| 18 April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan |
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| Faced with a string of serious defeats at the hands
of the Japanese, American military planners sought to make a demonstration of force to raise Allied
morale. Consequently in mid-April the U.S. aircraft carriers Hornet and Enterprise were
dispatched to the Western Pacific. On March 18 sixteen B-25 bombers took off from the Hornet,
accompanied by escort fighters from the Enterprise. Under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel
James H. Doolittle, the B-25s flew over southern Japan, dropping bombs on the cities of Tokyo,
Kobe, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Yokosuka. Only one bomber was damaged in the raid itself, but all sixteen
were forced to crash-land in China, since the aircraft carriers were not long enough for the B-25s
to land on them.
The raid did very little physical damage, but it did provide a considerable psychological boost. It also convinced Japanese military planners that the American carriers had to be destroyed before large-scale offensive operations could resume. Histories: Campaign Map: Photograph: Documents: Video:
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