J.R. Stork, 85; Flier in Daring Raid on Tokyo

“No, I’m not a hero. I just did the best I possibly could. And I was lucky to get through it ...”

--J. Royden Stork for “A

Veteran’s Story” on Military.com Web site

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What he got through was Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle’s daring raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942, the first successful American retaliatory strike after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.

J. Royden Stork was co-pilot of the 10th of 16 land-based B-25 bombers to take off from the deck of the Hornet--a feat never before attempted and considered by many a suicide mission for the 80 men aboard.

Flying at tree-top level, Stork’s plane correctly bombed its assigned chemical plant and flew on until, like the others, it ran out of gas over occupied China.

Stork, who not only survived the raid but the rest of the war and went on to become a Hollywood makeup artist, died Thursday at Century City Hospital of a heart attack. He was 85.

“The 16 planes didn’t do much damage, but we sure screwed up their war machine,” Stork told the Boston Herald last month during 60th anniversary observances of the raid. “They had to pull back some of their forces to protect the [Japanese] homeland, and some of their military leaders were so humiliated that they committed suicide.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt orchestrated the raid, not for the limited bomb damage it could cause, but to boost sagging American morale and to shock the Japanese, who thought distance protected them from attack. Not only had the Japanese sunk most of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, but in the intervening 132 days, they had also defeated American forces at Wake Island and in the Philippines.

Doolittle’s Raid made Americans believe they could win the war and step up their efforts to do it.

Not one of Doolittle’s planes was lost to enemy fire. Of the 16, one crash-landed, three were ditched in coastal waters, one landed in Russia and the other 11 in China. Two of the 80 men drowned, and of eight captured, three were executed by Japanese and one died in prison camp.

Stork was among a dozen or so of the fewer than two dozen members of the Doolittle Raiders Assn. still living who gathered last month in Columbia, S.C., for the group’s 60th anniversary reunion.

He described his harrowing Doolittle Raid experience many times over the years, beginning with an article published by The Times shortly after the attack and datelined China. Before parachuting out of the gasless plane, he said in that interview nearly six decades ago, he stuffed his pockets full of candy bars and cigarettes.

“Those bars were flung in every direction, my parachute gave me such a flip,” he said. “It was pouring rain and in no time my chute was soaked with water, and I was falling very fast. I couldn’t see anything in the dark so I was in a completely relaxed condition when I hit the ground. Otherwise I might have been hurt. I must have been knocked unconscious as I don’t remember anything until I found myself lying against a tree. I lay in the rain until morning before starting out.”

The downed co-pilot walked for a day until he was befriended by a local Chinese magistrate who helped him get to the pre-assigned rendezvous point an additional three days away. Stationed afterward in India with the Army’s 10th Air Force, Stork flew missions over Japanese occupied territory in the China-Burma-India theater for 16 months.

But Stork was grounded from combat flying, along with the other 73 surviving Doolittle Raiders, when U.S. intelligence learned that the Japanese had put a $5,000 bounty on each of the fliers’ heads.

Stork returned to the U.S. and spent the remainder of the war flying for the Air Transport Command and evaluating equipment for use in the war abroad. He was discharged in early 1946 with the rank of captain, after earning the Distinguished Flying Cross; the Air Medal; and the Chinese Army, Navy and Air Corps Medal Class A First Grade, which had been presented to him by Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Born in Frost, Minn., Stork grew up in San Diego and attended San Diego State before joining the Army Air Force Nov. 25, 1940. He completed advanced flight training the following April, a year before he found himself aboard the Hornet with his destination unknown.

After the war, Stork made his career in Hollywood as a makeup artist for Fox Studios. Among his credits were such feature films as the 1949 “Twelve O’Clock High” starring Gregory Peck commanding American pilots in England during the war.

Stork may have revealed a personal identity with that film in his interview on the military Web site concerning his “luck” over Tokyo: “There were plenty of ... fellows I graduated with from flying school that ended up in the major league in England, where ... they’d send out a hundred B-17s, and they’d only get 30 back.... I think that those guys are [the] heroes.”

Throughout his Hollywood career--which also included work on such feature films as “For Heaven’s Sake” in 1950 and “Gargoyles” in 1972 and such television series as “The Beverly Hillbillies”--Stork continued to speak out for the reality of World War II heroes and events.

Last year, he was among veterans who attended the Honolulu premiere of the blockbuster movie “Pearl Harbor.” He was also one of eight surviving Doolittle Raiders to meet with scriptwriter Randall Wallace to complain that both Doolittle and the raid were incorrectly depicted in the film.

Stork is survived by his wife of 44 years, the former Kay Adelle.

No services are planned.