Original subtitles

USS Enterprise,

a.k.a the Big E,

a fighting city of steel.

She is the most revered and decorated ship of World War II.

On this 360-degree battlefield,

where threats loom on the seas,

in the skies,

and in the ocean depths,

the Enterprise's enemies could be anywhere

and everywhere.

Now follow this sea-bound band of brothers

through four years of hell,

from Pearl Harbor to the doorstep of Japan.

You know, you did this to us.

Watch this. Here we come now.

There's nowhere to run when the war is all around you.

BATTLE 360: USS ENTERPRISE CALL TO DUTY

The central Pacific,

February 1, 1942.

Aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, with 2,800 men aboard,

steams through hostile waters near the Marshall lslands.

War on the high seas has been raging for almost two months.

Tensions on-board run high.

1:40 P.M.

Two miles off the carrier's starboard bow,

five twin-engine Japanese bombers break out of the clouds

and swoop toward Enterprise in a low glide.

They're Mitsubishi G4Ms,

Allied codename: Betty.

Enterprise's antiaircraft guns greet the invaders with a cloud of lead.

Even with the carrier guns banging away,

the Japanese Bettys are still determined

to deliver their 132-pound high explosives onto Enterprise's deck.

Just one hit could put this floating airfield out of commission.

The Japanese planes open their bomb bay doors

and let the ordnance fly.

All the bombs miss,

but one is close enough to rock the Enterprise.

Shrapnel rains down on the carrier's deck,

mortally wounding one of her men.

With their bomb bays empty, the enemy planes bug out,

except the one in the rear.

Although American gunfire has left her critically wounded,

the last bomber does a 180-degree left turn

and buzzes back toward the carrier.

He knew he'd lost, and he was going down,

so he was going to take some of us with him.

Enterprise captain George Murray orders instant evasive action.

"Full right rudder."

As the ship attempts to swing to the right

out from under the bomber,

the enemy plane dips down

to just a couple hundred feet above the water.

All of our guns that could were firing at it,

but it was coming on.

It kept coming and coming.

Aviation Machinist's Mate Bruno Peter Gaido

sees the impending disaster and scrambles into action.

This sailor actually ran across the flight deck,

jumped into a parked airplane,

got on one of the machine guns from the plane.

And he took the guns up like this,

and he started shooting at him like this.

With the ship moving sideways,

at the last moment, the suicidal enemy bomber

charts a flight plan for maximum destruction.

He banks sharply to the right

on a collision course with the Enterprise.

As the bomber crosses over the deck,

its right wing shears off the tail section of Gaido's plane.

But the intrepid machinist's mate is unhurt and still firing

as the enemy plane skids off the carrier deck.

And the gunner took the plane around,

shot him many other times till he hit the ocean.

It is clear to his shipmates that Gaido's heroics have saved the day.

His quick action spared the carrier a devastating blow.

The commanding officer of the aircraft carrier group,

Rear Admiral William F. Halsey,

has watched the extraordinary shootout from the Enterprise bridge.

10 minutes after that was over, Halsey called down and said,

"Who was that guy in the rear seat of that airplane

"that fired at that attacking plane?"

And he said, "Send him up to the bridge."

From Gaido's description, he stood at attention, saluted.

The Admiral said, "What is your name?"

And he said, "Bruno Gaido."

"What rate are you, Bruno?"

"Aviation Machinist's Mate Third Class."

He says, "Bruno, you are now Aviation Machinist's Mate First Class."

For Enterprise's sailors,

it's just another day on the job,

one of many close calls

they and the most revered aircraft carrier in history

will face over the coming four years.

These guys on the Enterprise

had a 360-degree view of the entire war.

You've got a surface threat,

you've got an air threat,

you've got a subsurface threat.

So it's all around you.

Above and below you was their battle space.

A ship earns one battle star for every major battle she fights.

By the end of the war in the Pacific, the Big E will earn 20 of them--

three more than any other ship

and seven more than any other carrier--

and the nickname Lucky E.

A lot of the people called the Enterprise the Lucky E,

but I don't think she was so lucky as she was good.

The story of the Enterprise began six years earlier.

Launched in 1936,

USS Enterprise, alphanumeric designation: CV-6,

is a new breed of aircraft carrier.

Yorktown class,

the super-carrier of its era.

It's a sleek-hulled, medium-weight vessel,

108-feet-wide, with a flight deck running across

almost the full 809 feet of her length.

Her deck is Washington State timber,

her hull, Pennsylvania steel.

Displacing 25,000 tons when fully loaded,

the Enterprise has a range

of 12,000 miles

with a top speed of 32 1/2 knots.

She's armed with 24

.50-caliber machine guns,

four quad 1.1-inch cannons,

and eight 5-inch guns

that can take out air or surface targets

from a maximum distance

of 18,200 yards.

The Big E weighs

more than 16,000 tons less

than the older carriers in the fleet,

but can carry the same number of warplanes into battle.

She's more fuel-efficient,

more agile, more deadly.

The Enterprise had a spirit about it,

indomitability.

No other ship was going to compare with it.

The Enterprise can carry up to 96 aircraft.

It is an armed airport.

They have all of those workshops and areas

underneath the flight deck, what's called the hangar deck,

where they service the planes

and where the planes are usually stowed.

There are three elevators,

and that's how those planes are brought up to the flight deck

or taken below.

The carrier is the floating base

for one squadron of TBD Devastator torpedo bombers,

the slowest aircraft,

which are typically held back

until enemy surface ships have been spotted.

One squadron of Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter planes

patrols near the ship, guarding it from air attack.

And two squadrons of SBD Dauntless scout bombers

are routinely deployed to search

200-square-mile sectors in all directions

for an enemy presence.

If the enemy is located,

the SBD, with a two-man crew

and a max speed of 250 miles per hour,

can win an air-to-air shootout

with the two .50-caliber machine guns

in its nose

and dual rear-mounted .30-caliber

free-floating machine guns.

It also has the capability of hitting enemy ships

with 1,200 pounds of bombs.

With its cadre of warplanes,

Enterprise is well-equipped for battle with Japan,

but none of the Big E's pilots have ever fired a shot in anger.

How will they respond when the Empire of the Sun

delivers its first attack?

War with Japan is imminent,

and while USS Enterprise is the super-carrier of her era,

she won't be fighting alone.

At sea, the carrier is like the quarterback of a football team.

She's defended by cruisers and destroyers

on the surface of the water around her,

by scout planes, bombers, and fighter planes

launched from her deck

and patrolling the skies overhead,

and sometimes even by submarines beneath the waves out in front.

The escort ships that sail closest to the carrier are the destroyers.

A destroyer is a relatively small warship,

typically with a displacement

of about 2,200 tons,

a length of some 400 feet,

and a width of about 40 feet.

Like Enterprise, a destroyer's largest guns

are her dual-purpose 5-inchers,

capable of firing 5-inch projectiles at either surface or air targets.

When taking on airplanes, these guns don't go for a direct hit.

They send up a barrage of shells, known as flak,

which are fused to explode at a specific altitude,

hopefully taking out any aircraft that are approaching the fleet.

The explosions send out blasts of shrapnel that leave behind

those distinctive puffs of black smoke.

The destroyers were the last line of defense

before the Japanese could get to the carriers.

Larger gunships, called cruisers,

are typically more distant from the carrier,

to serve as her first line of defense.

Their primary mission is to protect that carrier at all cost.

Everything else is secondary.

It was a team effort.

U.S. submarines also occasionally lend the carrier a hand.

They're the eyes and the ears of that whole fleet.

They can virtually be undetected,

they're great for reconnaissance,

and they can sink ships before they even know that they're there.

But Enterprise is the heartbeat of the task force.

It takes thousands of men

to keep this floating city on the move.

Clerks, yeomen, cooks,

men in the anti-aircraft divisions,

radar men, radio men, signal men,

different types of technicians.

The ship typically has a Marine detachment,

and their job is security for the ship,

and they generally have battle stations.

There are a lot of people on an aircraft carrier,

and all of them are doing different jobs.

The average age aboard ship is 19 years old,

and these young men have come from all across the country

to serve on this massive melting pot.

The decks echo with the accents of the Deep South and the Midwest.

Ranch hands from Texas

bunking with street toughs from Hell's Kitchen.

Guys from Pennsylvania, Alabama, California,

and everywhere in between.

For many of these American boys,

life aboard this mega ship takes some getting used to.

I grew up in Round Rock,

and there was 1,200 people in Round Rock when I left there.

Went aboard the Enterprise,

and there was about 2,800 on the Enterprise.

It was like a city. You didn't know all of them.

The Enterprise was the biggest ship

I’d ever seen in my life.

In fact, when I walked up the gangplank for the first time,

I was imagining, "Golly, there must be a swimming pool on here."

In 1941, the crew was still a largely unproven group

of sailors and marines.

How they would respond in the heat of battle

was anybody's guess.

Being afraid carries a lot of baggage with it.

I was never so afraid that I wasn't able to carry out

all my responsibilities 100%,

because I, like everybody else aboard that ship,

was determined we were not ever going to let out shipmates down.

I think that one thing there kept us on the job

regardless of what the circumstances were.

Toughness starts at the top,

and Enterprise's task force

is run by the toughest admiral in the Pacific,

William F. "Bull" Halsey.

Halsey's fearless and disciplined,

and most importantly,

he's a scrapper.

Bull Halsey was a man of great personal will,

a firm commander,

a man that wanted to be in the middle of the action,

in the thick of the combat.

He was a fighting admiral.

I have seen him many times on the bridge,

when we were under dive-bombing attacks,

shaking his fist and cussing those Japanese dive bombers,

and he was out there.

He'd have a helmet on, but that was about all.

His men immediately respect him,

and over the next several months,

they will come to love him too.

In the fall of 1941,

Halsey and the other American commanders

have a wary eye on Japan.

The Japanese have made several threatening moves in recent years,

invading china

and allying themselves with Germany and Italy

to form the original Axis of Evil.

The Empire of the Sun is anxious to expand

its territories across Asia.

The U.S. and her allies are determined to stop them.

Attempts to negotiate with Japan have floundered,

and American intelligence has intercepted ominous messages

hinting at war.

By November 27, 1941, talks with Japan have ceased.

The following day,

Admiral Halsey approves the issuance of a special order:

Battle Order Number 1 .

Bill Norberg, a yeoman, or clerk, aboard the Enterprise,

recalls some of the inspiring language from the order.

The things that I recall most clearly are,

"The Enterprise is now operating under wartime conditions."

"Steady nerves and stout hearts are needed."

Steady nerves and stout hearts indeed.

December 6, 1941.

Enterprise is 300 miles from Pearl Harbor.

The Big E is due back at Pearl this evening.

Lucky for Enterprise and her task force,

Mother Nature has other ideas.

We ran into a terrific storm,

and we fairly well weathered that

in the pretty good-sized ship that we had.

But our little tin-can destroyers were bouncing about

like bobbles on the water.

They used up so much of their fuel

that we had to slow down and stop and refuel them.

This twist of fortune

will actually keep Enterprise and her task force

from the far worse fate

awaiting the ships docked at Pearl Harbor.

Despite the storm, Enterprise still manages

to launch 18 scout bomber planes

on a routine reconnaissance mission on the morning of December 7th.

But this morning will be anything but routine.

200 miles to the east,

353 Japanese warplanes are headed for a date with infamy.

Enterprise crewman Sergeant Frank Graves

has been temporarily assigned to a post on dry land.

He's at machine gun school near the entrance of Pearl Harbor.

History is about to happen,

and he's got a front-row seat.

I heard some strange engine sounds.

I looked up, and right above the algarroba trees,

probably not more than 75 feet in the air,

were large Japanese 3-seater torpedo bombers

with a torpedo hanging on, single file, one behind the other,

and I started yelling, "Japs. Japs."

Finally, I guess one guy decided to have some fun,

and he opened fire on us,

hit the guy next to me.

Although Enterprise herself is not in the thick of the battle,

Pearl Harbor provides a preview of the fearsome firepower

the ship will soon be facing.

In addition to their Zero fighter planes,

the Japanese air arsenal includes

the B5M2 torpedo bomber,

nickname: Kate.

With a top speed of 235 miles per hour

and a crew of three,

the plane doubles

as a high-altitude bomber.

But the aircraft that will prove to be the most deadly,

sinking more Allied warships

than any other in the Pacific war,

is the D3A1 dive bomber,

nickname: Val.

With a two-man crew

and a max speed of 240 miles per hour,

the Val is capable of carrying one 550-pound bomb

and two 130-pound bombs.

We can see the dive bombers working over Pearl Harbor.

Later on, some high-level bombers came in on Pearl Harbor,

and I suspect that's the one that got the Arizona.

More than 100 miles out to sea,

Enterprise receives word

that something is happening in the harbor.

Something came over the radio,

"Pearl Harbor under attack. This is no drill."

When Admiral Halsey gets the news,

he has just finished breakfast

and poured his second cup of coffee.

Halsey, the men around him, and the Enterprise herself

are suddenly electrified.

We were pretty much aghast.

It just seemed surreal

that we could actually be at war right that minute

after we'd been at peace just a minute or so before.

I think many of us grew up that morning.

Beyond the horizon to the east,

the men of Enterprise's Scouting Squadron 6

approach Pearl Harbor

and begin to notice that something is very wrong.

We could see the smoke billowing up from the island,

and I said to the pilot,

"What the hell's the Army doing

"holding maneuvers on a Sunday for?"

The true state of affairs is about to become very clear.

The squadron's radios crackle

with a frantic call from one of the pilots.

It was Clarence Dickinson,

and he had a squeaky little voice that you couldn't miss him.

"For -- sake, shoot that son of a -- on our tail!

"He's shooting real bullets!"

As Dickinson roars into the fight at Pearl,

multiple enemy Zero fighters jump him.

His rear-seat gunner opens fire and downs one of the attackers.

But finally, Dickinson's plane succumbs

to the barrage of enemy bullets.

He didn't die. His gunner was killed,

but he parachuted, and he made it back

and got to fly another plane just right away.

Dickinson may have survived,

but the first tangle with the enemy has been devastating.

Six of the 18 planes Enterprise launched that morning are lost,

and for 11 of her airmen,

the first battle of the war will also be their last.

December 8, 1941 6:00 P.M.

USS Enterprise finally steams into its home port

on the evening of December 8th, roughly 32 hours after the attack.

The ships were on fire.

There was smoke everywhere.

There was oil all over the water.

I don't recall seeing any bodies floating around, thank goodness,

but it was a nasty mess.

It looked bad. It smelled bad.

You could almost feel gloom and doom in the air.

They had fire boats and tugs in trying to put out the fires.

The surface of Pearl Harbor was about maybe 3, 4 inches deep

with fuel oil.

Surveying the destruction,

Admiral Halsey swears that when he's done

the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell.

Halsey orders every able body on the ship,

officer and enlisted alike,

to help refuel and re-provision Enterprise as quickly as possible.

It's a job that normally takes a full day of round-the-clock work.

On this day, the men get it done in seven hours.

For the USS Enterprise to roll into Pearl Harbor,

see all that carnage, then do what they need to do

within seven hours, turn right back around

and get back out to sea,

most people would think that would be pretty amazing.

I just think that it just shows the American spirit

that, you know what? Okay, you did this to us.

Watch this. Here we come now.

The sneak attack on Pearl

has crippled the American Pacific Fleet.

4 cruisers,

5 destroyers,

and 4 auxiliary ships have been damaged or destroyed.

None of the fleet's eight battleships have been spared.

Four are sunk, and the rest have taken heavy damage.

But by striking when none

of the seven U.S. aircraft carriers were in port,

the Japanese made a critical mistake,

and they know it.

Starting now, Enterprise and her fellow carriers

are at the top of the enemy hit list.

Of course, the Japanese wanted the carriers,

because, first of all, they're taking out one of our ships,

then they're taking out airplanes,

and they're taking out personnel all at the same time.

So they're killing three birds with one stone.

They believe if they could've knocked out all of our carriers,

that they could win this war hands down.

We knew that we were an awful big target.

Enterprise sails out of Pearl on Tuesday morning

into a strange, new world,

where the threat of death looms just over the horizon.

I suspect every one of us probably would have had in our mind,

"Why did this have to happen?"

"But now that it has, what are we going to do about it?"

When we went back to sea on Tuesday morning,

for all we knew, we were right into the jaws

of the lmperial battle fleet,

and so we were a bunch of scared sailors.

Understandably, tensions are high aboard Enterprise

and within her task force.

Fear of enemy submarines is pervasive.

All eyes are open for them.

Someone spotted something they thought was a periscope,

and, of course, the destroyer escorts opened fire on it.

Dropped a few depth charges around.

This thing kept bobbing up periodically,

and they finally got up close enough to see what it was.

Someone had lost a mop overboard somewhere in the line

and this thing was...

The mop handle kept bouncing up toward the surface,

and everyone was a little bit amazed about

all of the depth charges and ammo that was wasted on that mop.

But the deep waters near Hawaii do conceal legitimate threats.

December 10, 1941

The Big E is on patrol near the Hawaiian Islands.

Off to the south of the carrier,

Perry Teff, a Dauntless dive bomber pilot

from Enterprise's Scouting Squadron 6,

spots enemy submarines at the surface.

Submarines have to come up for air at least once every 24 hours

in order to run the diesel engines that recharge their batteries.

This morning, Japanese submarine I-70

is in Perry Teff's sights.

Time for some revenge.

The American pilot swoops in and drops a thousand-pound bomb.

The explosion rocks the Japanese submarine,

damaging it and preventing it from diving beneath the surface.

Sometime later,

fellow Enterprise scout pilot Clarence Dickinson,

the man who parachuted from his damaged plane

at Pearl Harbor,

takes another dangerous dive on I-70.

Being a dive bomber pilot in World War II

takes nerves of steel.

The Dauntless pilots execute this death-defying maneuver

at 275 miles per hour with their canopies open

so that they can bail out quickly if they're hit.

To ensure the element of surprise,

they take their dive at an insanely sharp angle of 70 to 75 degrees.

70-degree dive angle on a World War II dive bomber,

it's pretty dynamic.

It's like your face is pointing at the ground.

If I hold you up by your feet

and give you just a little bit of a push forward, that's 70 degrees.

Now, we don't have to dive at 70-degree angles today,

because technology has allowed us to do much less dynamic dive angles.

Dickinson plunges down towards the sub

and finishes the job.

Payback.

It's the first enemy ship sunk by the U.S. Navy in World War II.

And the kill belongs to USS Enterprise.

For the USS Enterprise to get the first naval kill,

it had to lift the spirits not only of just the ship's crew itself,

but all of the American people

to show, you know what? We're not done.

We're not even close to being done.

Enterprise carries on with its patrol duties

in the waters near Hawaii until late January 1942.

Try as it might,

the ship has no luck locating enemy planes

and surface vessels near its home islands.

The Japanese fleet has long since retired to distant waters.

But even without the enemy in attack mode,

life aboard ship remains perilous.

Every time a plane takes off or lands on the carrier's deck,

death is in the air.

Landing on an aircraft carrier is always a difficult maneuver.

Eventually, with enough experience, you get to the point

where you can actually enjoy day landings.

Night landings are always not enjoyable.

From the time of the very first carriers,

the Navy set out to document any aviation mishaps,

so that when mistakes are made,

other pilots on-board and across the entire fleet

can learn from them.

James Barnhill, the ship's bugler,

is also a skilled photographer.

One of his jobs is to film

these death-defying takeoffs and landings.

I saw so many that would bounce and go over the side

or came in to one side of the flight deck or the other

and go into the catwalk.

If it looked like they were in trouble,

then we started the cameras rolling.

If it looked like it was a good landing, we didn't bother.

The pilots know that if they see the cameramen

stand up and start rolling,

it means they're probably heading for a rough landing.

They would just be sitting up there like vultures,

waiting to snap pictures of another crash.

Back in the day, the pilots would call that area the "vulture's nest,"

and that name has stuck through today.

You only have a space of landing that is 400 feet long.

You have six wires out there,

and you have to land on one of those wires.

Of course, you don't want to land on number six.

I've only landed on modern aircraft carriers

where we have four wires, and I can tell you,

when you miss the three and are headed to the fourth,

getting pretty close to the end of the carrier.

You always know when you caught a four wire.

Now, with the six wires that they had

back in World War II time frame,

I imagine it was pretty similar.

You knew when you caught the late wires.

But really, in pilot terms,

we don't care what wire we catch,

as long as we catch a wire.

February 1, 1942

The days of training and patrolling are over.

Time to take the fight to the enemy.

Target: Wotje Island, central Pacific,

in the Marshall Islands chain.

Objective: Deny the Japanese

a base for a possible invasion

of the Hawaiian Islands.

Strategy: Destroy Japanese airstrips,

fuel storage tanks,

ammunition dumps,

and anti-aircraft batteries.

Enterprise's task force cruiser, USS Northampton,

kicks off the attack.

Her 8-inch guns hurl their 260-pound projectiles

five miles across the sea to their targets on the island.

Closing to within 3 1/2 miles,

Northampton can now use her smaller 5-inch guns

to assault the shore batteries.

They were firing shells over the Japanese shore batteries,

and instead of hitting the shore batteries with direct hits,

the shells were exploding over the shore batteries,

showering those positions with shrapnel.

USS Northampton is 600 feet long

and 66 feet wide

and displaces 9,000 tons.

She has a top speed of 32 1/2 knots.

With nine 8-inch guns,

four 5-inch rifles,

eight .50-caliber machine guns,

and six torpedo tubes,

she is a force to be reckoned with.

The island of Wotje is experiencing that force this morning.

100 miles west of Wotje,

surveillance has revealed a heavy concentration

of enemy vessels at Kwajalein Atoll.

So while Northampton takes care of Wotje,

Enterprise sends its SBD bombers to strike the Kwajalein anchorage.

Dusty Kleiss speeds south

toward an outpost on tiny Kwajalein Island.

I found a cruiser there.

There were no fighters around.

Oh, boy, this is great.

So I got up there, and I made this dive.

Dive bombing is almost unheard of in modern warfare.

Precision-guided bombs

that can be deadly accurate from 40,000 feet

have made this risky maneuver obsolete.

But if you wanted to be sure of hitting your target

in World War II,

you had to get in close.

There's a lot of factors that come into dive bombing:

speed, dive angle,

altitude at release, winds aloft.

Clearly, the longer you wait to release the bomb,

the closer in to the target you're going to be

and the less all those factors can influence the bomb's trajectory.

So in that respect, waiting is better.

But you also got to be able to pull out of that dive bomb,

and you also you want to release the munition

so that, when it explodes,

you're not caught in the frag pattern,

so back then, you typically released a bomb

between 1,000 and 2,000 feet.

Again, the longer you wait, the more accurate it's going to be,

but also the faster you're going to be pulling out

and the lower you're going to be pulling out,

so it's kind of a...

There's a happy medium in there somewhere.

As he dives down toward the Japanese cruiser,

Kleiss has just one bomb aboard, a 500-pounder.

He knew he had one shot and one shot only.

Everything had to be perfect.

And he did it.

I clobbered it.

As he pulls out of his dive, Kleiss is feeling pressure

five to six times the force of gravity,

but there's no better feeling

than getting right up in the enemy's face

and delivering a knockout blow.

Five miles to the north,

a fellow Enterprise dive bomber pilot

has discovered a cluster of merchant ships

near the Carlos Pass.

He scores a well-timed hit on a tanker

scrambling toward the channel's mouth.

It was trying to go out at sea,

and he hit it right on the head and caught it on fire.

The tanker just happens to be at the choke point of the channel,

and it blocks passage by the remaining ships.

Well, here were all these ships inside of the lagoon.

Then the USS Enterprise launched nine torpedo planes after

to go get those remaining ships that were caught inside that channel.

Practically no anti-aircraft guns

and here these things couldn't move,

well, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The torpedo bombers sent by Enterprise

are Douglas TBD Devastators, slow, antiquated aircraft

that will soon be replaced by more agile planes.

With a sluggish maximum speed

of 207 miles per hour

and a feeble rate of climb

of just 720 feet per minute,

TBDs are overly vulnerable

to both enemy fighters

and anti-aircraft fire.

They carry a single 2,200-pound Mark Xlll torpedo.

The Enterprise TBDs pass over Kwajalein Lagoon

and drop their payloads,

but there's not a single explosion.

At this point in the war,

American torpedo technology is hit-or-miss,

and it's mostly miss.

9 out of every 10 torpedoes veers off course

or fails to detonate.

It's a frustrating reality

for the pilots risking their lives at Kwajalein.

Launch their torpedoes, not one hit.

Luckily, there are American bombers in the area too,

and their explosives are working just fine.

Kwajalein harbor is a smoking, burning wreck

by the time Admiral Halsey calls off the attack.

Some 90 enemy personnel are killed at Kwajalein,

including the area commander.

The Marshall Islands raids are a huge success,

and Enterprise returns to a hero's welcome at Pearl Harbor.

People were standing out there and cheering.

I remember nurses waving towels.

I remember some of the Army people holding their rifles up.

And I remember one guy holding a mop,

and he was shaking that back and forth.

They were so elated

that somebody had whacked the enemy good and proper.

And, of course, our sailors

were manning the flight deck by the hundreds,

and they were looking pretty spiffy up there,

and as we passed the Nevada, those guys hollered out in unison,

"Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!"

And our people responded.

Just unbelievably exhilarating,

"Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!"

Now, it sounds kind of sophomoric at a time like this

when you look back on it,

but at that time, it's just exactly what we needed.

The sailors and airmen of Enterprise

will soon get yet another small taste of sweet revenge.

Mid-April 1942

Sailors on the deck of the USS Enterprise

notice that the air is getting chillier.

They’ve been operating in the steamy South Seas for weeks,

and now the brisk weather is making it very obvious

that they're sailing north,

but only the admiral seems to know why.

Tension aboard Enterprise is still high.

At any moment, the calming sounds of the sea

could be interrupted by the whine of a Japanese Zero

or a torpedo broadsiding a ship.

Up on the bridge,

captain's Yeoman Bill Norberg is working an all-nighter.

I was working my shift on the bridge at night,

and it was a 12:00-to-4:00 in-the-morning shift,

and I was out on the port wing of the bridge,

and out there, it just so happened

the general quarters buzzer is out there.

And I kind of nodded off,

and my head was leaning back, and it hit that buzzer,

and the thing went off.

And, of course, that means everybody jump out of your sacks,

get your clothes on, get to your battle stations.

Around the ship, the crew jumps into action.

Men roll out of bunks and grab for helmets.

Crews ready their guns.

But the skies remain quiet.

Soon, word spreads that this is a false alarm,

and everyone aboard ship wants to know who triggered it.

And I heard somebody say,

"I don't know who it was, but he had a pea coat on,"

and that was me.

And I took off, and nobody caught me, thank goodness,

'cause, you know, sleeping on duty

isn't the best thing you can do in time of war.

At roughly 6:00 A.M. on the morning of April 12th,

the men of the Big E and her task force

notice a completely unexpected sight in the distance.

I walked out from the comm shack on the walkway,

and I looked over there, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

The surprise vessel is friendly.

It's their sister carrier USS Hornet, but she's carrying mysterious cargo.

There was something wrong with Hornet's silhouette.

What was wrong with it is the flight deck

was half-covered with these big, strange-looking airplanes

that were not painted Navy colors,

and they weren't Naval aircraft.

And they finally figured out they were B-25s,

and they had Army camouflage painted on them.

The Army B-25s are here

to make a bombing run on the heart of Japan.

Target: Tokyo

and other industrial centers around Japan.

Objective: Take out factories and munitions plants

and demoralize the enemy by assaulting her homeland.

Strategy: Attack with 16 B-25 bombers

launched from USS Hornet.

I don't like to use the word "revenge,"

but, sure, there was some revenge that--

They wanted to get some back. You know, they were mad.

And they wouldn't stand for it then, and we don't stand for it now.

You reach out and you hurt us,

we're coming after you, and you know what?

There ain't a damn thing you can do about it.

Army Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle

has agreed to lead the daring mission,

and he's chosen the B-25

as the aircraft on which to trust his life.

The North American Mitchell B-25B

is a twin-engine medium bomber

with a range, depending on bomb load,

of about 1,300 miles.

It's typically manned by a crew of five

and can deliver up to 5,000 pounds of bombs.

While other bombers have more range and power,

the B-25's modest wingspan

of 67 feet, 7 inches

will allow USS Hornet

to fit more bombers on its flight deck.

The plan is for the carrier to get Doolittle's bombers

within striking distance of Japan.

They will then launch,

bomb Tokyo and their other targets,

and continue on to land

in friendly remote Chinese territory.

Since Hornet's normal defensive aircraft

must be stored below deck to make room for the Mitchells,

Enterprise and her task force will go along

to protect the Hornet if she is attacked.

We were all thrilled, but we were scared to death.

We said, "This is a suicide mission."

In order to ensure that Doolittle's bombers

have enough fuel to reach the designated landing area in china,

Hornet and Enterprise need to get the planes

within 400 miles of the Japanese mainland.

But bad luck intervenes.

We ran across this little-- what we thought was a fishing boat.

It turned out to be a patrol boat.

We didn't pick it up on our surface radar.

It was that small.

Cruiser Nashiville went out with her 6-inch battery

and sank this thing.

And we thought, "Well, maybe we got away with it."

But Radio Pearl Harbor actually intercepted

a message reporting warships.

So they had to launch,

and they had to launch right then and there.

There was no turning back.

The carriers are 650 miles from the Japanese mainland.

It means Doolittle and his men might not have the fuel

to make it out safely.

They choose to go anyway.

At 8:20 A.M.,

on the cold, damp, and blustery morning of April 18, 1942,

the B-25 Mitchell bombers prepare for takeoff.

High wind, high seas,

carrier racing 30 knots,

pitching and bucking like a bronco,

about 25 knots headwind,

wind on the flight deck of the carrier's 55 knots.

The pilots have more to worry about than the weather.

Carriers like Enterprise and Hornet

weren't designed to launch planes this heavy,

and this is the first time a B-25 has attempted to take off

from a carrier in combat.

That aircraft wasn't designed to be taking off

on an aircraft carrier, so they really had to get

as much wind over the deck as possible

because wind over the deck translates to flying speed off the angle.

Once the bombers are speeding down the flight deck,

there's only two places they can end up.

With enough speed, they'll be in the sky.

Too slow, and they'll be in the sea.

Taking off in a high-wind, high-sea environment

is always tricky.

Your number-one priority right there

is going to be making sure that the aircraft

is lifting off the end of the deck when the bow is high.

Making it even more difficult,

the bombers have been stripped of all non-essential items

to make room for more fuel and bombs.

They're even heavier than usual.

Colonel Doolittle himself is the first to go.

And they got all these aircraft stacked up on the flight deck,

so the first guys to take off have the least amount of runway.

Doolittle's bomber struggles off the deck,

but manages to stay airborne.

The second one to go off almost dipped into the water.

And if I recall, there was one more plane

that almost went in the drink.

But all 16 of them got on their way.

Four hours after launch, the bombers finally reach their targets.

Despite enemy flak, each plane drops 2,000 pounds of hell

into the heart of the Japanese homeland.

They then turn toward the Chinese coast

and their designated landing area.

But as the last drops of fuel funnel from the bombers' tanks,

most of Doolittle's air crews

have no choice but to bail out or crash-land.

Three crewmen perish in the process.

Eight are captured by the Japanese.

The physical damage done to Japan has been negligible,

but the psychological impact is truly significant

on both sides of the Pacific.

It was definitely a morale booster, not only for our servicemen,

but for our whole country.

At a time of war,

when the enemy is getting nailed at the heart of their homeland,

it makes you feel like,

"You know what? You tried to stop us.

"Ain't happening. We're coming after you."

It showed the Japanese that they weren't invincible,

that we could reach out and we could touch them.

The first six months of the war

have been a trial by fire for the crew of the Enterprise.

In December of 1941,

the men of the Big E were sailing the Pacific,

unsure of what lay beyond the horizon.

Now they are well on their way to becoming

a battle-tested fighting machine.

Morale on-board runs high.

We didn't look for the war to last very long.

We just didn't think that the Japanese were that strong.

They thought that the war would be over relatively quick,

and they couldn't have been more wrong.

Soon, the pilots and gunners from the Enterprise task force

will come face to face with the enemy again,

and the course of the war will change forever

in the massive and deadly Battle of Midway.