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Dec 28, 2020 · On the night of March 9, 1945, Operation Meetinghouse saw American warplanes launch a firebombing raid against Tokyo — leaving 100,000 dead and a million homeless. The Americans planned the firebombing of Tokyo — which was then largely made up of wooden structures — for a dry and windy night to ensure maximum destruction.
- The Raid Took Place Just 132 Days After Pearl Harbor
- Nothing Like It Had Ever Been Tried Before
- Doolittle Was No Stranger to Daredevil Flying
- The B-25 Was Not The First Choice For The Raid
- The Planes Were Heavily Modified
- The Task Force Sailed with Surprisingly Little Security
- The Mission Was Almost Blown in The 11th Hour
- Japanese Forces Were Unprepared
- Doolittle Thought The Raid Did Little
- Japanese Reprisals Were Swift, Furious
The Doolittle Raid was initially planned as payback for the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Within two weeks of whatPresident Rooseveltcalled the “day of infamy,” the White House ordered the military to mount a retaliatory strike against Japan itself. It was certainly a tall order. With the enemy homeland located on the far side of the Pacific, ju...
The plan called for a small task force, built around the carrier USS Hornet,to secretly cross the Pacific and close to within 600 miles of the Japanese coast. Once in position, the flattop would launch twin-engine army B-25 bombers from its flight deck (a feat never before attempted in history). The planes, each carrying four 500-pound bombs, would...
Command of the raid was given to James Doolittle, a veteran army pilot. The 45-year-old barnstormer, who was called by some the “the Babe Ruth of flyboys,” first made a name for himself in 1922 by piloting a World War One-eraDe Havillandbomber from Jacksonville, Florida to San Diego, California. The record breaking 2,000-mile hop lasted 21 hours an...
While the Doolittle Raid would make the B-25 one of the most famous warbirds in history, mission planners initially explored using a number of other medium bombers before settling on the then unproven Mitchell. TheDouglas B-23 Dragon, which had a longer range than the B-25, was initially considered. However, the pre-war bomber’s 92-foot wingspan wa...
In order to fly the marathon 2,000+ miles required for the 13-hour raid, the bombers would need to shed hundreds of pounds of excess equipment. Armour plating and defensive machine guns were jettisoned. Even the pride of the American bomber corps, the top secretNorden bombsight, was stripped from every one of Doolittle’s planes. An ad hocreplacemen...
On April 1, 16 B-25s, emblazoned with names like Bat Out of Hell, Whiskey Peteand Whirling Dervishwere loaded aboard the USS HornetatAlameda naval basein San Francisco Bay. Despite being overloaded with bulky bombers, the carrier also sailed with a complement of fighter planes. The navy worried that the task force might have to fight its way back t...
The Doolittle Raid very nearly never happened. At sunrise on April 18, the task force was about 700 miles from the Japanese coast when the ships were spotted by an enemy patrol boat. The Japanese vessel, No. 23 Nittō Maru, was quickly destroyed by a barrage of shellfire from the cruiserUSS Nashville, but not before its skipper radioed the location ...
Despite the early discovery of the task force by the Japanese patrol boat, the American bombers faced little resistance from local air defences. Flak batteries remained mostly silent; only one of the B-25s was damaged by anti-aircraft fire. Three Japanese fighters attacked the bombers and were shot down by American gunners. Their mission complete, ...
With night falling and their fuel reserves nearly exhausted, 14 of the 16 bombers crews crash-landed or bailed out over Japanese-occupied China. One of the planes never reached the mainland and was forced to ditch in the sea. Two of the crew members drowned. A raider from another plane died after his parachute collided with a cliff-face. Only one b...
Although only light damage was inflicted, the fact that American bombers had struck Japan from seemingly out of nowhere was a huge embarrassment for the regime in Tokyo. Imperial troops were soon scouring the Chinese countryside for any trace of the American fliers. Eight were eventually captured. All were tried for war crimes and condemned to die;...
The first of the long-range bombing raids on the Japanese home islands took place as early as 28 Nov 1944, mainly from the newly constructed air fields in the Mariana Islands. In Jan 1945, American General Curtis LeMay took over the 20th and 21st Bomber Commands, merging them into the XX Air Force.
The firebombing of Tokyo was over 16 sq. miles Tokyo, killing 100,000 and leaving more than 1 million homeless. At its heart it was psychological warfare.
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Article History. Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, American war film, released in 1944, that depicted the U.S. air raid on Tokyo and other Japanese cities following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (1941).
- Lee Pfeiffer
November 24, 1944 U.S B-29 bombers. attack the Nakajima aircraft factory northwest of Tokyo. The high-altitude mission marks the first bombing raid of Japan from the Mariana Islands.
Nov 24, 2017 · November 24, 1944, Tokyo Is Bombed for the 1st Time Since the Doolittle Raid. by Steve Balestrieri Nov 24, 2017. Share This: In 1944, the US knew what awaited them when facing the Japanese...
