In world war II, there were many important battles in the Pacific theater, although many historians regarded the "Battle of Midway" as a turning point in changing the course of the war in the Pacific Theater, but if you carefully examine the evidence, in fact, the foreshadowing of the Battle of Midway was decided as early as the moment when Doolittle led the air attack on Tokyo.
On December 7, 1941, the Combined Fleet of the Japanese Navy dispatched six large aircraft carriers carrying more than 350 carrier-based aircraft to carry an unprecedented airstrike against Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the largest base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the entire Pacific. Although Nanyun gave up the planned third wave of air raids, thus abandoning the logistical support facilities such as shipyards, oil depots, and repair shops that bombed Pearl Harbor, at least half a year after that, the main force of the US Pacific Fleet was completely paralyzed and could not launch an effective attack on the Japanese army, and this period was also half a year for the Japanese army to cut melons and cut vegetables throughout the Pacific Ocean.
However, the cowboy bloodiness of the Americans who did not accept defeat was also revived by the bombs of the Japanese army. Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt instructed the U.S. Army and Navy (at that time, the United States did not have an independent air force, and the aircraft were subordinate to the Army Air Force and the Naval Air Force, respectively— the author's note) to come up with a plan to retaliate against Japan, preferably targeting Tokyo, the capital of Japan.
Because Japan is an island nation surrounded by the sea. Therefore, the use of aircraft carriers and carrier-based aircraft to carry out sudden bombing of the Japanese mainland is the most effective method, and it can also be regarded as the Japanese means to treat the Japanese themselves. But how easy is it to strike Japan? After the air raid on Pearl Harbor, Japan knew that its homeland was also surrounded by the sea, so it established a cordon composed of small ships such as ocean-going fishing boats and patrol ships on the water about 800 kilometers east of its mainland, and any U.S. warships that approached this line would be discovered at the first time.
In World War II, due to the general use of piston engines in carrier-based aircraft at that time, the take-off weight of the carrier-based aircraft itself was limited, limited by engine performance, and the amount of fuel and bomb load was even more limited. At that time, the general range of carrier-based fighters was about 600 to 800 kilometers, and the combat radius was between 250 and 350 kilometers, and Japan established a maritime cordon 800 kilometers away from the mainland in order to prevent the US military from sneaking attacks on the Japanese mainland. If it cannot effectively break into the vicinity of the Japanese mainland, no US carrier-based aircraft can effectively strike at the Japanese mainland.
But the problem was eventually solved: Colonel Francis Rohr of the U.S. Naval Aviation Corps was inspired after visiting the Naval Pilot Training Base in Norfolk, Virginia. Colonel Rolle found that the local U.S. Naval Aviation Corps marked the length of the aircraft carrier in paint on the airfield, and then flew fighters to train according to this standard, and according to the test, the U.S. Army's long-range bombers also had the possibility of taking off from naval aircraft carriers with reduced armor and weapons. Moreover, because the Army's twin-engine bombers are larger, the internal fuel load is also higher, and the weight of the aircraft can be greatly reduced in the case of effectively reducing armor and its own firepower. In this way, even the Army's twin-engine heavy bombers could take off safely from the carrier, and if this training is successful, the U.S. military will have access to reliable, bombing combat aircraft on the Japanese mainland.
In this regard, Colonel Rohr proposed that the Navy's aircraft carriers could be used to carry the Army's twin-engine heavy bombers to the waters 800 kilometers away from the Japanese mainland and carry out air strikes against Japan. Because the aircraft of the Army Air Force and the Naval Air Force were quite different, at that time, among the US land-based bombers, there were many twin-engine bombers with a range of 1800 to 2000 kilometers, which could meet the necessary conditions for take-off bombing outside the Japanese cordon, and at the same time implement the necessary strategic deterrence against Japan.
The plan was immediately taken seriously by both the U.S. Army and Navy, and the U.S. military subsequently designated Colonel Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Corps to select and organize the raid. After finalizing the plan, the U.S. Army and Navy moved quickly, and on February 3, 1942, two B-25 bombers were carried to the aircraft carrier USS Hornet moored at Naval Base In Norfolk, Virginia. In the subsequent tests, the two B-25s easily took off from the Hornet aircraft carrier, which suddenly strengthened the determination of the US military to use the aircraft carrier to carry Army bombers against Japan.
At that time, due to the size of the Army's twin-engine bombers, therefore, in the planning of the US military, the B-25 aircraft group did not return to Japan after bombing Japan, but continued to fly forward, through the entire Japanese archipelago, and then flew to The areas around Jiangxi and Zhejiang in China that had not yet been occupied by the Japanese army, and then the Kuomintang army was responsible for rescuing and protecting the US pilots from danger. To this end, at least 2 months before the US military plan, at that time, in the land that had not yet fallen in China's Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas, the Nationalist government extensively mobilized the people to repair the airfield on a large scale, which once attracted the attention of the Japanese army invading China, but these people would not have thought that the actions of the Kuomintang side were actually related to the US military's planned air raid on Tokyo.
James Doolittle was a legend in the U.S. Army Air Corps who was born with a unique talent for flying, flying the DH-4B as early as 1922, which took 21 hours and 19 minutes to complete the feat of flying across the North American continent. In 1928, Doolittle became the first pilot in the United States to complete the rib fighting stunt, and in 1929, Doolittle took the lead in completing the first "blind flight" in the United States that relied entirely on the dashboard for the first time in history, thus becoming a prominent figure in the history of American aviation. By 1941, Doolittle had been retired for 10 years, but after the Army Air Force issued a call-up, he still gave up his well-paid job at Shell, returned to the Army Air Force, and began to train carefully selected boys.
While Doolittle and his teammates worked hard to train, and to ensure that the B-25s could take off from the carrier deck, the 24 B-25 bombers designated to bomb Tokyo were sent back to the Minnesota factory for modification. All equipment unrelated to the air raid operation was removed in the modification, including aircraft guns, machine guns, ammunition... Even the bulletproof steel plates in the cabin were all removed to reduce the weight of the aircraft. After arduous training, coupled with the limited deck area of the aircraft carrier, only 16 B-25 bombers could be carried. So Doolittle finally selected 16 crews, a total of 80 pilots, aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet, accompanied by the aircraft carrier Lexington, to go to Japanese waters to prepare for the earth-shattering bombing. In this bombing operation, the LEXINGTON aircraft carrier carried normal naval carrier-based fighters to provide air cover for the Hornet, while the U.S. military also dispatched 3 heavy cruisers, 1 light cruiser and 8 destroyers to escort the two carriers. This is probably the only combat force that the US military can dispatch after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is a nest attack.
At 7:38 a.m. on April 18, 1942, when the entire U.S. task force was more than 1,200 kilometers away from the Japanese mainland, it was suddenly discovered by the Japanese fishing boat Nichito Maru, and the Japanese fishing boat immediately reported the location of the U.S. aircraft carrier battle group by radio. This put the entire raid in jeopardy at once. To this end, the commander of the fleet, Admiral Halsey, decided decisively that all 16 B-25 bombers would take off at a distance of about 400 kilometers farther than the original place of departure, and at the same time, due to the advance time, it meant that they would have to carry out air strikes against Japan during the day, and the white sky attack also meant that the entire raid operation was in extreme danger.
But perhaps the sky did care for the Americans, and for three reasons, Doolittle's bomber group did not receive any interception at all during the air raid on Japan: First, because the Nichitakaru was sunk too quickly, so that its telegram had not yet been sent, the Japanese base camp did not actually know that there were American planes coming. Secondly, the honest aircraft insignia that the BOMBers of the U.S. Army at that time also used was a red circle in the middle of the white five-pointed star on a blue background. From a distance, it looks a bit similar to the Japanese aircraft insignia, so most Japanese people regard these aircraft as their own aircraft, and they do not think that they are actually American aircraft. At the end, Tokyo had just finished an air defense exercise, so even after the Doolittle fleet had dropped bombs, many Japanese people on the street still thought that it was part of the air raid exercise and did not take the air raid seriously.
Each of the B-25 bombers led by Doolittle carried four 500-pound bombs (227 kg), three of which were high-explosive bombs and the fourth of which was a cluster-type incendiary bomb, which was equipped with rod-like incendiary agent and flew around after the explosion to expand the range of combustion. Before setting out, Doolittle tied the medals awarded to him by the Japanese government in his early years with a small wire to the tail of one of the bombs, and in this way he returned the honor conferred by the Japanese to the Japanese. A reporter accompanying the army filmed this historic scene.
Since the Japanese were completely unprepared for air raids, neither the fighters nor the anti-aircraft artillery units could react to Doolittle's group before they could react to Doolittle's group, and Doolittle's bomber group had already dropped bombs and left quickly, and the entire air raid on Tokyo lasted only 30 seconds. Later, Doolittle wrote a book in the form of a memoir, called "30 Seconds Over Tokyo", which recorded the legendary air raid.
Although the 16 B-25 aircraft had a limited bomb load and caused very little damage to the Japanese air raids, the air raids on the Japanese mainland by the army bombers taking off from the aircraft carrier were still deeply stimulating the nerves of the Japanese people, and also made the Japanese base camp realize that the Japanese mainland was actually not safe. All this led to the Japanese military's quick approval of the combined fleet commander Yamamoto Isoroku's campaign plan for the capture of Midway. This laid the biggest foreshadowing for the japanese Navy's disastrous defeat at Midway. Therefore, it can be said that whether it is a marching army or a personal struggle, victory cannot be completely hoped for by the enemy's mistakes, but need to be promoted by one's own efforts. It was precisely because of the "facilitation" of Doolittle and others that the Battle of Midway was "facilitated" and the death knell was sounded for the Japanese Navy.