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It is an amazing vintage newsreel of the Doolittle Raid, the very first air raid by the United States of America on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other military targets on the Japanese home island of Honshu during World War 2.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT
The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, on Saturday, April 18, 1942, was an air raid by the United States of America on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on the island of Honshu during World War 2, the first air raid to strike the Japanese Home Islands. It demonstrated that Japan itself was vulnerable to American air campaign, served as retaliation for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, and provided an important boost to American morale. The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle of the United States Army Air Forces.
The bombers were carried by the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) from Alameda, California to their launch point in the Pacific. At a distance of about 650 miles from Japan, the task force encountered a Japanese picket boat, which radioed a warning to Japan. Although the boat was eliminated by gunfire from the cruiser USS Nashville, Doolittle and Hornet skipper Captain Marc Mitscher decided to launch the aircraft immediately – ten hours earlier and 170 miles farther from Japan than planned.
Sixteen B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were launched without fighter escort from the USS Hornet deep in the Western Pacific Ocean, each with a crew of five men. The plan called for them to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China – landing a medium bomber on Hornet was impossible. Fifteen aircraft reached China, but all crashed, while the 16th landed at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union (today Russia). All but three of the 80 crew members initially survived the mission. Eight airmen were captured by the Japanese Army in China. The B-25 that landed in the Soviet Union was confiscated and its crew interned for more than a year. Fourteen complete crews returned either to the United States or to American forces.
After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted a massive sweep through the eastern coastal provinces of China, in an operation now known as the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign (also known as Operation Sei-go), searching for the surviving American airmen and inflicting retribution on the Chinese who aided them, in an effort to prevent this part of China from being used again for an air raid on Japan.
The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it achieved its goal of raising American morale and casting doubt in Japan on the ability of its military leaders to defend their home islands. It also contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's decision to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific – an action that turned into a decisive strategic defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy by the U.S. Navy in the Battle of Midway between 4 and 7 June 1942. Doolittle, who initially believed that the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial, received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two steps to brigadier general.
The mission was also notable since it was the only time in U.S. Military history that United States Army Air Forces bombers were launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on a combat mission.
First U.S. Air Raid on Tokyo and Japan After Pearl Harbor | 1942 | World War 2 Newsreel
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