This Day in History: The Doolittle Raiders avenge Pearl Harbor
During this week in 1942, the Doolittle Raid is launched. Americans would not let the attack on Pearl Harbor go unanswered! Instead, the renowned aviator Lt. Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle would lead 16 B-25 bomber crews in a surprise attack on the Japanese homeland.
“The president was insistent that we find ways and means of carrying home to Japan proper, in the form of a bombing raid, the real meaning of war,” Lt. General Henry “Hap” Arnold would later describe.
Military leaders settled on a bold plan: Bombers would be towed across the Pacific by an aircraft carrier, USS Hornet. When they were about 400 miles from Japan, the B-25s would take off, headed for Tokyo and other industrial centers. Bombs would be dropped on military targets, then the planes would head for a Chinese airfield. A return to USS Hornet simply wasn’t feasible.
Doolittle looked to the Seventeenth Bombardment Group for help. The pilots volunteered in the dark, knowing only that the mission was dangerous—and that Doolittle was leading the way. “The name ‘Doolittle’ meant so much to aviators that man, we just volunteered like crazy,” one pilot would say. “He was a real leader. The men loved him and respected him.”
The morning of the raid, April 18, began with rough seas and some bad news: Several Japanese patrol boats had been spotted. The mission had become a race against time. USS Hornet wasn’t quite close enough to Japan, but the B-25s needed to get in the air anyway.
Doolittle was the first to go. The story concludes at the link in the comments.
