Author: Editor-in-Chief of Tonkindo
"They took off from Shangri-La." On April 18, 1942, US President Roosevelt told the major media with a smile at a press conference: The US army has just attacked the Japanese mainland. When reporters asked the president, considering that military secrets were not leaked, President Roosevelt humorously told all the media that the PLANE THAT the United States bombed Japan took off from Shangri-La.
On December 7, 1941, organized by the famous Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Imperial Japanese Navy dispatched six large aircraft carriers carrying more than 500 carrier-based aircraft to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the largest naval base in the Pacific. In just 90 minutes, the Japanese Navy dispatched two waves of attack, almost completely annihilating the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet in the port of berth. More than 2,400 American troops were killed in this battle, and even the 10-centimeter-thick diesel oil floated in Pearl Harbor Bay, which was in a very miserable condition. The "sneak attack on Pearl Harbor" is the biggest sneak attack suffered by the United States in the more than 200 years since the founding of the United States.
We have a saying in China called "a gentleman takes revenge, ten years is not too late." "But Westerners are different from us, and Westerners are accustomed to going straight, revenge, and never delay. Therefore, after suffering the great humiliation of Pearl Harbor, the United States immediately reached an agreement on the issue of war against Japan and resolutely declared war on Japan. However, due to the severe blow, the morale of the US military in the Pacific region is low, and there is also a sad mood in the US mainland, in this case, how to boost the morale of the American people is the first question that Roosevelt, who was the US president at the time, had to consider first.
Japan is an island country surrounded by the sea on all sides, which can be described as a geographical situation that cannot be defended. If we can seize the opportunity to bomb the Japanese mainland with air raids, it is undoubtedly the best means to boost the morale of the US side. So the Roosevelt administration, at the outset of the counterattack plan, put forward the idea of bombing the Japanese mainland with bombers. However, it is easier to imagine and difficult to implement, the straight-line distance between the United States mainland and Japan is more than 10,000 kilometers, even if the bombers take off from Alaska, the range of all the BOMBers of the US army at that time is far from successfully bombing Japan, and then return safely. Moreover, Japan was also aware of the defense problems of the mainland, so the Commander of the Japanese Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, ordered the establishment of a defensive post composed of requisitioned fishing boats and destroyers on the sea about 800 kilometers east of the Japanese mainland, specifically to monitor the sea against the American fleet approaching the Japanese mainland. Because with the technical level at that time, no carrier-based bomber exceeded the combat radius of 300 kilometers, Yamamoto extended the Japanese patrol line to 800 kilometers to ensure that the mainland was worry-free.
However, the practical difficulties did not overwhelm the American soldiers, and Colonel Francis Rohr, the deputy chief of staff of the US Navy at that time, who was in charge of the Anti-Submarine Act, after carefully inspecting the Navy aircraft carrier and the double bombers of the Army Air Force at that time, reported to The Then Commander of the US Navy, Admiral Ernest King, that he could use the Navy's aircraft carriers to carry the Army's bombers, take off from outside the Japanese Navy's defense zone to bomb Tokyo, and then no longer return, but land in the coastal areas around Jiangsu and Zhejiang in China. The air raid plan was then rescued and escorted back to China by the Chinese army at that time.
During World War II, the United States did not yet form an independent air force, but assigned aircraft to the Army and Navy, and called them "Army Air Corps" and "Naval Air Force" respectively. Colonel Rolle's suggestion was taken seriously by Admiral King, and he quickly approved the appointment of James Harold Doolittle, then a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Army Air Corps, with full responsibility for the program and to lead the team on the mission. Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle was one of the few highly skilled pilots in the U.S. Army Aviation Corps, and although he was retired at the time, he had been engaged in civilian flight work and was a famous pilot and flight engineer in the United States at that time. Because Doolittle is one of the few professionals who are proficient in both flying and aircraft technology, he is indeed the perfect candidate for the bombing of Tokyo.
According to the requirements of the US military, bombers capable of taking off from the aircraft carrier must carry at least 1 2,000-pound bomb (about 907 kilograms) and be able to fly at least 4,450 kilometers to ensure the smooth completion of the operation. At that time, the U.S. Naval Aviation Corps did not have a carrier-based aircraft that could meet this requirement, and the U.S. Army Aviation Corps could meet these requirements with four twin-engine tactical bombers, namely the B-18 "Poirot", the B-23 "Dragon", the B-25 "Mitchell" and the B-26 "Marauder", but because the wingspan of the Polo, Dragon and Marauder bombers was too large, it was inconvenient to deploy on the aircraft carrier, and it was possible to scratch the aircraft carrier island during take-off, causing danger. So Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle eventually chose the most compact B-25 Mitchell bomber.
The B-25 Mitchell bomber was one of the best twin-engine medium tactical bombers in the United States during World War II, named after the famous American commander William Mitchell during World War I, and was one of the very few aircraft in the United States specifically named after a person. Developed by the famous North American Airlines at the time, the aircraft had a maximum range of 1200 miles and a maximum bomb load of 1200 pounds, and although it was a medium-sized tactical bomber, the aircraft was still equipped with special protective armor for the pilots, and was equipped with self-sealing fuel tanks, and was equipped with self-defense machine gun turrets in the nose, tail, back and abdomen, and the self-defense firepower was extremely strong and the battlefield survivability was excellent.
However, in order to take off on the limited deck of the aircraft carrier, Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle had to lead his men to remove all the armor on the B-25 bomber to reduce the weight of the aircraft. At the same time, the turrets on the back, nose and abdomen of the aircraft were all removed, and steel auxiliary fuel tanks were added to the belly, so that the fuel reserve of the entire aircraft soared from 640 gallons to 1140 gallons, thus nearly doubling the range. After a long and arduous training, on April 1, 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle led all the crews to officially board the US aircraft carrier "Hornet". Although the U.S. military initially planned to arrange 24 B-25 bombers, but because the aircraft carrier does have limited space, and the wide Army bombers can not fit into the narrow aircraft carrier hangar, they can only be parked on the deck. Therefore, in the end, the US aircraft carrier "Hornet" carried only 16 B-25 bombers, and secretly escorted the 18th Task Force led by the "Enterprise" aircraft carrier to the Coast of Japan.
In the entire attack formation, because the "Hornet" aircraft carrier needs to load 16 US Army B-25 bombers, the deck is completely occupied, and it is impossible to take off and land us Navy aircraft normally, so the air defense and long-range reconnaissance tasks of the entire fleet are completely dependent on the carrier aircraft of the "Enterprise" aircraft carrier. In addition to the two aircraft carriers Hornet and Enterprise, the entire U.S. military formation also includes 3 heavy cruisers, 1 light cruiser, 8 destroyers and 2 fuel supply tankers. The entire fleet, completely radio silently, followed the sparsely shipped North Pacific route, fumbling all the way to the Japanese mainland.
Everything had gone very well, but by about 7 a.m. on April 18, when it was 1,200 kilometers from the Japanese mainland, the U.S. task force was spotted by the Japanese armed fishing boat Hito Maru on patrol, and the ship immediately issued an alert to the mainland, saying that the U.S. fleet had been found. Although it was immediately interfered with by the U.S. radio and sunk, Lieutenant General Halsey, who commanded the entire fleet, did not dare to risk thousands of lives easily, especially since the attack on Pearl Harbor, the main U.S. fleet was almost completely lost, and only 3 aircraft carriers were absolute top pillars, and there must be no mistakes. After much deliberation, Halsey and Doolittle decided that the bombers would take off early and pounce on Japan.
According to the original plan of the US military, the US bombers would bomb major Japanese cities at night and land in the Zhejiang area of China after dawn in order to be rescued by Chinese soldiers and civilians. However, because the take-off was nearly 10 hours earlier than before, which meant that the U.S. military had to cross and bomb the Japanese mainland during the day, the danger of the operation was doubled, and the Japanese naval commander Yamamoto Isoroku mobilized several elite air units stationed in the eastern part of Japan to resist the U.S. surprise attack. At the same time, due to the early take-off, this means that even if the B-25 aircraft expands fuel reserves, it is not enough to reach China safely, so before taking off, the ground crew fills each aircraft with fuel as much as possible, and constantly shakes and flaps the wings and fuel tanks of the aircraft, hoping to squeeze out all the bubbles in the fuel tank and then fill the aircraft again. At the same time, the pilots removed the last machine gun on the plane for self-defense, which was used to reduce the weight of the aircraft and increase the distance.
When ready, all 16 B-25 bombers lifted off sequentially between 8:20 and 9:19 a.m. without any surprises. Before departure, in order to ensure maximum bombing effectiveness, the U.S. Army equipped each B-25 aircraft with four 500-pound (227 kg) bombs, three of which were high-explosive bombs and one of which were incendiary submunitions, so that while bombing Japanese targets, they would set fire to the city. Before the plane took off, Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle personally hung the "Friendship" medal once awarded to him by the Japanese government on the bomb, and in this way returned the medal to Japan, which was taken by the reporter accompanying the army and became one of the many classic photos of World War II.
As all the B-25s lifted off and left, the U.S. fleet turned around and retreated home. Bombers led by Doolittle pounced on Tokyo. According to the mission allocation, of the 16 B-25 bombers, 10 bombed Tokyo, 2 bombed Yokohama, and the other 4 bombed Yokosuka, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. Due to the sudden arrival of the American planes, the Japanese army had almost no time to react, and the entire bombing of Tokyo lasted only 30 seconds before, and later, according to the memoirs of General Doolittle (promoted to lieutenant general after the war), a chronicle novel "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" was once a hit.
At the same time, because the B-25 aircraft at that time was still painted with the old military insignia of the US Army Air Corps, it was a red dot in the middle of a white five-star, and if you did not look carefully, it was easy to mistake it for the Japanese military insignia, so when the entire Doolittle formation flew to Japan, many Japanese citizens mistakenly regarded it as their own aircraft and waved at it. On the way, Doolittle even encountered a team of Japanese fighters, and the two sides did not exchange fire, but passed by. It can be said that the entire air raid operation seems to be really helpful in the dark.
Although the US air raid on Tokyo was only 30 seconds long, and the damage caused to the Japanese side was not large, basically all the air raid damage was repaired shortly after the air raid. The only commendable bomb probably was probably the bomb dropped by Aircraft 13 piloted by Lieutenant Mcelroy of Yokosuka, and at least one of the aircraft carriers near the Japanese Navy's "Ryuho" exploded, causing damage to the carrier and extending the repair time for half a year. Strategically, however, Doolittle's bombing of Tokyo was immeasurable in boosting the morale of the United States. After hearing that the Japanese mainland had been bombed by the United States, the United States was excited and swept away the haze of pearl harbor defeat.
At the same time, Doolittle led an air raid on Japan, but also let the decision-makers of the Japanese base camp find their own defense weak, objectively prompting the Japanese side to once again pour its national strength into the famous "Midway" naval battle, and this battle completely changed the balance of US and Japanese forces in the Pacific, and sounded the death knell for the eventual demise of the Japanese Empire. Therefore, from this point of view, the doolittle formation's air raid on Japan can be regarded as one of the classic examples of modern air combat.