The Doolittle Raid

Sixteen weeks after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. needed to hit back. The plan was audacious: launch sixteen U.S. Army medium bombers — North American B-25 Mitchells — from a Navy aircraft carrier 600 miles off the Japanese coast, bomb Tokyo and other industrial cities, then continue west to land in Free China. Nothing close to this had ever been attempted. Lt Col James "Jimmy" Doolittle, already famous as a 1930s air racer (Bendix and Thompson trophies, both in 1932), was given the mission and 24 volunteer crews from the 17th Bombardment Group. Training began at Eglin Field — today's KVPS — on March 1, 1942. The crews spent three weeks practicing on auxiliary fields with white lines painted to simulate the 467-foot deck length they would have on USS Hornet. Navy Lieutenant Henry Miller flew down from NAS Pensacola to teach them carrier-style takeoffs: full flaps, brakes locked, engines screaming, brake-release timed to the deck officer's flag. They flew low-level navigation legs over the Gulf of Mexico, dropped practice bombs from 200 feet, and learned dead reckoning across open water — radio-silent. On March 25, the 22 selected B-25s left Eglin for Sacramento, then Alameda. They loaded onto Hornet on April 1, 1942 and sailed under the Golden Gate. On April 18, sighted by a Japanese picket boat 200 miles farther out than planned, Doolittle launched anyway. All sixteen aircraft made it off the deck — the first time a U.S. Army bomber had ever flown from a carrier in operational combat. They bombed Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka. Material damage was modest. Strategic damage to Japanese morale was catastrophic — and Yamamoto's response (close the perimeter, take Midway) led directly to the decisive U.S. victory at Midway six weeks later. Eglin remembers the raid in the Air Force Armament Museum. The Hornet that launched it (CV-8) was lost at Santa Cruz in October 1942; her successor (CV-12) is moored at Alameda today as a museum.