Durka-Durka-Muhammed-Jihad!!
Today I walked into work and was peeling back the day-by-day calendar featuring historic aircraft and was reminded that today was the 63rd anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.
.jpg "B-25 Lifting off the deck")
On April 18, 1942 sixteen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers performed a first-time take off from the USS Hornet while 600 miles off the coast of Japan. The initial plan was to have the Hornet close to within 400 miles and launch Doolittle's bombers, but the discovery of the task force by a Japanese picket boat hastened the departure. Better to launch now instead of having the bombers on the Hornet's deck when the presumed air attack came.
.jpg "B-25 revving up for takeoff (Note white lines painted on the deck to guide the pilot during the rollout)")
The B-25 crews hurried to take anything non-essential off the planes to lighten the load enough to accommodate the extra gasoline that would be needed to cover the extra distance to their targets in mainland Japan. This even included the .50-calibre machine guns, which left the planes virtually defenseless while flying into the heart of the enemy airspace.
Most of the planes were to target military targets around the Tokyo area. And while their payload was light - four 500-pound bombs, one of which was an incendiary bomb intended to make as much damage as possible to the multiple wooden buildings near the target areas - and there wouldn't be much strategic damage done, the mere presence of American bombers over Japan would not only strike a blow to Japanese moral, but would give American moral a much needed boost.
There's a ton of information on the Internet about this raid and it's always been fascinating to me ever since I read '30 Seconds over Tokyo' by Ted Lawson as a kid.
Sadly, this historic raid was somehow tied into the storyline in the movie Pearl Harbor and I cringe whenever I think about how these brave crews were minimized for a Hollywood plotline. The one aspect (that I spotted) that was preserved was that one of the B-25s was dubbed 'The Ruptured Duck' and this was retained in the movie.
This is the kind of bravado that distinguishes American soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the rest - doing what is deemed impossible, doing it with panache, and making sure that everyone knows it was American know-how that got the job done.
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