{"product_id":"the-doolittle-raiders-group-of-brigadier-general-richard-august-knobby-knobloch-w4444","title":"The Doolittle Raiders Group Of Brigadier General Richard August \"Knobby\" Knobloch","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDistinguished Flying Cross (bronze gilt, numbered \"1034\" on the edge of the bottom arm, 44.3 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback); Air Force Distinguished Service Medal (bronze gilt with thirteen white enameled stars, blue glass centrepiece, engraved \"RICHARD A KNOBLOCH\" on the reverse, 54 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback and hook); Legion of Merit, Legionnaire Grade (bronze gilt with red, white, blue and green enamels, engraved \"R.A. KNOBLOCH\" on the reverse, 46.5 mm x 48 mm, oak leaf cluster on its original ribbon with brooch pinback and hook); Air Medal (bronze, 42 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback); American Defense Service Medal (bronze, 31.8 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback); American Campaign Medal (bronze, 32 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback); Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (bronze, 32 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback); World War II Victory Medal (bronze, 36.5 mm, original ribbon with brooch pinback); National Defense Service Medal (bronze, 32 mm, oak leaf cluster on its original ribbon with brooch pinback); China (Republic): Army, Navy and Air Corps Medal, Class A, 1st Grade (three-piece construction, silver with red and blue enamels, numbered \"3056\" on the reverse, 51 mm x 51.3 mm, on an original Class A, 1st Grade ribbon with hook and eye, bottom star point bent slightly back); and Italy (Republic): Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 4th Class, Officer (18K Gold with white, red and green enamels, marked \"750\" (18K Gold) on the ring, 43.2 mm x 61 mm inclusive of  its crown suspension, original ribbon, reverse missing its star on the cross, obverse missing its red enamel highlight at the base of the crown). Extremely fine. Accompanied by a \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e Raiders Crested Jacket Patch (gold-coloured and silvered bullion wire, in various textures, with red, white, blue, black and yellow embroidery, red and black threading giving definition to five icons, illustrating a Mitchell B-25 Bomber in flight at the top, with five elements representing the crews who took part in the Tokyo \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eRaid\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e: a series of seven Maltese Crosses (which come from the standard of the 17th Bomber Group, from which three of the squadrons were selected), a Thunderbird (34th Squadron), a Kicking Mule (95th Squadron), a Tiger's Head (37th Squadron) and a Winged Helmet (89th Reconnaissance Squadron), black cloth backer, 87 mm x 106 mm, four push pins on the reverse).\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003eFootnote: Richard August \"Knobby\" Knobloch (May 27, 1918 - August 13, 2001) was a Brigadier General in the United States Air Force. He was born on May 27, 1918 in West Allis, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, the son of William M. Knobloch and Mary M. Shanks. He would later move to Milwaukee, and then to Lake Forest, Illinois, where he graduated from Lake Forest High School, before returning to Wisconsin, where he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1936, in order to be a veterinarian and joined the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) program. Knobloch met the woman that would later become his wife at an ROTC spring formal, Rosemary Alma Rice. The couple would marry on August 1, 1943 and have two daughters, Sandra and Lynda. They had dated for about a year when, in 1940, Knobloch made a decision, that would interrupt his college studies and his love life. He knew that he had to \"do something\" about the war situation and joined the Aviation Cadet Program with the United States Army Air Forces, on November 25, 1940 at Randolph Field, Texas. Knobloch had had an interest in aviation since the age of nine, which was initially triggered by Charles Lindberg's visit to Milwaukee in 1927, as Lindberg was on a tour after he had made his flight to Paris aboard the Spirit of St. Louis. Knobloch took his flight training at Randolph and Kelly Fields in Texas, receiving his pilot wings on July 12, 1941 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. His first assignment was to the 37th Bombardment Squadron, Pendleton Field, Oregon, as Pilot and Assistant Operations Officer. The squadron's mission was submarine patrol of the U.S. West Coast, flying the B-25 Mitchell, until he volunteered and was selected for a secret mission, to be led by Lieutenant Colonel James \"Jimmy\" \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e, in February 1942. Just two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Army Air Forces planned to retaliate by bombing Tokyo and four other Japanese cities, taking advantage of the fact that American aircraft carriers could approach near enough to the Japanese mainland to make such an attack feasible. Lieutenant Colonel James \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e lead the mission, known officially as the 1st Special Aviation Project (later known as the Tokyo \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eRaid\u003c\/span\u003e and later nicknamed the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eRaid\u003c\/span\u003e), assembling a volunteer force of aircrews, who began their top-secret training by learning a new technique, to make their North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers airborne in the short distance of 500 feet or less, to simulate taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The future raiders had weeks of hazardous training at Eglin Field, Florida and the Naval Air Station at Alameda, California. Knobloch only had about sixty hours in the B-25 up until April of 1942, when the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e took place. He would be interviewed years later about the experience, stating \"We were all part of the 17th Bomb Group, which was the only organization in the United States that had B-25's. We had about three weeks training down at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and then one morning were called about four or five in the morning and told, \"Pack your bags - - - we're going to Alameda, California\". Not yet knowing we were going to \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e Japan. It was kept highly classified and we didn't even discuss it among ourselves. Only one person beside General \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e in our group knew what our target was. And that was Jack Hilger. He was the deputy commander of our little group. We started with about twenty-two crews and of these, sixteen were finally selected as the ones to go. We went out to the west coast to the Sacramento Air Depot first and spent a couple of days there, where they did some work on the aircraft. Then moved on down to Alameda Naval Air Station and were loaded on board the U.S.S. Hornet. When we were loaded on the carrier, we were still not sure of our target. There was a little bit of guessing whether we were going to Japan or maybe we would be going around the end of South America and attack Rome, Berlin, or whatever. We really had no idea. After loading, they towed the aircraft carrier out into the middle of San Francisco Bay and gave us shore leave. We could see the carrier from the shore sitting out there with the B-25's on the deck. There were some pretty wild parties that night because we knew we were leaving the next day.\" During this time, Knobloch would talk to his girlfriend and future wife in Wisconsin, Rosemary Alma Rice, before leaving the San Francisco area board the U.S.S. Hornet. The Hornet (CV-8) was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. In addition to launching the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eRaid\u003c\/span\u003e on Tokyo, the Hornet would go on to participate in the Battle of Midway, the Buin-Faisi-Tonolai \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eRaid\u003c\/span\u003e, the capture and defense of Guadalcanal and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, where she was irreparably damaged and sunk by enemy destroyers. Hornet was in service for a year and six days and was the last U.S. fleet carrier ever sunk by enemy fire. Knobloch went on to describe the trip aboard the U.S.S. Hornet in detail: \"We were all aboard by \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145686\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003e8 o'clock\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e the next morning. It was a beautiful day. We sailed out under the Golden Gate Bridge heading due west. It was pretty obvious where we were going! Shortly after we lost sight of land, the captain of the ship, Mark Mitscher, came on the PA (Public Address) System and announced to all of us, ''Our destination is Tokyo! \" He further said Admiral Bull Halsey, with an additional number of ships, would meet us somewhere north of Hawaii, and that Bull Halsey had declared he'd take us right into Tokyo Bay if possible. We spent our time on the aircraft carrier working on the aircraft, making sure the guns fired properly, checking bomb shackles, tuning up the engines, and getting everything ready. We had a whole series of targets that we looked at. They were pretty lenient, permitting us to select the ones we thought would do the most damage. They were listed in order of priority and we were met by Bull Halsey's task force about the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145687\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003e7th of April\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e. We ended up with two aircraft carriers, four cruisers, eight destroyers and two tankers. Still heading almost due west toward Japan. Finally on the morning of \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145688\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003eApril 18th\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, about five in the morning, there was a call to General Quarters. And for us, the Army Air Corps crews, our combat post was our aircraft. So we rushed to the flight deck and when we got there, were told to go back down and get our B-4 bags and come back as soon as we could because we were going to be launched. At that time while on deck, we could hear and see one of the cruisers had dropped out of the task force and was shelling a Japanese picket ship sitting not too far away. It looked like a small fishing boat. Also some aircraft had been launched from the other carrier in the task force and they were dive bombing\". The vessel in question was the Japanese patrol boat, No. 23 Nitto Maru, which had radioed their position. It was subsequently sunk by the Brooklyn-class light cruiser U.S.S. Nashville. The original plan was to fly at night, then bomb in the early morning, and recover in China during daylight. But the spotting of the U.S.S. Hornet by the No. 23 Nitto Maru about 670 miles from Japan, on April 18, 1942, forced a earlier departure for the sixteen aircrews. Admiral William F. \"Bull\" Halsey, commanding the daring operation from the U.S.S. Enterprise, launched \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e's North American B-25 Mitchell's about 150 miles early, at the extreme of the aircraft's distance and fuel requirements. Knobloch went on to describe the conditions and scrambling on board the Hornet: \"The reason we had to be launched was because the Japanese would know where we were and they would send out aircraft to attack the task force. It was just about all the naval forces the United States had in the Pacific, because most of our naval power had been lost at Pearl Harbor. There was much scrambling and getting ready. The seas were pretty rough, in fact we were taking water over the bow occasionally when the carrier would get in proper sync with the waves. It wasn't raining and the base of the clouds were not too high. The carrier was cruising at about 20 knots and we probably had about 45 to 50 knots of wind across the deck. The first aircraft to take off was General \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e, at \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145689\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003e8:20\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e. He had no problem getting airborne. The other aircraft followed in about three to five minute intervals behind him. We couldn't use the whole deck because the Navy didn't want us taking off aft of the superstructure of the carrier for fear we'd blow a tire or lose an engine and the aircraft would fly into the superstructure and set the whole carrier on fire. So we each had the same distance for our takeoff roll. We taxied to a position just even with the superstructure and waited there for the launch signal. One of the fellows had a little problem. That was Ted Lawson. His flaps milked up somehow and instead of taking off at full flaps, he took off with zero flaps and rolled off the end of the deck and we thought, oh, oh, there goes the first one into the ocean. But he finally pulled up and recovered and there was no problem. Ted was a damn good pilot and saved the airplane. Trav Hoover also had a problem as he hadn't rolled the stabilizer tab to the proper position. Ted Lawson and his crew later had a movie made about them and it was called \"Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo\" \". Lieutenant Richard A. \"Knobby\" Knobloch (Co-Pilot, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin) of Crew 13 (know as Lucky Thirteen and nicknamed \"The Avenger\"), 37th Bomber Squadron was aboard a B-25B Mitchell aircraft, the 13th of 16 aircraft, that also included Lieutenant Edgar E. McElroy (Pilot, of Ennis, Texas), Lieutenant Clayton J. Campbell (Navigator, of St. Maries, Idaho), Sergeant Robert C. Bourgeois (Bombardier, of Lecompte, Louisiana) and Sergeant Adam Ray Williams (Engineer\/Gunner, of Gastonia, North Carolina). The crew's target was the Yokosuka Naval Station, the only plane assigned to this location, with the other fifteen planes focusing on various targets: ten to Tokyo, two to Yokohama, two to Nagoya and one to Kobe. Knobloch was one of the eighty airmen who, under the leadership of Jimmy \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e, disembarked from the U.S.S. Hornet in the first bombing \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e over Japan in the Second World War, which became known as the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eRaid\u003c\/span\u003e. Knobloch continued, describing the flight and bombing: \"We approached Japan about \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145690\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003e1 o'clock\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, the sixteen airplanes having sixteen individual targets. \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e had all incendiaries on his aircraft because we had hoped to get off at dusk and hit Japan at night. \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e being first would set fires. If the city was blacked out, as we fully expected it to be, we would have been able to use the fires that he started with his incendiaries, to help us find our own individual targets. However, it was bright daylight and the weather constantly improved as we got closer to Japan. Most of us were, I won't say lost, because a pilot is never lost, but maybe, a little disoriented as we hit the coast of Japan. So it took a little flying around until we found some good check points and could make our runs. Our particular target was the naval base at the entrance of Tokyo Bay: Yokosaka. If you've ever been to a naval yard, I'm sure you're aware of how compact everything is and you can't miss with bombs. We had three 500 pound demolition and one 500 pound incendiary. It was an incendiary cluster of about 125 little individual bomblets. When the casing hit the air stream, it broke up into these 125 little bomblets and scatter­ed across the naval yard. You couldn't miss. The 300 bombs came down right on target. I was co-pilot. As all pilots know, a co-pilot doesn't really have much to do, just to get his hands slapped now and then and told to serve the coffee and that sort of thing. One thing I did do, I took some pictures over the target. They happen to be the only pictures that came out of the Tokyo \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e. I took one out of the right side and one out of the left. We all had cameras in our aircraft but we lost all the aircraft so we lost all the cameras except mine, which I bailed out with. So any pictures you see taken over Japan, were mine. I guess that makes me the official photographer. So I was doing something over the target! Left Japan and headed back out to sea to confuse the Japanese, so they would think we were going to some secret base out in the ocean. All the time we were flying as low as we possibly could. In fact, we had to pull up to about a thousand feet to drop our bombs so the demolition wouldn't blow us out of the sky. When we lost sight of land, we headed back around the tip of Japan and across the Yellow Sea into China.\" After having bombed the Yokosuka Naval Station and the other bombers having made it to Japan and dropped their bombs, the squadron of aircraft turned southwest for China. All but one of the B-25s ran out of fuel before reaching their recovery airfields in China and as a result, their crews were forced to either bail out over China or crash-land along the coast. The remaining plane made its way to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union and was met with a very inhospitable welcome. Of the eighty airmen, three were Killed in Action (two off the coast of China, one on the Chinese mainland), eight were taken as Prisoners of War (three later executed, one dying in captivity, four later repatriated), while the other sixty-nine survived, seven of the survivors (including all five members of Lawson's Crew 7) receiving injuries serious enough to require medical treatment. Although fifteen of the sixteen raiders crash landed in China or were lost at sea, it was a tremendous boost for the United States, which had been stung by the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor. The \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it achieved its goal of raising American morale and casting doubt in Japan on the ability of its military leaders to defend their home islands. It also contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's decision to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific, an attack that turned into a decisive strategic defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the United States Navy in the Battle of Midway. \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e, who initially believed that the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial, received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two steps to Brigadier General. Knobloch's Crew 13 themselves were quickly running out of fuel, forcing them to put the aircraft on autopilot, followed by their bailing out at \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145691\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003e22:45\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e. They successfully parachuted, all five landing near Poyang, north of Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. He went into detail, describing the remaining flight of Crew 13 and its harrowing ordeal in the air and on the ground, thereafter: \"The weather, which had been good over Japan but steadily got worse. Most of the aircraft climbed up into the weather and we had automatic pilots and it was something. They called it AFCE (Automatic Flight Control Equipment). It was electrical, not very good, but you didn't have to work too hard. We flew about fourteen hours and then the gauges started to look pretty empty on all the tanks. The indicator was flickering against the empty. We knew it was time to get out. The pilot, McElroy put it on AFCE, and we gathered around the escape hatch, which didn't look very interesting because it's only about two feet square and it's in the bottom of the B-25. You just lifted up a little floor and then you pulled the lever and kicked the hatch out. And here was this black hole with rain seeping up in, it sort of reminded me of the black hole of Calcutta, which I saw later. The crew chief was supposed to go first so Adam Williams started to get out and then crawled back in. He got his legs out and he crawled back up in and he shook hands with all of us and he said, \"Well, so long fellows.\" Then he started to go out again and then he started to crawl back up again and I put my foot on his head and pushed him out and said, \"See you on the ground!\" The Bombardier, who was a Sergeant, went next, then the Navigator, then myself, then the Pilot. I was scared only one time on that \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e. And that's when my parachute opened. I had never bailed out before. In fact, none of us had except \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e. All the people that were on the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e, 16 airplanes, 5 men to a plane, 80 men, only one man had ever bailed out. It was \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e's third jump. When that parachute opened, there was a jerk and I thought to myself, oh, oh, your parachute canopy is tangled in the empennage (tail assembly). So I was frightened. But then the next thing I knew, I was swinging gently down through the clouds. So I got over that and right away thinking, what am I going to do when I hit the ground? Because we didn't know where we were over China. We didn't know whether we were over land, or Japanese-occupied China, or free China. It was a little interesting thinking, \"What are you going to do to evade the Japanese?\" And if you come down in the water, are you going to survive? But then I broke out of the overcast and in spite of the fact that it was pitch black, I saw what looked like a road and a river down below. I thought, gee, that's great. I'll be able to come down near a hamburger stand and get a hamburger and a glass of milk. But I hit the ground about that time without any warning. It was wet. Landed in a rice paddy! I wasn't hurt; took my parachute, rolled it up in a ball and tucked it under a bush alongside the rice paddy and then started to walk. I had a little tiny compass they'd given us and we had agreed that we would all walk on the heading that the airplane was on when we bailed out, hoping that we could assemble. I walked a little way and I had a flashlight along with my camera in a pocket of my flying suit. I had a couple of cans of C rations. I took the flashlight out and flashed it around the sky a little bit and got seven answers. Or seven lights also flashing. I thought to myself, well there's only five of us in the crew and seven lights. Gosh, it didn't take much of a mathematician to figure there was somebody else out there. I put that flashlight away and didn't use it. Well, anyway, walked aways and got to a river, a creek, and started to wade across it and got up to about my waist and decided it was going to be too deep. So went back and found a stack of rice straw and crawled into it to keep warm, for it was raining. Pretty soon I saw a light coming toward me. It was the pilot who was walking in a reciprocal course of the airplane. I didn't know that. I could just see somebody's legs and he got to the other side of the water and the light went out. I sat there a while and finally said, \"Hey\" and didn't get any answer. Tried it again a little louder: \"Hey!\" Still no answer. And finally, I loudly yelled, \"Hey Mac.\" A voice came back, \"Is that you Knobby? \" So I knew it was McElroy. We chatted a while across this water and I told him it was too deep to wade. He said, \"Okay, I'll stay over here, you stay over there 'til dawn and we'll see if we can get together\". It was about eleven or \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145692\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003etwelve o'clock\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e at night. I went back to the stack of rice straw, then and curled up. It was nice and warm in there and I must have fallen asleep because first thing I knew, it was daylight. We were able to get together the next morning. We found something that resembled a boat and I paddled across to Mac's side and took him back to the side of the river I was on. I'd lost my 45 (pistol) when I bailed out. Very foolishly, I had put my cartridge belt on over my parachute harness so when the chute opened, the 45 flew off, so I lost it. Mac said, \"You don't have to worry, I'll protect you.\" We still didn't know where we were. We started walking on the aircraft reciprocal heading, saw a couple of people and they avoided us, made big circles around us. They were obviously peasants, Chinese farmers. We headed toward a village, and then people came out of the village and started to gather. Mac says, \"I'll stay out here and protect you and you go in there and see if you can find out where we are\". I went into the village and they took me to one of the mud houses and gave me some hot water with an egg in it.....food. I kept trying to talk to them but couldn't. I knew they were Chinese. They knew no English. Finally I heard a voice say, \"Do you speak English or American?\" It shocked me. I was so surprised that I looked all around, but couldn't find the source. Pretty soon this voice says, \"Are you English or American?\" And here was a guy right in front of me. I said, \" Oh, boy, you speak English!\" But that's all he knew. He knew no other word. He didn't know thanks, please, yes, goodbye, north, south, east or west. Knew no other words. I went back out to Mac and said, \"They don't know a thing in that village!\" So we started to walk again. Pretty soon we came across the other crew members. Our crew chief, Adam Williams, had bailed out with two 45's on his cartridge belt. He gave me one so I was finally armed again. We started going through the countryside. A boy about fourteen or sixteen years old ran in front of us, and made noises like a gun and made believe he was shooting. Then got in front of us and pushed us. So we decided that wasn't the right way so we just headed off in another direction. Then he smiled and it was all right. We walked a while and pretty soon, came upon a man with a weapon: a rifle. He stopped and presented arms type of thing with his gun at the ready. We kept trying to talk to him. He had no uniform but he had a little button with the flag of China on it. So we figured, well, he's Chinese. And then as we got closer, I jumped him and took his gun away. It almost came apart in my hands. I found it was tied together with rice straw. I opened it and there was no bullet in it. This Chinese lacked everything but courage. He didn't know who we were. But anyway he was a guerilla, fighting behind the lines and without weapons as obviously his gun was no good. He took us to a command post and there we found a Captain who spoke a little English. He took us to another place and we finally assembled with the others. The engineer sprained an ankle a little but it didn't interfere too much with his walking. There were eleven crews that bailed out. Four either ditched or crash landed. One crew went to Vladivostok. President Roosevelt had asked Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, if all the airplanes could go to Russia because it would have saved all the airplanes. The distance to Vladivostok was not very far. But Stalin was busy on the western front with the Germans. And he said, \"Under no circumstances. No airplanes can come.\" But this fellow had excessive gas consumption and the only thing he could do, was to head up to Vladivostok and land wheels down. So his crew became guests of the Kremlin, if you will. They were interned and finally, \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aBn\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-aQJ\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_42145693\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\"\u003efifteen months later\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e, they escaped from Russia across the Iranian border and turned themselves in to the American consul.\" Knobloch reflected upon the mission years later, answering the question, \"How could you do any damage with four 500 pound bombs?\" His reply: \"Our material damage, although not substantial, was considerable. Secondly was the morale impact. It was good for the morale of the United States and its Allies and bad for the morale of the Japanese and the Axis powers. It was obvious that Japan could be attacked. This was just the first strike of many others to follow. Thirdly, another effect of the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e was the Japanese had expanded their perimeter into China; they were making attacks on Australia; they had sunk two British battleships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, in the Indian Ocean. They had taken Indonesia. As a result of our attack on the homeland, sea and air forces went back to Japan, to protect the Emperor and their home islands. Number four, they got the forces back to Japan and then said, \"Okay, now in order to prevent another attack like this, we are going to have to go for the United States.\" So they assembled a fleet, a very large task force, and headed east towards the United States. They were intercepted and as a result, near Midway, and the Battle of Midway occurred. There was a large Japanese fleet and a very small American fleet. The U.S. Navy, was very much outnumbered but they whipped the pants off the Japanese and that stopped the movement towards the western coast of the United States. That was strategically the biggest impact of the Tokyo \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e.\" A little over two weeks after the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e, Knobloch filed the following report: \"Chunking, China \/ May 4, 1942. \/ Subject: Report of Engineering. \/ (Airplanes #40-2247, 40-2297, 40-2282, 40-2344) \/ To: Chief of Air Corps -- Attn. General \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e. \/ Engines and accessories. All four airplanes ran cool and one crew chief claimed he could have obtained better engine performance on auto lean with winterized equipment on engines. Oil pressures and temperatures were normal at all times. On three ships the AC - LS - 85 plug gave satisfactory performance and was highly recommended. The other crew chief claimed the BG - LS - 65 would be better. The difficulties encountered were confined to occasional starving of engine on manual lean (less than auto lean setting). No excessive corrosion noticed on engines or engine accessories. Airplane in General. Bomb shackle adaptors, and antennae leads corroded considerably due to salt air probably. No corrosion noticed on aileron, appendage or flap hangar bolts and posts. Bomb-bay, turret, crawl-away, and wing tanks gave satisfactory performance. No major difficulties in airplane were encountered during the mission. Recommendation by all four ships that fuel transfer pump be located so as work could be performed on it in flight. RICHARD A. KNOBLOCH 1st Lieut. A.C.\" After the \u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eraid\u003c\/span\u003e, he remained in the China-Burma-India Theater, where he flew more than fifty combat\/bombing missions with the 10th Air Force and later, the 491st Bomb Squadron, aboard B-25's and the Douglas C-47's (Gooney Bird), before returning home in July 1943. For his participation with the 1st Special Aviation Project (\u003cspan class=\"m_-5606834997111357382gmail-il\"\u003eDoolittle\u003c\/span\u003e Tokyo Raider Force), United States Army Air Forces, on April 18, 1942, Lieutenant Richard August \"Knobby\" Knobloch was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, his citation reading as follows: \"The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 2, 1926, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Flying Cross to First Lieutenant (Air Corp\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"eMedals","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46119343063317,"sku":"W4444","price":27500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0713\/9105\/2053\/files\/c_4646.jpg?v=1692865461","url":"https:\/\/www.emedals.com\/products\/the-doolittle-raiders-group-of-brigadier-general-richard-august-knobby-knobloch-w4444","provider":"eMedals","version":"1.0","type":"link"}