted Lawson) was the most seriously injured, we felt that if there was any money going to made out of this, we’d let Ted make it.” Lawson, whom Davenport served as co-pilot, lost a leg inthe mission. Lawson later wroteThirty Seconds Over Tokyo, his firsthand account of the raid.Lynn Haven resident Harvey Yawn recalls seeing Doolittle, Davenport, Lawson and the rest of the Raiders take off that dayin 16 B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean. Yawn was a Navy gunner aboard the U.S.S. Vincennes CA-44, a heavy cruiser acting as an escort vessel for the U.S.S. Hornet. Doolittle and his Raiders took off from the Hornet.“It was really exciting,” Yawn said. “I couldn’t imagine land-based planes on an aircraft carrier. They never had been able to land or take off with a twin-engine B-25 bomber, and they were stacked on the flight deck.” His brother James Yawn, another retired Navy man who served with him and now lives just north of Miami, also was aboard the Vincennes.“I told my brother I had to go up and watch this,” Harvey Yawn said. “So I went up on the flight deck and I saw them take off. That was really something, to see land-based planes take off from that carrier.”He didn’t think they could take off from the short runway.“I watched the No. 1 go off and I just knew it was going to crash,” Yawn said, adding that that was Doolittle’s plane. “But he leveled off. And then another one come off. And as more come off, they had a longer runway. Finally the last one went, the 16th one, and I’ll tell you, that was a sight to see!”Six-hundred miles from Japanese shores, officials aboard Yawn’s ship tuned in Radio Tokyo and broadcast it throughout the vessel as it moved farther away from Japan.“All of a sudden this Japanese announcer went berserk,” Yawn said. “I don’t know what he was saying, but you could tell he was excited.”Then the voice of Yawn’s commander was heard over the intercom. “He said, ‘Men, Gen. Doolittle and his Raiders have introduced themselves to Emperor Hirohito and Tojo.’ Doolittle and them shook ’em up,” Yawn said, pride in his voice.Doolittle’s men learned of their target only a short time beforey yyyythey took off from the Hornet.“Most of us had guessed that it was going to be an attack on the mainland of Japan,” Davenport said. “But we were not sure, and we did not know for sure until after we were at sea. He said, ‘I know you’ve all been wondering what your targets are.They are the four main cities of Japan.Five-man crews would fill 16 planes.“My target was selected as ‘industrial area of Tokyo and downtown Tokyo,’ with strict instructions not to bother the Emperor’s palace,” Davenport said. “I was elated that I drew Tokyo and downtown Tokyo. The other targets were important, too, so that we could make as big a splash as possible with our token task force.”By tapping U.S. radio transmissions, the Japanese had discovered the plan to bomb at night, so the attack time was moved up.“It was actually about noon Japan time when I hit Tokyo, Davenport said. “This put us on the China coast at night.”The plane flying ahead of the Raiders that was to install a homing beacon on a friendly field in China crashed before arriving.“When we arrived at night, there was no beacon and we were running out of fuel with the early take-off, so we had to ditch on the China coast,” Davenport said. “We lost all 16 planes. We were picked up by friendly guerrillas within three, four hours who took care of our injuries.The men discovered they were on an island. The guerrillas ferried them on boats to safety, but not without incident. The American airmen had to hide under floorboards of the boat while Japanese soldiers boarded it for “a look around,” Davenport said.“We finally arrived at the mission hospital in Linhai, China,where some English missionaries, including Dr. Chen Shenyan, took care of us,” Davenport said.In March of this year, Davenport was reunited with Dr. Chen in Red Wing, Minn.Forty-two of the 80 airmen who made the raid with Doolittle —■ now a 95-year-old resident of Pebble Beach — are still alive.Yawn’s own vessel sank Aug. 7 in the South Pacific when sevenyyJapanese cruisers “jumped on us all at once,” Yawn said.“We lost a large part of our crew,” he said. “Eighty percent were either killed or wounded. Me and my brother swam together without life jackets for several hours until (U.S. rescue crews) picked us up the next day.”Yawn, his brother and other survivors of that attack will commemorate its 50th anniversary Aug. 7.
Newspaper Details
Panama City News Herald
Panama City, Florida, US
Sat, Apr 18, 1992
Page 8
Full Page
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TN, USA 29 Dec 2020
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