The Doolittle Raid, a bombing attack on Tokyo, Japan, and other cities in the early months of World War II, lifted American morale and rattled Japanese belief in their invincibility. The raid, which had effects far out of proportion to its size and immediate tactical results, is noteworthy for two great acts of the Providence of God intervening on the American behalf.

 Background

American morale was low in the early months of 1942. In one bold stroke, the Japanese Navy had wiped out the greater part of the U.S. Pacific’s Fleet’s major fleet units. With seven of her battleships lying in the harbor mud, or too badly damaged to see action for months, the American Navy was rendered powerless to intervene as Japan proceeded on a rapid series of conquests of her Asian neighbors. Guam, Makin, Tarawa, Wake Island, and Hong Kong were all invaded and conquered in December 1941. That same month, the Philippines and Malaya were invaded. In January of 1942, Burma was invaded, and Japanese Army troops threatened India with invasion. On the second day of January, Manila, capital of the Philippines fell, and General Douglas MacArthur’s beleaguered forces retreated to Corregidor for a final stand. On the 15^th of February, Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. Compounding the British humiliation, two of their Battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by Japanese bombers.  Japanese troops invaded the Dutch East Indies, hoping to take the valuable oilfields that the island nation needed to sustain her war machine. Allied attempts to keep the Dutch East Indies out of Japanese hands were dashed by the severe repulse dealt them in the battle of Java Sea, and the Indies fell to Japan in March. As the Japanese racked up victory after victory and secured more and more of Asia under her thumb, the Americans, their morale in the dumps, looked for a way to strike back.

Planning the Raid

 

The Army had wanted to bomb Japan as early as two days after Pearl Harbor, and President Roosevelt, too, was a proponent of carrying the war to Japan itself. On the 21rst of December, he had met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House, and urged that Japan be bombed to lift American morale. Thus, by January 1942, plans for just such a bombing were already in the works. But bombing Japan was a lot easier said then done. Using the Philippines was not an option. The airfields there, and the B-17 Flying Fortresses that sat on them, were no longer available, being either destroyed or in Japanese hands. Another option was to attack from Russia, but Russia, pressed sorely by the German Army in the West, had no desire to incur Japanese wrath, and perhaps involve herself in a two front war. Hence, she stuck by her neutrality pact with Japan, and proved that her first loyalty was to herself, not her Western Allies. Chinese airfields did not present a viable option, and bombers could not reach Japan from the West Coast or Hawaii. Faced with these difficulties, the only realistic option was a carrier based attack, but that involved grave risk to the carriers taking part in such an operation, because they would have to approach to within 200 miles of Japan before launching their aircraft. The Navy had no intention of risking their precious aircraft carriers, the only offensive units, left in the decimated Pacific Fleet, in such a risky venture.

But Roosevelt kept pushing, and as he had the foremost military minds working on a way to overcome the seemingly impossible barriers, he eventually got results. Both General Henry “Hap” Arnold of the Army Air Forces, and Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations of the United States Navy, had their staffs working on possible plans to bomb Japan. On January 10^th, 1942, a submarine officer in Admiral King’s staff, Captain Francis Low observed planes taking off from a short airfield painted like a carrier deck. Army bombers were making practice bombing passes at the same. It suddenly hit Captain Low that if those bombers could launch from an aircraft carrier deck, they could bomb Japan at a range long enough to allow the carrier some measure of safety. Excited over his idea, but nervous, Captain Low went to see his boss, Admiral King aboard his yacht, which served as both his flagship and as a second office. King was a taciturn man with a stern demeanor, by no means the easiest man to talk to. But Low knocked on his door and asked to speak to him alone. King invited him inside. “What’s on your mind?” He asked. “I’ve got an idea for bombing Japan I’d like to discuss with you,” Low replied. King was at once interested. Not only was this idea foremost in all American military minds at present, but King, unbeknownst to Low, had considered the idea of transporting bombers on a carrier to North Africa and flying them off to land at airbases there. Thus, both he and the Admiral had been thinking similar thoughts, but Low had had the foresight to regard the carrier as more than a mere transport. “I’ve been to the Norfolk yard, as you know, sir, to see the progress made on the Hornet. At the airfield there, they had marked out a strip about the size of a carrier deck, and they practice takeoffs constantly.” King listened but was puzzled as to why Low was simply rehearsing what King already knew. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at Low.” Low quickly explained his idea: “If the army has some plane that could take off in that short distance,” Low said, “I mean, a plane capable of carrying a bomb load, why couldn’t we put a few of them on a carrier and bomb the mainland of Japan?” King leaned back in his chair, silent for a moment. Low believed that any moment he would be rebuked by the Admiral, since he was not an airman, but a submariner. He would probably be told to stick to his specialty and leave the air bombing ideas to the airmen. But King did not rebuke him. Instead, he acknowledged that Low had a good idea. “Low, you may have something there.” King told him. “Talk to Duncan about it in the morning.” Low then left, after being stiffly warned not to blab about his idea to anyone else.

 

Low now called Captain Donald Duncan, King’s air officer, and Duncan agreed to meet with Low the next morning. On the third floor of the Navy building in Washington, the two men met. Low quickly explained his idea. Duncan listened, and replied “In the first place a carrier deck is too short to land an  Army medium bomber safely. Even if one could stop in time, there would be no place to stow it because it wouldn’t fit on an elevator, to be taken below and make way for the next plane.” Duncan went on to explain that the B-25 and B-26 Medium bombers did not have tail hooks which would prevent them from landing on a carrier, as well as the fact, that even if they did have them, their tails were too weak to withstand the shock of such a landing. But Duncan did not completely rain on Low’s parade. He acknowledged that it might be possible to launch the planes from a carrier deck, just not land them there. Duncan promised to research the matter and get back to Low. Duncan buried himself in the task of researching the idea. After five days of intense study, he emerged from his office with a thirty page handwritten analysis of the idea. In his study, Low had to figure out which medium bomber was most practicable to use.

There were about five choices available: the B-18, the B-26, the B-23, and the B-25. The B-18 was obsolete by 1942, and quickly written off. The B-23’s wingspan made it too large for carrier operations. The B-26 was also ruled out; it required a longer runway then a navy carrier could provide. That only left one plane: the B-25, and it had it’s issues. In the first place, it was brand new, and was untested in combat. In the second place, it would have to be modified to fit extra fuel tanks. With the B-25, the only real choice, despite it’s issues, Duncan settled on it. He also settled on using the USS Hornet, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, for the job. Another carrier, he believed, would need to go along to provide air cover. Due to weather issues, April would be the best time to launch the attack.

After working out these issues, Duncan and Low now went to see King; he went through Duncan’s report and approved the plan. “Go see General Arnold about this.” King told them, “And if he agrees with you, ask him to get in touch with me.” And then he added “ Duncan, if this plan gets the green light from Arnold, I want you to handle the Navy end of it.” The next day, January 17^th, 1942, both men met with General Arnold. Arnold was receptive and enthusiastic. He listened while Duncan outlined his plan, and agreed to it.  Duncan, he said,  would coordinate the Navy’s part in the plan, and he would find someone to coordinate the Army’s role.

 

Arnold already had someone in mind for that task. Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, who worked directly under him on Special Projects. Doolittle was an excellent choice to oversee the modification of the planes, train the crews, and see to the technical troubleshooting involved. Doolittle’s name was already synonymous with aviation.

 

A famous military test pilot, civilian aviator, and aeronautical engineer, he was already known to the public for his daring aeronautical stunts.  He was the holder of many aviation speed records. He had raced aircraft. He had flown coast to coast in 24 hours, the first man to do so; then he had broken his own record when he had done so later in twelve. He was the first man to ever fly blind; he had taken off, flown and landed, without ever seeing the ground. Doolittle’s actions had been dangerous, but he was not reckless. He carefully calculated every risk, and it did not harm his actions that he was absolutely without fear. As an aeronautical engineer, who worked for Shell Oil while in the Army Reserve, he had convinced the company to manufacture higher grade aviation fuel for bigger and stronger aircraft yet to be built.

In July 1940, Doolittle had been called back to active duty with the rank of major. After helping automobile manufacturers transition to building aircraft, Doolittle was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and assigned a place on General Arnold’s staff as a technical troubleshooter. Doolittle was called into Arnold’s office, and briefed him. Doolittle, on his own, came to the conclusion, as  Duncan had, that the B-25 was the plane for the job. But it was not known if the B-25 could take off from a carrier. In theory it could, but no one, not even Doolittle, had ever tried it. Captain Duncan set himself to discovering if one could. Duncan quickly arranged to have three B-25s waiting at Hampton Roads, Virginia. There, two bombers were loaded onto the carrier and flown off  on 3^rd of February under Duncan’s eye. Satisfied now that what he and Doolittle had merely believed was technically possible, was now a reality, the Army and Navy got down to actually preparing for the raid. Now that it had been demonstrated that B-25s could fly off carriers, there remained the question of what would happen afterwards. Landings aboard the carrier were out of the question, and by this time, it was out of the question for the B-25s to land in Russia. It had been briefly considered that the bombers could ditch in the sea and the crews picked by destroyers, but that plan was quickly discarded. Thus, areas of China under the control of Nationalist China, were chosen: namely five separate airfields, where the planes would refuel and fly on to Chungking. The plan was to launch them 650 miles from Japan from the deck of a carrier, whereupon they would proceed to their targets, bomb them, and then head for China to land upon Chinese airfields. Communication was maintained with Chiang Kai-Shek, Generalissimo of Nationalist China, but for security reasons, he wasn’t told the details of the raid. He agreed to allow the planes to land there, on the supposition that he was receiving reinforcements. He did not know that the planes he would be allowing to land would have just bombed Tokyo. Fearful of Japanese reprisals, he would not have agreed had he not known the truth.

Preparing the Raid

Doolittle immediately turned his full attention to preparing the raid. On January 22^nd, he requested that eighteen B-25 Medium bombers be made available to Mid-Continental Airlines for modification. Secrecy and security were of the utmost importance, and therefore, a battalion of military police were placed around the hangar housing the B-25s. Nobody got into that hangar without a pass, and the Military Police were fully prepared to shoot anyone who tried to enter without one. The 265 steel gasoline tanks installed aboard to increase the bomber’s range proved unsatisfactory. They leaked and were thus replaced by 225 gallon tanks. Another fuel tank was added in the crawl way above the bomb bay capable of holding 160 gallons. A 60 gallon tank was carried in the rear turret and ten five gallon tanks were placed in the rear compartment where the radio operator ordinarily would have sat. These modifications gave the B-25s a fuel load of 1,141 gallons of gas. The rear turret, now replaced by the 60 gallon tank was removed from each B-25 for another reason. It was hard for inexperienced gunners to operate. A steel plate was welded over the hole where the turret had been, New shackles also had to be added to carry the bomb load. De-icers were also installed, since it was not known yet that Russia would not be landing site.  The Norden bomb sight was removed for two reasons. First, the bombing would take place at low altitudes, and the Norden was not needed for this. Second, the Americans were worried about the Norden falling into Japanese hands. Therefore, they removed the Norden and replaced it with another, a much cheaper device that cost only 20 cents to build. The heavy radio set aboard the planes were also removed; radio silence would be observed on the mission, and the B-25s needed to be stripped of every piece of equipment not essential to this mission. Nothing was done to increase the B-25’s firepower which comprised a 30.machine gun in the nose and a 50.machine gun in the top turret. The turret’s machine guns were prone to jamming, and the nose machine gun was cumbersome to use, but Doolittle was not given time enough to come up with anything better. In the tail of the plane, broomsticks were fitted, painted black to resemble  machine gun barrels. Doolittle asked Arnold’s intelligence officer, Brigadier General Carl Spaatz to prepare a list of targets in Japan. He brought Doolittle a list of cities and military targets in each. Crews had now to be obtained. The crews for each of the 24 bombers came from the 17the Bombardment Group. It’s commander Lieutenant Colonel William C. Mills told the crews, on Doolittle’s order, only that he wanted volunteers for a mission that involved an attack on the enemy, extremely short takeoffs, and was risky. That did not deter the young men to whom he spoke in the least. All 140 of them volunteered at once. From these, twenty-four complete crews were selected. (One medical officer, who would be trained in gunnery, was also picked. The selection of First Lieutenant T. Robert White would be a Providential occurrence, for his medical skills would subsequently prove invaluable).  After picking up their bombers, they flew them up to Eglin Field in Florida on March 1rst 1942. Lieutenant Henry L. Miller, a flight instructor at nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station was ordered to come to Eglin and supervise the training. On March 3^rd, Doolittle himself arrived at Eglin and addressed the men, He strongly stressed the secrecy of the mission and informed them that the forthcoming mission would be the dangerous of their career. He gave any man the chance to drop out, but no one did. It was made clear from the first day of training that all twenty-four crews would go along on the mission, but that only fifteen B-25s would be used. This was done to ensure that a pool of replacement crew was on hand in case someone became sick or dropped out voluntarily. Also, it was done for reasons of ensuing secrecy. The training at Eglin was grueling and hard. The army pilots were not trained as navy pilots. The latter knew how to make short takeoffs at minimum airspeed. For Army pilots, they had taught the exact opposite: to get plenty of airspeed before launch. They had always trained at airports with long runways. Lieutenant Miller patiently taught them,and they got the hang of it. Takeoff practice was not the only thing the crew were trained in. Gunnery practice, navigation, bombing, and formation flying were also priorities, but bad weather kept the planes grounded for some days and deprived the crews of some valuable flying time. Flights were made out over the Gulf of Mexico in order to allow pilots and navigators to become used to flying without visual references or landmarks. Machine gun practice was carried out both in the air and on the ground. Of the crews, Doolittle wrote “The first pilots were all excellent. The co-pilots were all good for co-pilots. The bombardiers were fair but needed brushing up. The navigators had good training but very little practical experience. The gunners, almost without exception, had never fired a machine gun from an airplane at either a moving or stationary target.” Despite the fog and bad weather that kept planes grounded and reduced practice time, training progressed rapidly during the three-week period of training. Meanwhile, Captain Duncan had been busy with the Navy end of things and passed the word to Arnold that the sixteen-ship naval task force would be soon ready to take his planes and crews to their launch point. The USS Hornet was moved from Norfolk, Virginia, to Alameda, California by the Panama Canal. Hornet was a Yorktown class fleet carrier. She displaced 20,000 tons, and could speed at 34 knots an hour. She was built to carry 72 aircraft and was captained by Admiral Marc. A. Mitscher. Hornet was the nucleus of the task force which also comprised the Astoria class heavy cruiser Vincennes, (nine 8 inch guns) and the Brooklyn class light cruiser Nashville. The four other ships in Task Force 18 were destroyers: Gwin, Grayson, Meredith, and Monssen. The Hornet had all it’s planes aboard, but the carrier could not conduct flight operations while the B-25s were on the flight deck. Therefore, the presence of another carrier was necessitated to provide air cover. To provide this, Admiral William F. Halsey’s Task Force 16 was ordered to join up with Task Force 18. Halsey’s Task Force 18 comprised the USS Enterprise, another Yorktown class carrier, two heavy cruisers, the ten 8-inch gun Pensacola class Salt Lake City, and the USS Northampton, the nine 8 inch gun armed namesake of her class, and four destroyers of three classes: Balch, Benham, Ellet, and Fanning. The last ship of Task Force 16 was a fleet oiler USS Sabine. Halsey took command of the combined force, which became Task Force 16. The US Submarines Thresher and Trout were ordered to support the operation by patrolling Japan’s coastal waters before the coming raid. On April 10^th, both subs were ordered to patrol the route that Task Force 16 would be taking, and sink any enemy craft in this area. On March 25^th, the twenty-two crews took their bombers and flew to Sacramento Air Depot from Eglin for a final check. To B-25s did not go; one had been wrecked in a landing accident at March 10^th, and the other developed problems that could not be repaired in time before departure. The 22 B-25s arrived two days later at the Sacramento Air Depot. On March 31rst, and April 1rst, sixteen of the B-25s were loaded aboard the Hornet alongside the dock of Alameda Air Depot. Despite the fact that 22 B-25s were available, there was room aboard the Hornet only for 15. The sixteenth plane was loaded, not to take part in the mission, but to give the pilots participating in the raid the opportunity  to watch a takeoff from a carrier deck. Task Force 16 set sail on April 2^nd in dense fog.

 The Japanese Defense

Japan was not prepared for an air raid in April of 1942. The people had been lulled into a false sense of security by the propaganda coming from their own government, which assured them that Japan was under divine protection and would never be attacked. The Japanese Government knew better then to believe it’s own propaganda; nevertheless, they believed that the risk of an air attack was quite low, and if even one did come, it could come only from carrier based bombers, which would have to approach to within 200 miles of Japan before taking off from their mother ships. Premier Tojo, when asked on the eve of war by top level Japanese strategists about air defenses of the home islands had replied:

“I do not think the enemy could raid Japan proper from the air immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. Some time would elapse before the enemy could attempt such raids. I believe that enemy air attacks against Japan would be infrequent and would be carried out by carrier-based planes. If it should become possible for the enemy to raid Japan from bases in the Soviet Union we might face considerable danger, but I think that this is not likely in the early stages of the war.”

Tojo and his military advisors thus believed that any raids against Japan would come from carrier borne aircraft. It never occurred to them that the Americans might have the ingenuity to put land-based bombers on carriers. Japan had assembled a rudimentary defense of the air over the home islands. Under the control of both the Army and Navy, the Japanese had a total of 700 anti-aircraft guns, mostly 75-millimeter pieces, However, these guns were supposed to protect a huge area of territory. 300 aircraft were also available, but some of these were obsolete and their pilots under-trained. Because of the low possibility of air raids, not much men and material were allotted to it. Most of the material and men went to offensive operations, as Japan conquered her Asian neighbors and added them to her ever-expanding empire. The Japanese Navy, on paper, had an entire fleet assembled for the defense of the islands under the command of Admiral Boshiro Hosogaya. In reality, the fleet comprised only a cruiser squadron, and a squadron of picket boats who operated hundreds of miles off the Japanese shore to provide an early warning system in case of attack. The Americans were completely unaware of the existence of this system of screening. The Army, for their part, operated some radar sets, but these were primitive and not very effective. Perhaps the most advanced area of Japanese defense lay in their ability to read and understand enemy radio traffic. It was through this system, by intercepting radio messages between Halsey’s Task Force and Mitchser’s Task Force, that they were able to figure out that an enemy carrier force was in the Pacific. First Japanese thoughts were for the safety of the home islands and especially of the emperor. They figured that the carriers would have to approach to within 200 miles of Japan to launch their aircraft. Yet Japan’s picket boats ranged out 700 miles. Any carrier force would be spotted a good fifteen hours before it got within range and subjected to attacks by Japanese land based bombers. No more radio intercepts of American ships were made, however, and it was deduced that the American carriers were headed somewhere other than Japan.

  The Voyage to Japan

The voyage to Japan was, for the most part, made without incident. Takeoff for the raid was scheduled on April 19^th, when Task Force 18 would be 400 miles from Japan. The B-25s were lashed to the deck of the Hornet to keep them from becoming damaged during the trip. Secrecy was still an utmost concern. Halsey knew well the risks that his Task Force was running. The entire Japanese Navy could be down on his neck, and the 1rst Carrier Striking Force, consisting of five fleet carriers, all Pearl Harbor Veterans, now finishing up an operation in the Indian Ocean, would be returning to Japan within days. Only when well out to sea, were the bomber crews assembled and told of their mission: the bombing of Tokyo, and several other major cities. There was more training held aboard ship during the voyage. Aerial gunnery turret practice was carried out on kites flown from the Hornet for use as targets. There was practice in celestial navigation supervised by the carrier’s navigation officer. There were lectures given to the bomber crews by several officers. Lieutenant Commander Stephen Jurika, who had been assistant naval attache to Tokyo from 1939 to 1941, conducted lectures to the men on Japanese culture, customs, political ideologies and history. Jurika went over the locations of Japanese industries, landmarks, and anti-aircraft batteries. He went over all the escape and evasion tactics that could be used by the bombers. For their part, the pilots, with the exception of Doolittle, didn’t pay much attention to him. They were a lot more worried on simply getting their medium bombers off the Hornet’s flight deck then on anything that could happen to them over the air in Japan. First Lieutenant White conducted lectures on first aid. He cautioned the fliers about properly treating even small cuts and scratches, because Chinese sanitation was far lower then Western Standards, and any little cut sustained would turn into a serious infection. He counseled them to treat every small cut or scratch, as if their lives depended on it, because it did. Jurika assigned targets to the raiders, and Doolittle spoke to them, firmly pressing upon them to avoid bombing Emperor Hirohito’s palace, and also any residential areas. The raid would only target military targets. That point was made especially clear by Doolittle. Thus, in contrast to the later firebombing raids on Japan, the Doolittle raid would be conducted according to the rules of Just War. Someone asked Doolittle what to do if their plane was hit by ground fire and was going down. Doolittle replied that the decision was up to them, but that he for one, was going to crash his airplane where it would do the most damage after his men bailed out. In addition to attending lectures, the crews of the aircraft, many of whom were also mechanics, spent much time tinkering with their aircraft. They wanted to be sure that they were absolutely in pristine condition and would fly perfectly, for they were putting their lives in the hands of the performance of their machines.

The voyage to Japan was highlighted by a ceremony of decorating the bombs to be dropped. Medals that had awarded to American crewmen by the Japanese in an 1908 visit by American warships to Japan had been donated by their owners to the US Navy for return to their owners. Navy Secretary Frank Knox sent the medals to Nimitz for use at an appropriate time. That time was now here. Doolittle and Mitchser decided to return the medals “with interest” by attaching them to the bombs to be dropped over Japan. Jurika himself contributed a medal; one that had been awarded him during his attachment to the American embassy. Not only were the medals attached, but the crews painted the bombs with whimsical slogans such as “I don’t want to set the world on fire, just Tokyo,” or “You’ll get a bang out of this.” On the eighteenth, at 3:00 am, the radar on USS Enterprise picked up two small vessels off the bow at a distance of 21,000 yards. Instantly, the order was given to turn the entire Task Force and avoid coming into contact with the other vessels. General Quarters was sounded, and the Americans ran to their battle stations even as the entire Task Force turned and did not make contact with the two small craft, both picket boats. At 5:08 am, Enterprise launched dawn patrols. The aircraft took off into surly weather. The wind had picked up, rain squalls were drenching the decks, and clouds hung low. At 5:58, one of the pilots spotted a small fishing boat, and scrawled down the sighting. When the message got to Halsey he again ordered all his ships to change course, this time left on a coarse of 220 degrees. It vexed him that the plane might have been spotted, though it wasn’t likely at 42 miles distance. But at 7:38 am, another picket boat was sighted. This time the sighting was visual. A lookout on the Hornet spotted the picket boat at range of 20,000 yards. Unknown to the Americans, they had stumbled directly into the successive lines of picket boats patrolling hundreds of miles off the Japanese coast to screen against surprise attack. The picket boat spotted them too. Hornet’s radio operator heard it’s radio crackling as it transmitted a message. Halsey instantly ordered light cruiser Nashville to peel off and sink the picket boat with her 6-inch guns. He flashed a message to Mitchser. “Launch Planes.  To Colonel Doolittle and gallant command: Good luck and God bless you.” Doolittle was on Hornet’s bridge when the order came in. He knew what the message meant. He and his crews would have to launch immediately, a day earlier then planned. The only alternative, now that they had been spotted, was to jettison the B-25s overboard and abort the whole mission. Both Halsey and Doolittle would not even consider such an idea. They were going to bomb Japan, as long as there was any chance to do so, however slight. However Halsey could not risk the safety of the Task Force, since it contained two carriers, half the American carrier strength in the Pacific. Of primary importance was the safety of the carriers. There, were, however, numerous risks associated with launching a day early. In the first place, the B-25 pilots would be taking off 650 miles from Japan instead of 400. That would affect their chances of reaching their assigned airfields into China. But there was another issue. The plan that had been settled upon was for a night attack. Doolittle was supposed to take off ahead of the others and drop incendiaries over Tokyo, thus guiding the other bombers to the area. Now, however, the planes would have to attack in daylight, and against an alerted enemy. And the takeoff would not be easy. The seas were growing rougher as the weather grew nastier. The Hornet’s klaxon sounded “Army Pilots, man your planes!” All was confusion aboard the Hornet, as the planes were hurriedly readied for takeoff. The wheel chocks were ripped from the wheels; and gas tanks were topped off. Mitchser turned Hornet into the wind, and Doolittle, in the lead plane, warmed up his engines. As soon as the signal officer gave him the signal to go ahead, Doolittle began rolling his plane down the bow, slowly at first, picking up speed as he went. As he passed the ship’s island, Doolittle lifted from the deck, with plenty of deck space to spare. The other B-25 pilots were relieved to see that Doolittle had taken off safely. Doolittle circled to the left, checked his compass against the Hornet’s course, and made for Japan. Doolittle took to the sky at 8:20 am. The second B-25, piloted by Lieutenant Travis Hoover, went next, and he almost didn’t make it. He kept the nose of his bomber in the up position too long and almost stalled out. But good piloting skill enabled him to correct the mistake and take to the sky.

All sixteen of the bombers launched successfully, but Mitchser was not happy with the takeoffs which he described as “dangerous and improperly executed. The last plane to be launched had a mishap that caused an unfortunate casualty among Hornet’s naval personnel. That plane, piloted by Lieutenant Bill Farrow, had its tail sticking out over the stern. The propwash of the plane in front of him caught the nose and lifted it into the air. The tail section of Farrow’s plane fell down, and for a moment, it looked as if Farrow’s aircraft would slide backwards over the stern and into the sea. Sailors ran to the aircraft to secure it. Several grabbed the nose and tried to hold it down. One sailor, a man named Robert Wall, slipped and was thrown by the wind into the whirling propeller. One of the blades nearly removed his arm. He was carried below, and his arm would have to be amputated. Farrow finally took to the air at 9:19 am. Behind him, Task Force 18 was already turning to head for home.  Meanwhile, the picket boat had been attacked first by Enterprise fighters on combat air patrol, which strafed the boat, and then by the Nashville, bringing her 6 inch batteries to bear on the little converted fishing boat. One of the seamen, a man named Nakamura Suekichi spotted the planes and ran below to tell his skipper, a man named Gisaku Maeda. Maeda shrugged the report off. He believed they were patrol planes from Japan. Suekichi then came back down and told him, “Sir. There are two of our beautiful carriers now dead ahead.” Maeda knew that no Japanese carriers were supposed to be in the area. He came flying up from his bunk and raced topside. Studying the gray hulls ahead of him in his binoculars, he replied sadly “ They are beautiful, but they are not ours.” They, were of coarse, looking directly at Enterprise and Hornet. Maeda knew that attempting to take on Task Force 18 with the single cannon he had aboard was ludicrous. He went below, pulled a revolver from his sea bag and fired a bullet into his brain. There had been eleven men on the picket boat, Nitto Maru; now there were ten. After the fighters strafed, and dive bombers bombed unsuccessfully, Nashville closed and opened fire. But the target was small, and bobbing in the heavy seas, it made a poor target. The first salvo from Nashville missed, and she shifted to rapid fire, without results.  Dive bombers from the Enterprise then bombed her, but had no more success then the cruiser. Nitto Maru went down, but not before Nashville had spent twenty minutes trying to hit the little craft and expending 928 rounds of 6 inch ammunition in the process, a rather embarrassing affair for the Navy. Five Japanese survivors were picked up, including Suekichi; the other five perished.

Meanwhile, the dive bombers returned to the Enterprise. Two of them landed safely. The third, piloted by Lieutenant L. A. Smith, had taken small arms fire in the engine. Unable to return to his carrier, Smith ditched his SBD Dauntless into the sea, and was picked up, along with his gunner by the Nashville. Hounded by Japanese planes and subs, which showed up on radar, Task Force 18 beat it back to Pearl Harbor, and reached it a week later. The Navy would not get off scot free however. In addition to the man whom had lost his arm in the propeller, the Navy took another pair of casualties, and both of these were fatalities. Halsey sent up air patrols from both his carriers on the 19^th. One of the bombers, piloted by Lieutenant G.D. Randall ran out of fuel just seven miles from Hornet. His plane fell into the sea, and both he and his radioman were lost.  Halsey was supposed to report to Washington that he had launched the bombers, so that they could then report to Chungking so that the airfields the B-25s were supposed to land on in China would turn on their homing beacons and prepare to meet them. Inexplicably, however, the message was never sent by Task Force 18. Meanwhile upon receipt of the radio transmission by the Nitto Maru, the Imperial Japanese Navy pulled out all the stops to completely destroy Task Force 18. The picket boat had reported sighting three aircraft carriers. The Japanese again guessed wrong. Believing that Task Force 18 could not attack until it reached to within 200 miles of Japan, they believed that they would not have to send out an air raid warning to Tokyo and other cities until the 19^th, when Task Force 18 would be in position to launch it’s aircraft 200 miles from Japan. Hence, things could proceed as normal until that time. It should be pointed out that the launching of the B-25s early, was a Providential gift to the Americans in hindsight. Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki,chief of staff to  Admiral Yamamoto, Commander In Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, immediately ordered all available surface forces, as well as aircraft to hunt down and exterminate Task Force 18. All the ships were within a day’s sailing to intercept the Task Force. Had Halsey waited until the distance to Japan had closed to 400 miles from Japan, he would have sailed into a trap. The aircraft from five Pearl Harbor veterans would have slaughtered him, as would have eighty Betty Medium Betty bombers based in Japan, and carrier planes from carrier Kaga at Tateyama, which would have added thirty-six bombers of her own. Any ship in Task Force 18 still afloat after tangling with that those air assets, would have been finished by Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo, fresh from operations in the Indian Ocean, with five heavy cruisers and ten destroyers, and by six rerouted submarines. Providentially, therefore, Halsey’s decision to launch the B-25s and then retire, saved Task Force 18 and the Pacific Fleet’s carriers. Had he continued on after being sighted, America would have lost the Pacific War. The decision to launch the bombers early was a Providential occurrence for another reason, shortly to be related.

  The Bombing of Tokyo

Doolittle’s sixteen bombers were organized into several flights of three or four planes each. Doolittle himself was closely followed by Plane No.2, piloted by Lieutenant Travis Hoover. Hoover’s navigator was unable to figure out their position. The photographs from Army Intelligence did not match what they were flying over, and so Hoover stayed close behind Doolittle. The other two B-25s in Doolittle’s flight were piloted by 1rst Lieutenant Robert Gray, and 1rst Lieutenant Everett W. Holstrom. During the four hour flight to Japan, Doolittle passed a Japanese light cruiser below. Doolittle figured that if the picket boat encountered and sunk by Task Force 18 had not spotted them, by some fluke, the light cruiser below had. Either way, a radio warning would get to Tokyo. An hour after spotting the cruiser, they passed a Japanese twin engine patrol plane. It was noon, when Doolittle finally arrived over Japan. To the relief of Doolittle and his crew, there was no reception committee of fighters, but they were off coarse. Navigator Hank Potter told Doolittle that they were either fifty miles south or north of Tokyo. Doolittle now had to decide whether to turn north or south, and due to the amount of fuel he had, he could not afford to guess wrong. Flying in low over the coast, he spotted a large lake.

Recognizing the landmark, Doolittle turned his aircraft left and headed for Tokyo. Due to compass malfunctions, and a forty-knot headwind, the bombers were all blown off coarse and when they came over Japan, finally recognized landmarks and turned toward Tokyo, they arrived over the city from all points of the compass. The Japanese were completely bewildered; they could not figure out from what direction the B-25s were coming. But the Providence of God intervened on the American behalf in another way. The Japanese had decided to stage an air raid drill on April 18^th of all days. Tokyo went on full alert for three hours, and the air raid drill was just coming to an end, to be followed by an air show of Japanese planes, as the B-25s entered the sky above Tokyo. The Providential aspect of this, was that the Japanese assumed the bombers were part of the practice drill or the follow up air show. Everybody thought the attack was a fake; nobody actually thought the American aircraft were for real, and they responded accordingly. Doolittle passed over many airfields covered with biplanes; trainers for Japanese pilots. As Doolittle got to within ten miles of Tokyo, nine aircraft, obsolete fighters known to the Allies by the code name “Nate”, maneuvered to attack in three formations of three planes each. They did not press the attack, however; they just prepared to do so. Evidently, they mistook the planes for Japanese bombers, and thought that they were supposed to mimic an attack on them, not press one home. Doolittle guided the plane over its target in Tokyo’s east center, and his bombardier dropped four incendiary cluster bombs onto the armory that was Doolittle’s target. The time was 12:20 pm. The air raid warning was now sounded. Anti-aircraft fire now was directed at Doolittle’s bomber. It was intense, but the B-25 was not destroyed. Doolittle headed west, and then south to the sea, and his navigator set coarse for China.

Lieutenant Travis Hoover, following close behind and to the right of Doolittle, was likewise not attacked from the air. He encountered no fighters, although he did pass several training planes. Hoover’s targets were gunpowder factories or armories in Tokyo. Bombardier, Lieutenant Richard E. Miller was unable to identify them, and so he had to drop his bombs on a secondary target instead, two factory buildings and storehouses. The B-25 was flying very low, and therefore, the men inside felt the concussion, as their ordinance impacted the target and detonated. The plane turned back before Miller could see the results, but the engineer-gunner Staff Sergeant Douglas Radney did, and reported half the target covered in smoke.  Hoover followed Doolittle toward the Chinese coast. From the left, puffs of anti-aircraft dotted the sky. The bursts were trailing Doolittle’s bomber. Hoover sped over Tokyo Bay, expecting to be taken under fire by the anti-aircraft batteries from the numerous warships moored there, but none of them opened up.

Lieutenant Robert M. Gray’s plane no.3 arrived over Tokyo, just after the city finally became alert enough to open up with anti-aircraft weapons from the ground.  His crew were worried about being hit by alerted anti-aircraft batteries and took a vote on what to do if shot down over Japan. Everyone wanted to bail out except Gray, who wished to steer his plane into Tokyo’s biggest building. After navigating anti-aircraft batteries, the navigator made out his targets and the bombardier dropped his bombs on the assigned targets: a steel works, gas company, and chemical works. The anti-aircraft fire  that worried the crew  so much was light to moderate. The gunners had the right elevation, but not the right aircraft speed. But the crew had to worry about fighters, too. They were jumped by six of them, as soon as they dropped their ordinance. Engineer-gunner Corporal Leland D. Faktor opened up with the 50.machine guns in the turret, and the bombardier used the 30.nose machine gun. They outran the fighters. As they came out over the bay, plane no.3 was taken under fire from by the warships in the bay with their anti-aircraft  batteries. Afraid that they would radio their coarse heading, Gray turned on a southward heading until out of sight, and then switched back to a northward heading that would take them to China.

Plane No.4, the last plane in Doolittle’s flight, was not as fortunate as it’s predecessors. 15 degrees off coarse, plagued by engine trouble, leaking gas, and afflicted by an inoperable turret, which made the two 50. machine guns unusable, it was set upon by two enemy fighters, Kawasaki Ki-61 Hiens. Tracers from their guns interlocked above the cockpit. Lieutenant Lucian N. Youngblood, the copilot told pilot Lieutenant Everett W. Holstrom that he had sighted two more fighters coming across their bow at fifteen hundred feet distance. Holstrom was in quite a pickle. He fired at the planes in front of him with his nose machine gun, but without his two 50 caliber machine guns, he was defenseless against an attack from above, and the last two fighters sighted seemed ready to attack from that angle. Just when it appeared it couldn’t get any worse, it did. Ten more fighters approached from the direction of Tokyo. Having encountered severe fighter opposition, and still far south of his target, Holstrom could have tried to fight through the swarm of fighters to his target, but he decided to abort the mission instead. He jettisoned his bombs in Tokyo Bay, and headed at top speed for China. The fighters chased him, but at 720 miles per hour, he was far faster. Holstrom shook off his pursuers and got away clean.

The second flight of aircraft was led by Captain David M. Jones. Arriving from the northeast, the crew of plane no.5 had a hard time finding landmarks. Believing they were too far north, they turned south along the coast. After fifteen minutes, Captain Jones still had not found Tokyo. He was about to order bombs dropped on the first suitable target, when suddenly he arrived over Tokyo Bay. Jones turned north and approached Tokyo Bay from the south. He was running very low on gas, so he decided to skip bombing his assigned targets and hit what he could around the bay. He aimed for what he thought were industrial targets of a military nature. His bombardier let go with the bombs and the first projectile fell onto an oil tank. The next bomb fell onto a power plant. Smoke, dust and bricks flew through the air. Anti-aircraft fire threw up black puffs of smoke around the plane as Bombardier Denver Truelove put the third bomb, an incendiary cluster, onto a large building with a saw-tooth roof. He aimed the last bomb on another two-story building, but only clipped a corner of it. As soon as the last bomb was gone, Jones beat a course for the southwest.

Plane no.6 was able to hit its assigned targets. It was piloted by Lieutenant Dean Hallmark. Hallmark trailed after Jones plane until it turned south, then lost sight of it. Hallmark passed a Japanese patrol plane half an hour after takeoff and saw six fighters at 10,000 feet when they reached the coast. Hallmark made it to his assigned target, the Central Tokyo Steel Mill, and dropped bombs that did not completely destroy the target. Unsatisfied, Hallmark circled for another pass, and this time, on his second bombing run, he blew the steel mill to smithereens. They did not take any hits from anti-aircraft fire and were not intercepted as they made it for the coast. Hallmark took the same southward direction taken by the other planes in his flight for China.

Plane no.7 was piloted by Lieutenant Ted W. Lawson. His was the last plane of the second flight. He arrived over Japan northeast of Tokyo and turned south. He passed some Japanese aircraft, but they did not break off to attack him. He was unable to find his primary target, the Nippon Machine Works, so he settled for a secondary target. When he reached that target area, he dropped his bombs onto factories in the waterfront area. To one of those bombs was attached the medals donated to Knox and sent to Nimitz for future use.  His incendiaries, however, accidentally hit a residential area. No sooner had the bombs fell, however, then the anti-aircraft fire blazed up at them, and the Japanese gunners had the correct altitude. One shell burst near the right wing, and Lawson moved the plane slightly left. Lawson and his crew streaked out of Tokyo at 300 miles per hour. Lawson skirted Yokohama, and once he was out over the water, headed for China.

Plane No.8 was piloted by Captain Edward J. York, who led the third, and last, flight of bombers to strike Tokyo. Edward J. York was the only West Point Graduate among the crews. His plane was burning more fuel than it should have, and even before his plane made landfall over Japan, he realized that he would run out of gas long before he reached China. In an effort to conserve fuel, he began looking for something worthwhile to bomb, instead of looking for his assigned target. Coming across a factory that was three stories tall, with four smokestacks, York decided to bomb it. At 1500 feet, the bombs were released over the target. Since ditching in the sea was not appealing, and landing in Japan even less so, he decided to head for Vladivostok.

Plane no. 9 was piloted by Lieutenant Harold Watson. Watson and his crew spotted a few Japanese planes in the air, as they headed toward their target, but they were not attacked. As they arrived over Tokyo, the anti-aircraft shells began to streak up at them, and the fire grew more intense as they flew on. As they moved toward the target, the Tokyo Gas and Electric engineering company, located on a spit of sand jutting out into the harbor, they mistook this for the Kawasaki Truck and Tank Plant. From 2,500 feet Watson moved over the target, and the bombardier dropped all four bombs. One was seen to hit, and Watson headed out over the Imperial Palace and out over Tokyo Bay. A Japanese fighter pursued, making only a single pass. Engineer-gunner Technical Sergeant Eldred V. Scott opened up with the rear turret’s machine guns and sheared off the plane’s wing. The enemy fighter, either a Zero or Hien, was not seen again.  Bursts of anti-aircraft fire followed Watson’s plane as he headed south over Yokohama, past the naval base there, and headed for China. But he made good his escape.

Plane no.10 was piloted by Lieutenant Richard O. Joyce. Joyce had not been scheduled to take part in the raid; his plane was the sixteenth B-25 brought on board Hornet to demonstrate a carrier takeoff, and then later added to the strike force. He flew to Japan at the altitude of 500 feet, and when he made landfall at the Inubo Saki lighthouse, rose to 3,000 feet. His primary target was the Japanese Special Steel Company in Southern Tokyo. Bursts of anti-aircraft fire from the ground poured up at them. Joyce headed for his target in a long straight bomb run from a height of 2,500 feet. Two bombs were dropped on the main plant, destroying several buildings. Joyce then bombed an alternative target, a precision instrument factory. Joyce then attempted to escape. Even as Joyce was bombing the targets, nine Zeroes moved in to get him. He outran them all, and they did not seem too eager to press the attack from the rear. Evidently, the fake guns installed in the tail made quite an impression on them. They made no impression on the anti-aircraft gunners, however. Shells exploded all around the plane, and a shell fragment tore a seven-inch hole in the fuselage, forward of the horizontal stabilizer.

Plane no.11 was piloted by Captain C.R. Greening, who led the fourth flight of B-25s. His target was not Tokyo, but Yokohama, the industrial center of Japan. Greening, like the others, burned more fuel, due to a 25-knot headwind, on the way to Japan. After he made landfall, he was attacked by fighters that he said resembled Zeroes except for the fact that they had inline engines. They were, in fact, brand new Kawasaki Type 3 fighters, to be code named “Tony” by the Allies. The fighters were fast, and they managed to keep up with Greening as he tried to outrun them. Greening increased his speed to 260 miles an hour, but the Tony fighters were not shaken in the least. Greening tried hugging the ground, even passing beneath power lines, but the Tony fighters relentlessly followed him even under them. Greening’s Engineer-gunner Sergeant Melvin J. Gardner opened fire on the fighters with his twin 50. machine guns, and hit two of them. One burst into flames at once. The other broke off the attack with damage. Pursued by two fighters, and under fire from anti-aircraft batteries, Greening decided to skip his primary target, and bomb a lucrative and tempting target located below. It was an oil refinery and oil tank farm. The Japanese had tried to camouflage it with a thatched roof, but Greening was not fooled. He bombed from six hundred feet, a dangerous technique, but one that was warranted because of the Tony fighters hovering about him. When the bombs were dropped, the terrific explosion blew him and the copilot out of their seats. The two men smashed their heads against the top of the cockpit. With their ordinance gone, Greening turned to get out of there. He outran the fighters, now that his bombs were gone, and saw as he made his retirement, that dense smoke was billowing from the target. As they raced across the bay, a small boat was taken under fire by the nose gun fired by the bombardier. The boat burst into flames and the crew jumped overboard. Greening flew south for twenty minutes, then turned to follow the coast, and from there set coarse for China.

Plane no. 12 was piloted by Lieutenant William M. Bower. He stayed in formation with Greening, since both were to attack Yokohama. When they reached the coastline, they separated, and proceeded separately to their targets. Bower followed the east coastline, and east of Yokohama, he could see a large fire started by Greening at the tank farm. Three planes pursued Bower’s aircraft, but never closed and did not attack. Bower’s original target was the Yokohama dockyards. But Bower found it obstructed by barrage balloons, and so he decided to bomb his secondary target instead, the Ogura Refinery. One of the bombs dropped exploded on the corner of a large building, and another exploded next to a railway. The crew strafed a power station, and then set coarse for China, using the nose gun to strafe and sink a weather ship on the way.

Plane no. 13 was piloted by Lieutenant Edgar E. McElroy. His target was the Yokosuka Naval Base. He had followed Greening and Bower until landfall was made, then he made his own way to the naval base. Anti-aircraft fire blazed up at him, as he flew his B-25 across Tokyo Bay to the Yokosuka Naval base. But despite the heavy volume of fire, his aircraft was not hit. McElroy attempted to bomb the docks of the Naval base from a height of 1,500 feet. His bombardier missed his targets with the first two bombs, but nevertheless hit something of importance. One bomb smashed a crane and it disintegrated, raining steel over the harbor. The other bomb hurtled down into the side of a ship still under construction, the aircraft carrier Ryuho under conversion from a submarine tender Taigei.  The bomb hit in the bow area and killed seven men. The third and fourth bombs hit a loading dock and factory, and the incendiaries started more fires. McElroy headed out over the open water for fifty miles, then turned south, raced down the coast, and made for China.

Plane No.14 was piloted by Major Jack Hilger.  He reached the coast of Japan at the mouth of Tokyo Bay. He flew along the shoreline at one hundred feet for one hour and fifteen minutes, until he reached Ise Bay. His target was not Tokyo of Yokahama, but Nogoya, 175 miles from Tokyo. When he reached Nogoya, he searched for his targets, and found them. He dropped a bomb on the military division headquarters next to Nogoya Castle. The bomb hurtled into the barracks of the headquarters and demolished it. Hilger next dropped a bomb on an oil and gas storage facility, northwest of the business district, and another on the Mistsubishi Aircraft Works at the waterfront.  The Atsuta Factory was also bombed. After all four incendiaries had been dropped, Hilger tried to strafe a pair of oil tanks, but could not hit the tanks and ignite the oil with his machine guns.  Hilger’s B-25 was subjected to a heavy barrage of anti-aircraft fire, but he weathered this, and his plane was not damaged. Hilger reduced altitude to avoid anti-aircraft fire and made his escape out over the bay. Twenty miles out, they could still see smoke rising above Nogoya. Hilger headed out to sea for twenty minutes to deceive the Japanese into thinking he was going east. Then he turned and made tracks for China.

Plane No. 15 was piloted by Lieutenant Donald G. Smith. He followed Hilger until he continued toward Nogoya Bay, and then west toward Osaka. The crew had to take evasive action to avoid a 2,500 foot mountain that was not in any of their charts. After having gotten past that, they continued on their way. Passing Osaka, to the northwest, Smith turned his plane toward Kobe, where his targets were located. Smith followed the coastline to the eastern edge of the city and passed many small craft in Nogoya Bay. He only encountered one plane, a commercial airliner. Smith bombed several targets: the Uyenoshita Steelworks, near the waterfront, the Electric Machinery Works, and the Kawaskaki Aircraft Factory. There was little Japanese opposition due to surprise. After Smith had dropped ordnance, his plane was taken under fire from two Japanese anti-aircraft batteries which fired two or three rounds at him. Smith’s plane was not hit, and he made tracks for China, pursued by two Japanese aircraft who failed to catch him.

Plane no.16 was piloted by Lieutenant William G. Farrow, providentially destined to have bad luck. Farrow’s trip to Japan was uneventful. Upon making landfall, he proceeded to his target. Heavy anti-aircraft fire around Osaka forced him to seek out an alternate target in Nogoya. Farrow dropped to one hundred feet, but upon being told that there were three fighters above them, he increased altitude to 2,500 feet and lost the fighters in a cloud bank. Nearing Nogoya, they again dove low, as they reached the city. Anti-aircraft fire was spitting up from the city, and the men could see smoke from the previous attacks of their comrades Hilger and Smith. Corporal Jacob DeShazer, the bombardier dropped three bombs onto a large oil tank facility. The tanks burst into flames, as Farrow flew over an aircraft factory, and DeShazer put the last bomb there. Farrow now headed for China, anti-aircraft fire bursting all around as they made their getaway. The anti-aircraft fire was not particularly effective. Several of the crews even reported that the 7.7-millimeter ammunition bounced off the skins of their bombers. The fighter pilots on the other hand, had little training, and in many cases, either did not press home their attacks to the maximum extent possible, or were slow to initiate combat. In either case, this was one reason why no B-25 was lost over Japan.

To the people in the buildings unfortunate enough to be bombed, there was no doubt what was happening.  People ran pell mell down the streets, screaming and terrified. One of the bombs dropped had accidentally fallen on Tokyo’s largest hospital, and patients were being carried out even as the building burned to the ground. But for most of those in Tokyo who saw the bombers flying overhead, it  assumed they were Japanese planes in the scheduled air show, and many even waved to the pilots. The bomb explosions were mistaken for the fire of anti-aircraft guns participating in the air show. Joseph C. Grew, the United States Ambassador to Japan, had been interned in the American embassy in Tokyo. He recorded in his diary entry for April 18^th, 1942:

 

 “The Swiss Minister came again, and just as he was leaving before lunch we heard a lot of planes overhead and saw five or six large fires burning in different directions with great volumes of smoke. At first, we thought it was only maneuvers but soon became aware that it was the first big raid on Japan by American bombers which are reported to have attacked first in Hokkaido and then, in turn, Tokyo, Yokohama, Nogoya and Kobe. We saw one of them, apparently losing altitude and flying very low, just over the tops of the buildings to the west, and at first we feared that it had crashed but then realized that it was intentionally following these tactics in order to avoid the dives of pursuit planes and the anti-aircraft fire. To the east we saw a plane with a whole line of black puffs of smoke, indicating anti-aircraft explosions, just on its tail; it didn’t look like a bomber and we are inclined to believe that the Japanese batteries lost their heads and fired on their own pursuit planes. All this was very exciting, but at the time it was hard to believe that it was more then a realistic practice by Japanese planes. The Japanese press claimed that nine enemy planes had crashed, but we doubt if any were lost since, if even one had crashed on land, the papers would have been full of triumphant pictures of the wreck. They appear too large to have come from an aircraft carrier, and they may have been flying from the Aleutian Islands to the new air bases in China. We were all very happy and proud in the Embassy, and the British told us later that they drank toasts all day to the American fliers.”

After the raid, the Japanese took deliberate steps to keep the truth about the raid from the Japanese people. They claimed that the raid did little damage, and to reinforce this line of propaganda, they fenced off bombed areas of the city with guards and made sure that the citizenry could not see the damage. They also claimed that nine planes had been shot down, and to make up evidence for that lie, the Japanese Government scoured of all of Asia, for the wreckage of an American airplane. When one was finally procured, they triumphantly paraded it through Tokyo as evidence of their pack of lies.

 The Landings in China

The bombing was Japan was over, but the crews, perhaps the most difficult part of the mission still lay ahead. That of simply landing in China. As the B-25s winged their way over the ocean to their landing sites in China, they flew with insufficient gasoline in their tanks to reach their destinations. This was the result of launching 250 miles farther from Japan then originally planned. But the Providence of God now intervened in a dramatic way. As the planes made their way to the Chinese coast, they were assisted by a thirty mile per hour tail wind, This lessened fuel consumption and kept the  bombers from having to crash in the ocean. As a result, almost all reached China. Doolittle’s bomber made landfall on the Chinese coast at 8:45 pm. His navigator had calculated that they would run out of gas 135 miles off the China coast, and preparations were made for ditching. Doolittle didn’t like that idea; there were sharks in the water, and he didn’t want to go down in the midst of them. But the tailwind eased their minds about ditching, and they were enabled to make the coast of China. The weather over China was bad, however. At 8,000 feet, flying blind on instruments, and with fuel consumption having increased, Doolittle realized that they couldn’t go much further. So he bailed out of the bomber, and his crew followed. Doolittle landed in a rice paddy. Wet and cold, he stumbled to a farmhouse, and stayed there until dawn. The next morning, he hiked up a path to a village. Rather awkwardly due to the language barrier, he asked a local China-man to direct him to the local train station. Instead, the man directed him to the local military base. There a Chinese officer waited with hand outstretched for Doolittle’s 45. automatic pistol. Doolittle refused to turn it over. Doolittle answered that he was American and would prove it by taking the officer to the spot where his parachute was. The officer, with a dozen armed soldiers, accompanied Doolittle to the spot, but found the parachute gone. Doolittle then pointed out that nearby villagers could substantiate his story because they had heard the noises of aircraft engines in the night. But the officer replied that the villagers had been questioned and had reported that they heard no noise and accused Doolittle of lying. Once again, he moved to Doolittle with hand outstretched to take Doolittle’s weapon. Doolittle was in a pickle. He was a foreigner with no paper and a gun who had no way of proving that he just been a bombing mission of their mutual enemy.  Things got tense for a moment, but were quickly relived when two soldiers found Doolittle’s parachute in the house. The villagers had found it and moved it there for safekeeping. The officer found all four of Doolittle’s crew. Everyone was fine, except for Hank Potter, the navigator, who had sprained his ankle when he hit the ground after bailing out of the B-25. Doolittle and his crew made it to Chungking, at least partly through the efforts of American Baptist missionary John Birch, who encountered the American fliers and led them to Chungking, acting as guide and translator along the way.

Lieutenant Travis Hoover followed Doolittle’s plane as it made its way across the China Sea, but the weather grew ugly when they reached the coast. Hoover climbed to avoid the mountains that he knew were located inland, when the left engine conked out. Three times, Hoover attempted to climb, and three times the left engine conked out. Realizing grimly that he would never make it over the mountains, Hoover realized that he would have to crash land. It was riskier then bailing out, but they were too low to do that. In light rain, and with nightfall coming rapidly, Hoover spotted a line of rice paddies, free from obstructions and put down there. The aircraft suffered only light damage. The crew piled out, took what they would need from the craft and then set it alight to keep it from falling into Japanese hands. They hiked up a mountain and spent the night huddling in a trench. They found a hut and stayed there the next day, then headed west that night. Coming across a villager, they were able to learn they were in Chinese territory, Continuing down a trail that wound between villages, the crew were set upon by Chinese guerrillas. The Americans were disarmed and robbed of everything, but their clothes.  At the guerrilla headquarters to which they were led, they managed to convince the Chinese who they were, and their belongings were returned to them. On April 22^nd, the crew traveled by boat to the village of Ning Hai, and from thence to Sungyao, where they met up with a Chinese college student who could speak English. He acted as interpreter, as they made their way by rickshaw, bus, train, boat, and on foot, to Chushsien. They arrived at Chungking on May 14^th.

Lieutenant Robert Gray also reached China. He would not have made it, except that the headwind into which he was flying, changed into the tailwind that so Providentially assisted the bomber crews. If they had not this wind for seven hours, they would have gone down into the sea two hundred miles off the Chinese coast. The weather grew ugly as night fell, and Gray climbed to avoid the mountains, flying on instruments. When the gas gauges hit empty, Gray ordered the crew to bail out. They all bailed out without difficulty, but Engineer-gunner Corporal Leland D. Faktor died upon hitting the ground. Either he knocked his head on the plane as he jumped, or he hit it on the ground when he landed, but his body was found next morning and carried to a nearby village. The other four crew members went for help. Two crew members, the navigator and co-pilot incurred minor injuries to themselves on the way. They stumbled into a village, where they spent the night, and then the next morning, the villagers agreed to lead them to the wreckage of their airplane. On the way, they ran into Chinese guerrillas. By rickshaw, and every other conceivable means of transportation, the four men eventually made Chungking. Corporal Faktor was buried in China.

Lieutenant Everett W. Holstrom ran into bad weather like the other crews as he reached China, assisted by the tailwind already spoken of. He and his crew bailed out at 10:30 pm. Everyone survived the jump, but one man cracked his shoulder upon hitting the ground. They too were rounded up by Chinese guerrillas and taken to a village. Believing they were German, the guerrillas roughly treated their prisoners until they deduced they were American. By every means of transportation, including their own feet, the crew eventually reached Chungking.

Captain David M. Jones and the crew of his B-25 were forced to bail out of their aircraft when the blinding rain and darkness made the possibility of a safe landing nearly impossible. Two of the crew injured themselves slightly on jumping, but all were alive. The men made their way to the nearby villige of Changsan. A train then carried them to Yushan where a crowd of Chinese received the Americans as heroes and friends. At the air station in Yushan, they were fed, clothed, and given a place to stay. On April 27^th, they were flown to Chungking.

Lieutenant Dean E. Hallmark flew south along the same route taken by the other planes. They neared China about sixty miles north of Wenchu at dusk. The weather was bad. It was raining and clouds hung low, obscuring visibility. Hallmark flew under the clouds at 100 feet, barely able to see in front of him. The gas gauges neared empty. Everyone put on their life vests and prepared to bail out, as the engines began to cough from lack of fuel. Hallmark held the plane steady as it slapped into the waves. Ditching the plane was not a harmless endeavor. The navigator broke his nose and suffered gashes to his head and arms. Hallmark himself had been cut in both his knees. The engineer-gunner tore open his forehead. Bleeding from numerous wounds, the men clambered atop the sinking airplane and tried to inflate their life raft. Then a huge wave threw them off the plane and separated them from the life raft. The engineer-gunner and bombardier drowned. Co-pilot Chase J. Nielson managed to make it to shore. Bleeding, exhausted, and fearful of Japanese capture, he hid next to a cobblestone path that led to a village. Discovered by a Chinese guerrilla, a Captain named Ling, he was led to join Dean Hallmark and Lieutenant Robert Meder, Hallmark’s copilot. Meder related how he had hidden the bodies of the other crew members to keep them from being discovered by the Japanese. The whole area, it turned out, was crawling with Japanese, and they were on the hunt for the Americans who had bombed their capital, and embarrassed them in the eyes of all the world. The Chinese guerrillas put the three Americans on a sampan, and accompanied by Captain Ling, managed to get them by that means to the city of Wenchow. On the way, a Japanese patrol boat stopped and searched the sampan, but failed to find the three Americans. At Wenchow, the three were placed in the care of a fisherman named Wong. The Japanese arrived immediately after, and the Americans hid themselves in the rafters of a shoddy building and in mats in the corner, while Wong attempted to look busy and light a fire. Three Japanese soldiers, one an officer, came into the building. Captain Ling, who had evidently betrayed them, was with them. One of the soldiers moved to the pile of sacks in the corner, and uncovered Hallmark. Hallmark was ordered to come out or be shot. Reluctantly, he complied and was taken prisoner. The officer demanded to know where the other two Americans were. Hallmark feigned ignorance, but the officer wasn’t convinced. He drew up a pistol and began beating Wong. A Japanese soldier then spotted the other two Americans hiding in the rafters. Both men came down and were taken prisoner.

Lieutenant Ted W. Lawson ran into rain and clouds one hundred miles off the Japanese coast. Lawson initially wanted to ditch just off a small island on the Chinese coast. At the last moment, he changed his mind, and tried to land on the beach. As it turned out, he smashed the B-25 into the beach. The force of the landing bruised and battered them. Bombardier Robert S. Clever was hurled through the Plexiglas nose. His face was drenched with blood, both of his eyes were swollen shut, the top of his head was skinned, and he incurred cuts around both eyes. Lieutenant Lawson suffered a severe gash in the left thigh, just above the the knee, and another on his left shin. One of his ankles was bruised, and many of his teeth had been knocked out. Lieutenant Dean Davenport, the co-pilot, suffered cuts on his right leg. Lieutenant McClure, the navigator was injured in the shoulders and was cut in his right foot. Engineer Gunner Sargent David Thatcher was cut atop the head, and bruised considerably.  As the least wounded of the crew, Thatcher tended to the wounds of the others. Some Chinese fishermen came from a nearby village and helped the crew to a hut. They were taken the next day to the mainland in a small fishing boat. On the mainland, they were taken to Yai Hu, and given medical aid. They were then taken to Linhai, and placed in a hospital there.

Captain Edward J. York’s plane was eating up gas far more rapidly than the others. It became obvious to he and his crew, that their bomber would never make China. That left two options, ditching in the water between China and Japan, or landing in Russia. York took the latter alternative. When they reached Russia, they put down at Primorskiy, a town thirty miles across an inlet from Vladivostok. The Russians were friendly, but they dodged their questions about who soon they could refuel and fly out. Instead, the Americans were put aboard a DC-3 and flown to Khabarovsk, 375 miles from Vladivostok. There, it was announced that they were to be interned for the duration of the war. The Soviets were American Allies, but only in the war with Germany. Russia had signed a neutrality pact with Japan, and Joseph Stalin had every intention of keeping it. He had his hands full fighting the Germans on his western front and had no intention of entering into a war with a powerful nation on his eastern front if he could avoid it. Hence, he followed international law strictly, and interned the aircrews of his allies.

Lieutenant Harold Watson’s plane ran into foul weather just like all the others. The Chinese coast was crossed, and the crew found themselves flying above the mountains, their exact position unknown. Then the gas ran out, and the crew bailed out. All landed safely except for Watson whose arm was caught in the parachute riser and dislocated at the shoulder. Chinese soldiers captured the fliers, and aided them to travel first to Hengyang, then to Chungking.

Lieutenant Richard O, Joyce, in Plane No.10, followed the other planes over the China Sea, and ran into the foul weather just as the others had. Their gas ran out before they reached Chuchow, their landing site, and the men bailed out. The men only got a few bruises when they hit the ground. The Chinese peasants were friendly and helped the Americans, assisting them to get to Chuchow.

Captain Greening’s plane no.11, ran into the fog and rain that had engulfed the others two hours before reaching the coast. It became obvious they would have to bail out. So Greening climbed to 11,500 feet, and the crew jumped. The next day, assisted by Chinese farmers and soldiers, they were led to Chu-hsien, well out of danger of capture from the Japanese.

Lieutenant William Bower’s plane no. 12 ran low on gas near Chuchow. Well inland from the coast, at 9,000 feet, the crew jumped. Finding a village, they were warmly treated by the Chinese, and put up in a filthy hut, which grated their western sensibilities, but not the inferior sanitary standards of their hosts. Thankfully, it didn’t last long, and they were soon on their way to Chungking.

Lieutenant Edgar McElroy’s plane no.13 ran low on gas, and the crew knew it was time to bail out. They were not sure if they over water or land. The men jumped, and were much relieved to hit the earth, rather then come down in the sea. They arrived at a nearby village at dawn, and were led to a Chinese army unit. The Japanese, they were told, were only two miles away from the village they had come to. The following day, they set off for Chungking, getting by there by foot, rickshaw, donkey, boat, bus, and train.

Major Jack Hilger’s plane no. 14 ran into the same bad weather that the others did. Low on fuel, bailout was undertaken. Hilger fell onto a mountain, and his chute got caught up in a tree. His left hand and wrist were sprained, his back was injured, and his groin and face were bleeding or were in pain. Hilger made his way to a village below the mountain and a boy from the village led him to the nearby Chinese army units. They reunited him with his crew, and they all set out for Chungking.

Lieutenant Donald G. Smith’s plane no. 15 had reached the coast when the engines started sputtering. Realizing they were out of gas but having no desire to run into the mountains ahead, they put down into the water west of Sangchow. Lieutenant White, the Medical Officer, at great risk to his life and with exemplary courage remained inside the sinking ship with water rising dangerously until his surgical instruments and medical kit could be salvaged. It was good they were, for he would save the lives of the badly wounded in Lawson’s crew with his medical skills and knowledge when they later linked up. The men paddled to shore in a life raft, but on the way to land, the boat sprung a leak and sank. The men made it to shore anyway. The Chinese who lived in the area promised to assist them in getting to safety.

Lieutenant William G. Farrow’s plane made it to China, and Farrow flew on instruments at 11,000 feet. The darkness and the overcast prevented them from finding a place to land, and with fuel rapidly dwindling, they had to jump. It was 11:45, when they did so, having just spotted the city of Nancheng. George Barr fell into a rice paddy and was promptly taken prisoner by Japanese troops. Bombardier DeShazer fell into a cemetery, where he spent the night. The next day, he made his way up a path to a village, and ran into some Japanese soldiers who took him prisoner. The other three members of the crew were captured as well.

  Prisoners of Japan

The eight men captured by the Japanese would suffer a terrible fate. Held first at Shaghai, and then transferred to Tokyo, the six men found themselves under the cruel hands of the Kempei Tai, the Japanese Secret Police. The Japanese were furious at the bombing of their capital. Little damage had of coarse been caused, but the blow to their pride was immense. Revenge was on their minds, and Japan set out to exact it from their prisoners. Japanese propaganda claimed that the raid had deliberately targeted civilians. A story was cooked up about how American aircraft had deliberately machine-gunned elementary school children at play. All of this was pure hogwash, of coarse. Doolittle had deliberately instructed his men to avoid targets not of a military nature. Granted, there was collateral damage (as in the bombing of the Japanese hospital), but such damage was accidentally inflicted. The Doolittle Raid, targeting only military targets and military industry, conformed much more closely to the Just War Doctrine then did the later firebombing raids on Japan, and the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the War. But to support their propaganda, the Japanese wanted to have confessions from the captured raiders substantiating the lies, and so they set out to get them using torture. From captured maps and charts recovered from one of the crashed planes, the Japanese already had a good deal of information about the raid, the training the men had received, and even the raid’s origin from a carrier. However, the Japanese could not believe that Medium bombers could fly from a carrier and suspected that the information about the USS Hornet launching the raid was planted information designed to serve as a smokescreen or red herring from the real place where the bombers had taken off. The prisoners were surprised about the wealth of information their interrogators possessed, even asking about Doolittle specifically. The Japanese bound the hands and feet of the prisoners and hooded them. Then the Kempei Tai beat them with bamboo sticks while demanding to know such things as how B-25s could take off from a carrier, and how many bombs each plane carried. They wanted to know how many bombers had been involved, and how many crewmen. The prisoners answered, but they deliberately gave misleading or evasive answers. That really stuck in the Kempei Tei’s craw. Growing angry, they took it out in severe beatings of the prisoners. But the Americans stuck to their misleading and evasive replies. The Kempei Tei now decided that beatings were insufficient for their purpose. They tried other methods of torture. The men were held down and water was forced into their mouths and noses to simulate drowning. When the men had passed out, the Japanese jumped on their stomachs until they vomited. Then the Kempei Tei repeated the process, knowing just how far to go to avoid killing their victims. The Kempei Tei used other methods too, such as forcing the prisoners to kneel with bamboo poles behind their knees, and then jumping onto their thighs, or hanging them by the wrists from pegs in the wall with their toes just grazing the floor. The Japanese showed the men maps and charts that had taken from one of the crashed planes in China. The men now realized just how needless the torture was. The Japanese already had the answers to the questions they were asking. But the starvation diet they were on, the lack of sleep, and the torture had worn down their will to fight back. On April 22^nd, the Japanese led the prisoners to an interrogation room. But instead of the torture, they were seated at a table on which sat a pile of papers written in Japanese, and a pen. The prisoners would ordered to sign or be killed. And so, the prisoners signed, although they had no idea what they were signing. When they asked, they were told that it had to do with their personal lives. In reality, the signed papers were confessions that they had deliberately targeted civilians, including the strafing of school children. With the confessions now in their possession, the Japanese kept up their torture. After the bombing of Tokyo, an ex post facto law had been passed by the Japanese War Ministry specifying that any airman that participated in the bombing or strafing or nonmilitary targets would be sentenced to death if convicted of that crime. Now with the confessions, the Japanese moved to apply it to the Doolittle raiders in their hands. On August 28^th, they were placed in front of five Japanese officers and placed on trial. It  was a mock trial. Not only had the sentence already been decided, but the trial was held in Japanese and so the prisoners could not understand any of it. They did understand the sentence, however, which was given in English: that of death. Dean Hallmark, William Farrow, and Corporal C. Spatz, Farrow’s gunner, were murdered by firing squad. The other prisoners had their sentences “mercifully” commuted to life in prison, and spent the remainder of the war years in military custody on starvation diet. When Lieutenant Robert J. Meder, Hallmark’s copilot died from malnutrition, the Japanese finally began feeding their prisoners better. A few books were provided the prisoners, a welcome relief to the utter boredom that had marked their imprisonment. One of these books was the Bible. The men read it voraciously. None of them had considered themselves religious, but it made an impression on all of them, especially DeShazer, who became a Christian during this time. He felt a calling from God to return to Japan and share the good news of Jesus with the Japanese people. His conversion resulted in his treating his Japanese captors with respect, and surprised at this, they began treating him with the same. The story of DeShazer’s conversion and love for the Japanese people that resulted in his resolve to return to Japan and share the Gospel after the horrifically cruel and evil treatment he received at their hands is one of the most powerful ones of World War II.

Revenge on the Chinese People

When Japan’s military leaders heard news of the raid on Tokyo, they took immediate steps to ensure that nothing like that would, or could, ever happen again. Knowing that the American bombers had landed or had gone down in China, and that the Chinese had assisted some of them, they decided to teach the Chinese a bitter and brutal lesson about the consequences of helping the Americans ever again. Under the orders of Emperor Hirohito himself, 53 battalions of Japanese troops invaded the Jiangxi and Zhejiang Provinces to to ensure that American bombers would not be able to land there in the future and to punish the inhabitants for helping the Americans. Chiang Kai Shek had worried that the landing of the B-25s in China would provoke Japanese retaliation against the Chinese people, and his fears and worries proved correct. The Japanese laid waste a full 20,000 square miles of territory. Towns and villages the raiders had passed through were burned to the ground, and human being and animal – in short, everything that breathed, male or female, of all ages – was shot. The dead people and animals were left unburied on the ground to rot. No corpses were buried. In the town of Ihwang, for example, in the words of an American Roman Catholic Priest: “ They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved. They raped any woman from the ages of 10-65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it.”  What took place in Ihwang, was only typical of the Japanese actions in every town through which the Americans had passed: rape of most of the women, then the killing of every living creature, then the razing of the town to charred earth.  Chiang Kai Shek reported “ After they had been caught unwares by the falling of American bombs on Tokyo, Japanese troops attacked the coastal areas of China where many American fliers had landed. These Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman and child in those areas – let me repeat – these Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman, and child in these areas, reproducing on a wholesale scale the horrors which the world had seen at Lidice, but about which the have been uninformed in these instances.” Of especial importance to the Japanese was the airfields in the area. The Japanese took the town of Chuchow, and forced 4,000 Chinese to plow up the airfield, digging trenches at right angles across the runway thus making it irreparably useless for the landing of aircraft.  Other airfields at Chu-hsien, Yushan, and Lishui were destroyed as well, and thirty percent of the crops in the area were put to the torch. In the town of Nancheng, the Japanese troops began a widespread spree of rapes, murders, looting, and wholesale destruction, that so reminded everyone of the infamous “rape of Nanking” in 1937, that people took to calling the events in Nancheng, “the rape of Nancheng.” The Japanese entered the town on June 11^th, 1942, promptly shot all the men, and for a month, remained there, raping the town’s female inhabitants at their leisure. Drunk most of the time, the Japanese roamed the streets of the town, looking for any woman they may have overlooked for the purposes for rape. During this time, the Japanese systematically looted the town, taking all radios, surgical equipment, and drugs. Japanese army engineers destroyed the town’s electrical plant, and ripped up the railroad that went through the town. Then on July 7^th, the Japanese Army started a carefully planned burning of the town of the ground. They left behind scores of female victims inflicted with venereal disease. But the Japanese reserved their worst reprisals for those Chinese unfortunate enough to have actually assisted the Doolittle raiders. The Japanese found a man who had given shelter to Lieutenant Watson. They tied him to a chair, drenched him with gasoline, and forced the man’s own wife to set him on fire. To the Chinese who had assisted Lieutenant Hallmark and his men, the Japanese lined them up and mowed  them down with machine gun fire. In Nancheng, the Japanese forced a group of men who provided the American fliers with food to eat feces. Then they lined them up in long lines, and fired guns into their bodies with the intention of seeing how many bodies a bullet would pass through before it’s path was stopped. The American fliers, grateful for the help the Chinese provided them, gave them gifts and souvenirs such as parachutes, gloves, American coins, cigarette packages, and the like. What the Americans had no way of knowing was that the savage Japanese would find these things in the possession of the Chinese and know from the presence of these trinkets that they had helped the raiders, and they would then know who would torture and kill. Not that the Japanese were particularly picky about who they tortured and killed in any case. For in the wholesale slaughter and devastation inflicted in two whole Chinese provinces, they massacred countless peasants who had never even heard of the raid on Tokyo, much less assisted the raiders. People were shot, bayoneted, beheaded, or dropped down wells to drown. And American General Claire Chennault reported: “ One sizable city was razed for no other reason than the sentiment displayed by its citizens in filling up Jap bomb craters on the nearby airfields.” The Japanese only stayed in the two provinces for a month, then withdrew, but behind them, they left more death and suffering – in the form of disease. The Japanese biological warfare unit, Unit 731, took flasks, filled with typhoid and bubonic plague and contaminated wells, rice paddies, and homes with them. They even baked 3,00 rolls of bread, infected them with typhoid and the bubonic plague, and handed them out to prisoners of war – whom they promptly released to return to China and spread more disease.  The Japanese spread fleas infected with disease too. But the Chinese were not the only casualties. 10,000 Japanese soldiers fell ill with diseases, and 1,700 died, mostly of cholera. Due to the terrible sanitary conditions in China, (the farmers fertilized their fields with dung, and people often defecated in the open air), it is difficult to ascertain exactly how effective the Japanese biological warfare was, particularly since there had been severe outbreaks of disease before. But it is known that severe outbreaks of disease occurred after the Japanese withdrew, and doubtless this was due in large part to the biological warfare unit of Japan’s army. In all, some 250,000 Chinese perished at the hands of the Japanese.  The Japanese atrocities against the Chinese civilians reveal the utter hypocrisy of their treatment of the captured American fliers. They were tried and convicted for “crimes against humanity.” Yet the death of the Japanese civilians in the Doolittle Raid had been accidental – the raiders had been specifically charged to target only military and industrial buildings, and to leave residential areas alone. On the other hand, the Japanese treatment of the Chinese was not only deliberate, but exceedingly evil, and completely indefensible from the standpoint of the Just War Doctrine. In addition, as mentioned above, it reveals the hypocrisy of the Japanese. Ultimately, they did not get their hackles up with righteous indignation because the Americans had committed some sort of an evil act – rather, they were angry because according to the Japanese, they were racially superior to other Asian races. In other words, it was worthy of death to accidentally harm a Japanese civilian, but it was perfectly fine to murder a Chinese civilian for just about any reason under the sun.  In short, Japan could treat the people in the conquered territories of its empire any way it pleased, but woe to anyone who laid a finger, even by accident, on a Japanese. This reason is more clear when it is remembered that Japanese troops forced all Asians in the conquered territories to bow when encountering a Japanese. Those that failed received a slap across the face. To their credit, however, the atrocities committed against them did not scare the Chinese against helping American fliers in the future. If anything, it emboldened their resolve to do so in the future, and throughout the course of the war, hundreds of Allied airmen would be helped and assisted by the Chinese people.

 Aftermath

The American bomber crews were taken to India from Chungking, and from there, taken home to the U.S. Of the men who survived, 28 saw service in the China-Burma-India theater. Most of these 28 were killed in action over the course of the war. Nineteen men flew combat missions in the Mediterranean. Four of these were killed in action; and four were taken prisoner by the Germans. Two men were given medical discharges due to the wounds they sustained after the raid. Of the men in Japanese captivity, they would endure forty months of a hellish existence as Japanese captives before they were set free.  Doolittle expected to receive a court martial because in his eyes, the raid had been a failure: all sixteen bombers had been lost, and only minor damage had been inflicted on Japanese military installations and industry.  He was very pleasantly surprised when the opposite happened: he was promoted two ranks to Lieutenant General. He was also awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

All 80 of the raiders were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and they received decorations from the Chinese government too. Although the tactical achievements of the raid were minimal, the strategic achievements were profound. Overnight, American morale skyrocketed. To a home front reeling from bad news everywhere in the Pacific, the news that American aircraft had bombed Tokyo itself was just the right medicine needed. Doolittle was an American hero overnight, as were all his fliers. But the strategic results were even more profound in Japan. The raid badly rattled the Japanese. As mentioned above, they dispatched over 50 battalions to keep eastern China from being used as a base for shuttle bombing operations. In addition, squadrons of fighters earmarked for delivery to Japan’s Pacific Island bases were transferred instead to Japan’s home islands. The raid fed the Japanese lust for more territory. As the Armed Forces believed it needed a bigger defense perimeter to stave off American air attack. This “victory disease” as one Japanese Admiral would describe it postwar, led to an over extension of Japanese forces across the Pacific, and contributed to sloppy planning of future operations. Perhaps most significant were the effects upon the Japanese Navy. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander In Chief of the Combined Fleet, was particularly humiliated by the American raid. It was the Navy’s job to protect the home islands from attack, and the Navy had failed. As said before, the Japanese could not believe their discovery that the American medium bombers had flown off an aircraft carrier and put it down as an American red herring. In their minds, the planes could only have come from a land base, and their conclusions seemed to be vindicated when President Roosevelt remarked publicly that the planes had come from the secret American base at Shangri-La. (A mythical location in a novel) Japanese Admirals charted the Pacific and came up with the conclusion that Shangri-La had to be Midway, as with the exception of the Aleutians, no other place was close enough. Thus, Yamamoto resolved to exterminate the American fleet by first taking both Midway and the Aleutians and drawing out the American carriers that had survived Pearl Harbor. His plans would go up in smoke, quite literally, in the battle of Midway. The Doolittle Raid was thus a momentous strategic victory for the Americans, one that would hot have had its immense strategic effect if not for the Providence of God intervening on the American behalf.