During February 1942., a request for volunteers was passed through all of the USAAF’s bomber squadrons. From a large number of volunteers, around a hundred ended up being chosen and sent to an air base in Florida. There, they met their instructor, Lieutenant Henry L. Miller.
Volunteers went through a series of gruelling exercises. They were taught to land at as slow speeds and short distances as possible while flying twin-engined B-25 bombers. Conditions were made progressively worse and the landing area progressively smaller. Then they were sent to a second airfield, where they had to land and take off within two lines – one third of the space normally required.
In early April, volunteers and aircraft were sent to the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. Nobody was aware of what task awaited them, and 16 B-25 bombers had been loaded onto the carrier instead of the aircraft that were normally used there. Such large bombers had never been used on a carrier before: each weighted 11 tons, and their wing tips stretched past the deck. Next day the Hornet left San Francisco and was joined by two cruisers before sailing westwards.
Only once the ships were far from shore did Hornet’s CO, captain Mark Mitcher, open a sealed envelope with orders. Hornet was to sail to within few hundred miles of the Japanese coast, from where bombers will take off and bomb Tokyo. The goal was to cause a shift in Japanese strategic priorities. By showing them their capital city was vulnerable, aircraft would have to be withdrawn for its defense, thus weakening Japanese ability to support their advance and also to interdict traffic between Australia and United States. This was in fact the only way to save this line of communication, as well as to buy enough time for the US industrial advantage to show itself.
Hornet was not the only carrier thrown into the line of fire either. At around the same time, USS Enterprise left the Pearl Harbor on an unknown mission, sailling northwest. Ship reached Midway islands, and started circling in place in an area north of the islands. At dawn, a tanker and two destroyers arrived, and the Enterprise was refuelled before continuing to circle. Hornet arrived on 14th of April, causing surprise among Enterprise’s crew upon seeing large bombers on the deck. Fleet then proceeded westward, while bomber crews on Hornet continued with practice. They also received a new instructor – Stephen Jurika, former assistant of naval attachee in Tokyo. His knowledge of the city was now proving useful, as he pointed out and explained the details of Tokyo to bomber crews.
Plan was that the B-25 bombers under command of Colonel Doolittle will take off in the night of 18th onto 19th of April, some 400 miles from Tokyo, and attack the city during night. But the events did not go according to the plan. In the dawn of 18th April the squadron was still 650 naval miles east of Tokyo. Cruiser Vincennes signalled that it had noticed a Japanese patrol ship straight ahead, at distance of two miles. Vice Admiral Halsey immediately ordered a change of course and launched aircraft from Enterprise to reconnoiter surrounding area. Aircraft did indeed find a large number of patrol ships nearby, and Admiral Halsey had cruisers open fire. Cruiser gunfire sank three patrol ships in short order, but it was clear that secrecy of the plan had been compromised. Indeed, No.23 Nitto Maru had radioed a sighting report.
B-25s had to take off immediately, which they did in spite of heavy weather. As soon as the last bomber had taken off, the squadron turned around and sailed East to avoid potential Japanese attacks. The Japanese 26th Air Flotilla, having expected the carriers to approach within 200 miles of Japan as they had done in the raids in February in the Marshalls and Gilberts, and at Wake and at Marcus, launched 29 medium bombers equipped with torpedoes from Kisarazu, escorted by 24 carrier fighters equipped with long-range tanks. These aircraft naturally failed to find the ships, which had turned back and were now sailing eastwards, far beyond the calculated interception point.
Bombers would not return to the carrier, but rather would carry out the attack on Tokyo and then proceed to China, as the Soviet Union did not want to provoke the Japanese by allowing the US bombers usage of Vladivostok. Due to the early launch, they arrived over Tokyo not during the night, but rather in the middle of the day around noon. This proved fortunate, as large-scale air defense exercise had just been concluded, and all observers considered these 16 bombers for a late formation that was supposed to be part of the exercise. As a result, the bombers arrived over their target without raising alert or being intercepted, achieving complete surprise. Flying low, almost at the level of the rooftops, the bombers started their run, quickly causing mass panic before disappearing to the west.
But because of the early takeoff, bombers arrived onto Chinese airfields in the middle of the night. Early arrival also meant that nothing had been prepared for the landing, and crews had to jump with parachutes from bombers that had spent their fuel. Five crewmen died as a result. The Japanese inflicted brutal reprisals against the Chinese populace in Chekiang province where the crews had jumped out. One B-25 landed intact at Vladivostok, where the Soviets interned it and its crew.
On the same day, planes from Enterprise attacked Japanese picket boats encountered near TF-16, damaging the armed merchant cruiser Awata Maru and the guardboats Chokyu Maru, No.1 Iwate Maru, No.2 Asami Maru, Kaijin Maru, No.3 Chinyo Maru, Eikichi Maru, Kowa Maru, and No.21 Nanshin Maru. Guardboats No.23 Nitto Maru (which had transmitted the initial contact report) and Nagato Maru, also damaged by planes from Enterprise, were sunk by gunfire of the light cruiser Nashville (CL-43).Nanshin Maru and Iwato Maru sank the next day. The Japanese navy’s Combined Fleet deployed 11 boats from the 3rd and 8th Submarine Squadrons as well as two cruiser divisions to intercept TF-16. The First Air Fleet, formed around carriers Akagi, Soryu and Hiryu, also received orders to engage the Americans on 18 April 1942 in the Bashi Channel, south of Formosa, while returning from the raid in the Indian Ocean.
Damage caused by this attack was minor, but the psychological effect was significant. Japanese did not know that the aircraft had come from the carriers, but instead believed they had flown all the way from the Midway islands. Thus, further expansion was necessary. The raid played a significant role especially in eliminating the resistance of the General Staff to Yamamoto’s plan for a strike against the Midway.
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