From the April 18, 2012, Denver Post "Denver veteran aboard USS Hornet watched Doolittle Raiders take off for 1942 raid."
Russell Plybon will never forget April 18, 1942: "I stood right at the center of the flight deck and watched them take off. One of the pilots forgot to put his flaps down, and when he went off the end of the ship, he sunk down, but pretty soon, here he come back up."
Plybon was a 24-year-old farm boy from Missouri who enlisted in the Navy immediately after Pearl Harbor and trained as an aircraft mechanic. The men of the Hornet were not told the nature of the mission until at sea.
They had wondered why the sixteen B-25s were loaded on board at San Francisco, but just assumed they would be ferrying them to Hawaii. since these bombers were designed for land bases.
But.... --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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