Local Doolittle Raid Pilot to Attend Annual Reunion

Veteran Howard Sessler will get a chance to recall some of his World War II adventures this week when he travels to a reunion with some of his war buddies.

The 81-year-old Moorpark resident is scheduled to leave Wednesday to join the other 28 surviving members of the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo. The gathering will be held at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

Although his old comrades get together annually to catch up and reminisce, Sessler said he only makes the trek every few years.

“I talk to them every once in a while,” he said. “You know them all, and you’re concerned about them.”

Sessler, a Boston native, joined the Army Air Corps in 1940 and was flying submarine patrol in Oregon when the United States entered World War II in December 1941.

On April 18, 1942, Sessler piloted one of 16 bombers in a raid on the Japanese capital, in retaliation for the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor four months earlier that triggered the U.S. entrance into the war.

Sessler said he and his four-man crew successfully hit their targets, but the mission had mixed results.

“I think it accomplished what they wanted it to. They wanted to show the [Japanese] we could get back at them,” he said. “As far as doing a lot of damage, well, can you do a lot of damage with 16 airplanes?”

None of the planes in the bombing raid made it safely to the designated landing zone, an airport in mainland China, Sessler said. Sessler’s aircraft, and most of the planes involved, were forced down by the stormy conditions that morning.

Sessler and his crew swam to a nearby island, one he describes as “nothing more than a big rock,” where they hid for a week from Japanese soldiers who had occupied the Chinese coast. The men eventually sneaked off of the island in a fishing boat and later connected with Allied troops.

His experiences behind enemy lines didn’t keep Sessler on the ground, as he went on to fly more than 100 missions.