The Dolittle Raid Reconsidered
The Dolittle Raid Reconsidered
It meant a great deal more than the results...
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The last Dolittle Raider passed away on this day in 2022.
On 18 April 1942, the US started to strike back for Pearl Harbor….
The Dolittle Raid is the best known of the six American carrier raids conducted against Japan and Japanese-held territories in the first half of 1942. Officially, it was Special Air Operation One. Unofficially, it’s known by various names such as the Dolittle Raid, Doolittle's Raid, and the Tokyo Raid. Meant as little more than a morale-booster, attacking Tokyo and other cities on the Home Island of Honshu, the attack had far-reaching effects far beyond the damage it caused.
It was the first direct attack on Japan in five centuries.
James H. Doolittle, a prewar air daredevil, planned and led the raid, but a naval officer named James Low proposed it in response to a request from the White House. The Navy launched two twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bombers from the deck of USS Hornet in February 1942, proving the concept was valid, and the US Army Air Force (USAAF) green-lighted the operation. The plan involved launching 16 stripped B-25s, each with a crew of five, 500 miles east of Japan. They would bomb Tokyo and other industrial targets without fighter escorts and then continue west to land in China, joining Claire Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force.
It didn’t work out that way…
A Japanese picket boat discovered Hornet and her task force over 700 miles from Japan, forcing Dolittle to launch early. All the Raiders reached and bombed Japan, but none reached the planned airfields. One Raider plane went down over Japan; fourteen crashed in China; the last landed at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. Seventy Raiders reached initial safety. One died bailing out. Japanese forces captured eight in eastern China (two drowned in the sea), and executed three.
The raid killed about 50 Japanese and injured an unclear number.
Although it caused only minor damage, it showed that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attacks. Damage to Japanese military and industrial targets was minimal, but the raid had major psychological effects. It raised fear and doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the Home Islands. Traditionally, the raid pushed forward Yamamoto Isoroku’s plan for the Eastern Operation, attacking Midway Island in the Central Pacific.
In Japan itself, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and IJN lost considerable face for their failure to protect Japan.
The raid showed that the IJN early warning network functioned, but no one believed the Americans would launch two-engine bombers from a carrier. The Japanese pointed their early warning radars in the wrong direction because they expected air attacks only from Russia. Twice before the bombs fell, air observers (including Tojo Hideki) saw two-engine aircraft flying west, but no one thought to report them. Also, the IJA fighters scrambled to intercept the bombers were older airplanes, too slow to catch them; the one bomber shot down was to antiaircraft artillery.
Japan had to spend resources it didn’t have to defend the Home Islands.
With the Home Islands suddenly under perceivable threat, both the IJA and the IJN reluctantly and grudgingly built some defenses. The IJA, tasked with the defense of the Home Islands, had to bring first-line fighter aircraft back from duties in China and the Dutch East Indies while they developed and built interceptors. Japanese radar, like all their technologically advanced equipment, was crude and overly expensive to build and deploy, but had to be built in large numbers to protect the coastlines. Antiaircraft artillery had to be built and manned in Japan, taking more resources from combat duties. Finally, air raid precautions and shelters, which before 1942 were scarce and always looked down upon, had to be provided for.
Japan punished China for the Raid; Dolittle thought he’d be fired.
In reprisal for the raid itself and for the help the Chinese provided getting the Raiders to safety, the Japanese launched the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign, killing 250,000 Chinese civilians (and probably more) and 70,000 soldiers. Doolittle initially believed the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial. Instead, a grateful nation promoted him two ranks to brigadier general and awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Because the Soviet Union was neutral to Japan, it interned the Raiders who landed at Vladivostok. That said, within a year, the crew “escaped” (with the help of their generous hosts) and returned to the United States via Allied-occupied Iran and North Africa.
In the rest of the world, it raised morale.
After months of unrelenting defeat—Battan had fallen just a week before—spirits soared in the United States and in other Allied countries upon the news. President Roosevelt, when asked where the Raiders came from, answered “Shangri-La,” the fantasyland of the popular novel and film, “Lost Horizon.” While the Japanese learned what ships were involved, it remained a secret until 1944. When the defenders on Corregidor learned of the attack, shortly before they surrendered, they taunted their Japanese enemies with what little energy they had.
The raid inspired bond-selling film adaptations.
Howard Hawks’ 1943 film “Air Force” included an early air attack on Japan from a secret island base, one of several deception rumors the USAAF spread on the origins of the Dolittle Raiders. Darryl F. Zanuck’s “The Purple Heart” of 1944 was a fictionalized dramatization of the execution of captured Raiders. Mervyn LeRoy’s Academy Award-winning (special effects) “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo” in 1944, based on the bestselling memoir of that name by Raider Ted Lawson, was the first public acknowledgement that USS Hornet was their carrier, and the first to show the films taken of the launch.
The Fire Blitz: Burning Down Japan
While the Dolittle Raid was little more than a blip on the military landscape, it would be the only Allied air attack on Japan until August 1944.
Starting from India with “small” raids, a single B-29 Stratofortress carried more bomb weight than Dolittle’s entire Raider force. While the first raids in 1944 and 1945 did only slightly more damage to Japan than Dolittle did, in March 1945, that changed. The Fire Blitz started a six-month campaign that burned down practically every urban area in the archipelago. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Battlecruisers: The Bomb
War and Social Structures
And Finally…
On 20 April:
1792: The French Wars begin with Spain’s invasion of France, triggered by the execution of Louis XVI in February. Europe would fight this series of coalition conflicts with a few intermissions until 1815, with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte.
2008: Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 race in Motegi, Japan. It was the first time a woman won a sanctioned, open-wheel, Indy-style auto race. Driving in both IndyCar and NASCAR races in her twenty-year career, this was her only first-place finish.
And today is NATIONAL PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE DAY. It celebrates the sweet confection that combines pineapple (responsible for the invention of the greenhouse in England in the 19th Century) and cherries combined with a cake batter. It does nothing for me, but indulge yourselves…