18 April 1942: Doolittle Tokyo Raid

April 18, 2017, was the 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Tokyo Raid. Four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with additional Japanese military victories across the Pacific since, American morale in the spring of 1942 was abysmally low. It was actually a U.S. Navy submariner who suggested attacking the heart of the Japanese mainland, using U.S. Army Air Force medium bombers flown from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, a true joint-operation. The plan called for sixteen B-25s (under the command of Lt Col James H. Doolittle) to take off some 450 miles from Japan, bomb selected targets on the mainland such as oil storage facilities, factory areas, and military installations, then continue flying west toward the East China Sea. Airplane crews accomplished the first objective, but none of the Raiders had enough fuel to reach their designated airfields. They either ditched at sea, bailed out, crash-landed in China, or, in the case of one crew, diverted to the Soviet Union. Two of those who bailed out drowned at sea. Eight other flyers were captured by Japanese forces. Three were ultimately executed while a fourth died of poor health while in captivity. The four survivors were liberated in August 1945. Damage from the raid itself was actually minimal, but strategically it stunned Japanese military leaders into recalling combat forces from the front lines to defend mainland Japan. Likewise, because of the mission’s audacity, it raised the spirits of those back home in the U.S. who were desperate for any positive news.