
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 5, 1995                   TAG: 9510050033
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TASK FORCE MEMBERS TO BE HONORED

A Vinton man and other former U.S. sailors who were part of the task force that launched Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle's famous April 18, 1942, raid on Tokyo will be paid tribute Saturday at the Alameda Naval Air Station in California.

It was at Alameda that the B-25 bombers for the Tokyo raid were loaded aboard the USS Hornet in March and April 1942. Chief of Naval Operations Jeremy Boorda will present certificates commemorating the raid to former members of Adm. Bull Halsey's Task Force 16 and surviving family members.

The 20-year naval service of 73-year-old James E. Bratton, a Roanoke native and Vinton resident, predated World War II, beginning in 1939. During the Doolittle raid, he served as a torpedo man aboard the destroyer USS Benham, which helped escort the Hornet toward the coast of Japan.

The raid is viewed by the Navy as a "watershed event" during the Pacific War because it boosted U.S. morale that had suffered Japanese blows at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. The plan was for Halsey's task force to make its way within 400 miles of the Japanese coast to launch Doolittle's B-25s, but the task force encountered enemy shipping and was forced to launch the bombers 150 miles farther out than planned.

Bratton remembers the day of the launch as misty, with seas so heavy that they were breaking over the bows of the U.S. ships and over the Hornet's flight deck.

Bratton was with the Benham during the battle of Midway, when the destroyer rescued 925 survivors from the carrier Yorktown and destroyer Hammann, and stayed with the Benham until it was sunk during the battle for Guadalcanal. He later served on the carrier Lexington until it was torpedoed and on another ship during the battle of Okinawa.

Saturday's events will include a re-creation of Alameda's part in the Doolittle raid by loading a B-25 onto a successor carrier that bears the Hornet name. The carrier, which temporarily has been saved from the junk heap, will be open to the public during San Francisco's Fleet Week '95, Friday through Wednesday.

by CNB