A moment of welcome triumph in the bleak months after the attack on Pearl Harbor came with a successful bombing attack on Japan by U.S. Army Air Force B-25 Mitchell Bombers launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. The Doolittle Raid as it came to be called is still a remarkable feat.
It was unprecedented. Japan had believed itself safe from retaliation, protected from aerial attack by the breadth of the Pacific.
The concept for the attack came from Navy Captain Francis S. Low, Assistant Chief of Staff for antisubmarine warfare, who reported to Admiral Ernest J. King on January 10, 1942, that he thought twin-engined Army bombers could be launched from an aircraft carrier, after observing several at a naval airfield in Norfolk, Virginia, where the runway was painted with the outline of a carrier deck for landing practice.[9] The attack was planned and led by Doolittle, a famous military test pilot, civilian aviator, and aeronautical engineer before the war.
It was turned into one-way mission for most of the planes in the raid. Having to launch farther away than planned, most of the aircraft did not have fuel to make planned landings in China, and were forced to ditch. 15 of the 16 planes in the raid managed to reach the Chinese coast. One landed in Russia and was interned. None of them were shot down in the raid. Casualties came from ditching in the ocean; some were captured by the Japanese in China and executed.
The raid did little physical damage, but it was a huge psychological blow and it forced the Japanese military to redeploy forces to defend the home islands. A small raid, a daring gamble — and some paid with their lives.
It has been over seven decades since the raid. The last survivor has now passed into history — but their legacy remains. From Air Force Magazine:
USAF leaders and the family of retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole said goodbye to the last of the Doolittle Raiders during a Thursday ceremony at JBSA-Randolph, Texas.
Cole, who co-piloted the lead aircraft on the famed April 18, 1942, raid on Tokyo with Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, died April 9 in San Antonio at the age of 103. The Thursday ceremony took place on the 77th anniversary of the raid.
“The Doolittle Raid exemplifies American defiance and ingenuity,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said at the ceremony. “They bet big, and it worked, because nobody thought such an attack was even possible. Nobody, except those who threw out the rulebook, customized the airframe, its hardware, its engine, and pioneered the training and operational tactics to do the unthinkable on an impossible timeline.”
A grateful nation thanks you for your service Lt. Col. Richard Cole.