The Doolittle Raid

 
The carrier-borne air attack against Japan, to become known as "The Doolittle Raid", was one of the most daring sorties of WWII. At the insistence of Franklin D. Roosevelt, military planners devised a plan to enable sixteen Mitchel B25 bombers to be launched off the coast of Japan in order to bomb Tokyo and other cities. Things went awry when the operation was thought to have been detected causing the bombers to take off further from the Japanese coast than planned, and all of the planes were lost along with a substantial number of aircrew, some of whom were captured by the Japanese.

Although little appreciable material damage was done to military targets, the exercise provided a tremendous boost to American morale after the tragedy of Pearl Harbor for which, in part, this raid was a reprisal; but more importantly was effect it had on the Japanese who were undecided about their strategy having already achieved most of their objectives. The obvious choice was to take Australia as this was the direction from which counter-attacks could be expected. Yamamoto favoured taking the war to American waters in order to bring the US fleet into battle and hopefully defeat it. The Doolittle Raid swung the argument his way, and the result was the Battle of Midway. The rest is history. Dropbears.com
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I Could Never Be So Lucky Again by James H. Doolittle, et al The autobiography of one of the most famous of all wartime aviators who joined the US Army Air Service in 1917 and went on to lead a sortie which would go down in history - the 1942 raid over Tokyo - for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and his General's stars. Dropbears.com Paperback - 544 pages (April ) ISBN: 0553584642

Thirty Seconds over Tokyo
by Captain Ted W. Lawson
Hardcover
Buccaneer Books; ISBN: 0899668860

The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid - America's First World War II Victory
by Craig Nelson
from Viking Press

Four Came Home: The Gripping Story of the Survivors of Jimmy Doolittle's Two Lost Crews
by Carroll V. Glines
Paperback (March )
ISBN: 157510007X

Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944)
Starring: Van Johnson, et al.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Listed under War Movies

The Doolittle Raid
Carroll V. Glines
Schiffer

Not As Briefed: From the Doolittle Raid to a German Stalag
by Colonel C. Ross Greening
from Washington State Univ Pr

The Ship That Held the Line : The U.S.S. Hornet and the First Year of the Pacific War
by Lisle Abbott Rose
Listed under Aircraft Carriers
 
 

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