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Frank Peak Akers graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1922 and was soon assigned to the destroyer, USS Sumner, which operated in the Pacific Ocean. On 11 September 1925, he earned his naval aviator "Wings of Gold". In 1933, he earned a master's degree in electronic communications from HarvardUniversity. Following that, he was a flight test officer at the Naval Air Station in San Diego, California. While in this assignment on 30 July 1935, he participated in an unusually hazardous experiment when he successfully landed on the nation's first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, while fitted with a special hood for the first "blind landing". He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for this.
During World War II, Akers was navigator on the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, and participated in the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and in the Battle of Midway. Later in the war, while stationed in Washington as head of the Radio and Electrical Branch of the Bureau of Aeronautics, he received the Legion of Merit for his part in developing more efficient and simplified aircraft electronic systems, including radar bombing.
After the war, as the commanding officer of the carrier USS Saratoga from 1945 to 1946, the ship made a record-breaking 642 carrier landings in a single day. He is also the only aviator ever to have been assigned as Assistant Chief of Naval Operations for Undersea Warfare, from 1951 to 1954. On 11 January 1962, he received the Gray Eagle Award honoring him as the Naval Aviator who had been flying longer than any other on active duty, a record he held until his retirement on 1 April 1963. Following retirement, Akers settled in the Washington, D.C. area, where he died in 1988, five days short of his 87th birthday. He was survived by his wife, Mary, who died several months later.
Pacific Air Offensive (1942-45)/Doolittle B-25 Attack on Tokyo
From Month/Year
April / 1942
To Month/Year
April / 1942
Description The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, on 18 April 1942, was an air raid by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu island during World War II, the first air raid to strike the Japanese Home Islands. It demonstrated that Japan itself was vulnerable to American air attack, served as retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and provided an important boost to U.S. morale while damaging Japanese morale. The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle, U.S. Army Air Forces.
Sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were launched without fighter escort from the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS Hornet deep in the Western Pacific Ocean, each with a crew of five men. The plan called for them to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China—landing a medium bomber on Hornet was impossible. Fifteen of the aircraft reached China, and the other one landed in the Soviet Union. All but three of the crew survived, but all the aircraft were lost. Eight crewmen were captured by the Japanese Army in China; three of these were executed. The B-25 that landed in the Soviet Union at Vladivostok was confiscated and its crew interned for more than a year. Fourteen crews, except for one crewman, returned either to the United States or to American forces.
After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted a massive sweep through the eastern coastal provinces of China, in an operation now known as the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign, searching for the surviving American airmen and applying retribution on the Chinese who aided them, in an effort to prevent this part of China from being used again for an attack on Japan. An estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians were killed by the Japanese during this operation.
The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it succeeded in 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 caused Japan to withdraw its powerful aircraft carrier force from the Indian Ocean to defend their Home Islands, and the raid 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 U.S. Navy in the Battle of Midway. Doolittle, who initially believed that loss of all his aircraft would lead to his being court-martialled, received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two steps to Brigadier General.