Doolittle Raid

The Doolittle Raid, also known as Doolittle's Raid, as well as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first American air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. Although the raid caused comparatively minor damage, it demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attacks. It served as an initial retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and provided an important boost to American morale. The raid was named after Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, who planned and led the attack. It was one of six American carrier raids against Japan and Japanese-held territories conducted in the first half of 1942.

Under the final plan, 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers, each with a crew of five, were launched from the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet, in the Pacific Ocean. There were no fighter escorts. After bombing the military and industrial targets, the crews were to continue westward to land in China.

On the ground, the raid killed around 50 people and injured 400. Damage to Japanese military and industrial targets was minimal, but the raid had major psychological effects. In the United States, it raised morale. In Japan, it raised fear and doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the home islands, but the bombing and strafing of civilians created a desire for retribution—this was exploited for propaganda purposes. The raid also pushed forward Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's plans to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific—an attack that turned into a decisive defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the US Navy in the Battle of Midway. The consequences of the Doolittle Raid were most severely felt in China: in reprisal for the raid, the Japanese launched the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign, killing 250,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers.

Of the 16 crews involved, 14 returned to the United States or reached the safety of American forces, though one man was killed while bailing out. Eight men were captured by Japanese forces in eastern China (the other two crew members having drowned in the sea), and three of them were later executed. All but one of the 16 B-25s were destroyed in crashes, while one of the planes landed at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union.

Because the Soviet Union was not officially at war with Japan, it was required, under international law, to intern the crew for the duration of the war. The crew's B-25 was also confiscated. However, within a year, the crew was secretly allowed to leave the Soviet Union, under the guise of an escape—they returned to the United States or to American units elsewhere by way of Allied-occupied Iran and North Africa.

Doolittle initially believed that he would be court-martialed for missing his primary targets. Instead, he received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two ranks to brigadier general.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a meeting at the White House on 21 December 1941 and said that Japan should be bombed as soon as possible to boost public morale after Pearl Harbor. Doolittle recounted in his autobiography that the raid was intended to bolster American morale and to cause the Japanese to begin doubting their leadership: "An attack on the Japanese homeland would cause confusion in the minds of the Japanese people and sow doubt about the reliability of their leaders. ... Americans badly needed a morale boost."

The concept for the attack came from Navy Captain Francis S. Low, Assistant Chief of Staff for antisubmarine warfare. He reported to Admiral Ernest J. King on 10 January 1942 that he thought that twin-engined Army bombers could be launched from an aircraft carrier, after observing several at Naval Station Norfolk Chambers Field in Norfolk, where the runway was painted with the outline of a carrier deck for landing practice. Doolittle, a famous military test pilot, civilian aviator, and aeronautical engineer before the war, was assigned to Army Air Forces Headquarters to plan the raid. The aircraft to be used would need a cruising range of 2,400 nautical miles (4,400 km) with a 2,000-pound (910 kg) bomb load. Doolittle considered the B-25B Mitchell, Martin B-26 Marauder, Douglas B-18 Bolo, and Douglas B-23 Dragon. The B-26 had questionable takeoff characteristics from a carrier deck. The wingspans of the B-18 and B-23 were larger than that of the B-25, reducing the number that could be taken aboard a carrier and posing risks to the ship's superstructure. The B-25 had yet to see combat and had a range of about 1,300 miles, but tests indicated that it could fulfill the mission's requirements if it were modified to hold nearly twice as much fuel.