The World War 2 Radio Podcast · Brick Pickle Media LLC

Shortcut to Tokyo

·31 min·1 clip

Wally's recording for his son ends with "maybe you'll have a son of your own."

1. The World War 2 Radio Podcast episode "Shortcut to Tokyo" presents a 1943 NBC broadcast of Words at War built from Corey Ford's book about the Aleutian Islands Campaign. 2. Corey Ford is the narrator and author of the source book, while Words at War is identified as an NBC series produced with the Council on Books in Wartime. 3. The episode asks what the Aleutians meant in 1942 and why Ford calls them "the shortcut to Tokyo." 4. Ford opens with Lieutenant L.D. Campbell's Navy PBY patrol ship spotting part of a Japanese task force on June 3, 1942. 5. The script says the Japanese were aiming beyond Dutch Harbor and planning an invasion of the Pacific Northwest coast. 6. At Dutch Harbor, Ford is in a shelter with bomber pilot Wally Marvin while high-level Japanese bombers drop explosives and incendiaries on the base. 7. American P-40 pursuit planes suddenly appear from the clouds and force the Japanese bombers to break off the attack. 8. A radio shack operator listens to the Japanese wavelength and reports that the carrier pilots are panicking because they have only a few minutes of fuel left. 9. Ford says 16 Japanese planes followed down into the sea, and he treats that result as the end of the Japanese dream of conquering Alaska. 10. The episode then shifts to the weather, with Ford and Wally Marvin describing fog, wind, cold, and "willow whore" winds that hit 80 miles an hour. 11. Ground crews tie planes down with oil drums and tractors because the Aleutian weather can smash aircraft even when they are parked. 12. Technical Sergeant L.O. Gardner recounts his first bombing mission, including a practice drop on a rock off the island and then a low-level run on Kiska. 13. Gardner describes diving in at 15 to 50 feet, hitting a destroyer, and watching bombs produce sheets of flame and smoke. 14. The mission returns with only four planes visible in the formation, and Ford notes that the day brought no medals or newspaper photos. 15. Ford then sits through a briefing where the crews hear map coordinates, altitude assignments, and instructions about fighter coverage and radio silence. 16. Sammy, Wally's bombardier, jokes about buying a ring for his fiancée in New York and being sent to Alaska instead. 17. A later mission ends badly, and Ford learns that Sammy is dead while looking at the unfinished jigsaw puzzle he left behind. 18. The episode changes tone again for a Christmas party in the Aleutians, where the men decorate a tree with 50-caliber shells and a red gas-mask cover star. 19. The mood is conversational, documentary, and radio-dramatic, with voices, briefing-room talk, and Ford's reflective narration carrying the episode. 20. Listeners who want WWII air war, Alaska, and first-person radio storytelling will get the most from it; listeners who want fast action without historical narration may skip it.

As heard by us

A 1943 Words at War broadcast that follows a low-level Aleutian raid from briefing hut to flame and smoke.

Shortcut to Tokyo adapts Corey Ford's book for Words at War and draws steady strength from the Aleutian Islands Campaign and the U.S. confrontation with the Japanese in Alaska.

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Why you'd press play

You get an Alaskan winter briefing hut, a map-heavy mission, and a wartime raid tied to the Aleutian Islands Campaign.

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