Throwback Thursday
The Doolittle Raid
This is one of the turning points in the Pacific theater during World War II. It turned the morale around here in the states completely.
If you've ever seen the classic Charlton Heston film, Midway, then you've seen some footage of the planes heading off to the raid, in the opening credits of the movie. They made brief mention of the raid in the first conversation between the Heston character and the Hal Holbrook character.
The raid was one of the biggest risks taken in the entire conflict, it was an all volunteer mission, the volunteers were trained without knowing what their mission was at all and it was considered a one way trip by some.
The planes left off the USS Hornet and flew in very low, tree top level and didn't find a lot of
airborne resistance as Japan thought that their homeland was safe from such an attack, with Admiral Yamamoto being one of the few voices to warn of the possible attack.
This is one of the parts of the war that has been brought to film but really needs to be done justice, it's a truly amazing story. Of all the planes used, only ONE made a safe and secure landing as planned, just a little more north than intended, it landed in Russia, with most of the survivors going down in or near China, the intended landing area.
What some of them went through in China is just as monumental as the raid itself and it can be experienced in the book by Captain Ted Lawson, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, which I couldn't recommend more highly. This memoir of the events that Lawson himself experienced as one of the pilots, as his crew endured incredible hardships and obstacles to make their way back home.
It's a story that you'll be challenged to put down.
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