Olympic Fan
04-18-2011, 09:05 AM
Today is the 59th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and while it's not a special anniversary or anything, I thought this was a particularly good report on the latest reunion:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=42635561�
Just five Raiders left (three others died in the last year).
I've always thought the Doolittle Raid was a particularly noteworthy event for several reasons:
(1) It was a particularly brilliant improvisation. I can't think of any other military force in the world at that time that could have come up with the idea of flying Army medium bombers off a carrier deck to effect a long-range raid on the enemy's capital. And it's hard to think of another flyer than Jimmy Doolittle who could have made it work (another topic, but you can make the case that Doolittle was the greatest and most important pilot of the 20th century).
(2) It was an interesting and almost unique case of Army-Navy cooperation. When you study military history, you see a lot of friction between the services. It happens in the US Military, but it is much worse in many others -- including the Japanese. Study the Guadalcanal campaign sometime ... the lack of cooperation between the Army and Navy had a lot to do with the Japanese failure there.
(3) The courage of the 80 men who made the flight. The original plan was scary enough -- take off from a carrier deck (never done before), hit Toyko that night, then try to find hidden Chinese landing fields just after dawn. But when the task force was discovered prematurely, they flew off more than eight hours and 150 miles early -- improvising a new plan that involved striking in broad daylight, then trying to find those airfields in the dead of night. Amazingly, not a single plane was hit over Japan ... but not a single plane landed safety in China (one did land safely in Russia, but the crew was interned).
The otherwise forgettable movie Pearl Harbor concludes with the Doolittle Road and contains two lines that I remember -- one untrue (Kate Beckinsdale's line that "Before the Raid, we knew nothing but defeat afterwards, nothing but victory"). But one by Alex Bladwin (as Doolittle) that always struck me as a perfect summation of the Raid:
"It's merely a pinprick -- but it's a pinprick right to their heart."
FWIW. the shock of the Raid provoked the Japanese to approve the attack on Midway that led to the decisive battle in the Pacific, the real turning point of that conflict.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=42635561�
Just five Raiders left (three others died in the last year).
I've always thought the Doolittle Raid was a particularly noteworthy event for several reasons:
(1) It was a particularly brilliant improvisation. I can't think of any other military force in the world at that time that could have come up with the idea of flying Army medium bombers off a carrier deck to effect a long-range raid on the enemy's capital. And it's hard to think of another flyer than Jimmy Doolittle who could have made it work (another topic, but you can make the case that Doolittle was the greatest and most important pilot of the 20th century).
(2) It was an interesting and almost unique case of Army-Navy cooperation. When you study military history, you see a lot of friction between the services. It happens in the US Military, but it is much worse in many others -- including the Japanese. Study the Guadalcanal campaign sometime ... the lack of cooperation between the Army and Navy had a lot to do with the Japanese failure there.
(3) The courage of the 80 men who made the flight. The original plan was scary enough -- take off from a carrier deck (never done before), hit Toyko that night, then try to find hidden Chinese landing fields just after dawn. But when the task force was discovered prematurely, they flew off more than eight hours and 150 miles early -- improvising a new plan that involved striking in broad daylight, then trying to find those airfields in the dead of night. Amazingly, not a single plane was hit over Japan ... but not a single plane landed safety in China (one did land safely in Russia, but the crew was interned).
The otherwise forgettable movie Pearl Harbor concludes with the Doolittle Road and contains two lines that I remember -- one untrue (Kate Beckinsdale's line that "Before the Raid, we knew nothing but defeat afterwards, nothing but victory"). But one by Alex Bladwin (as Doolittle) that always struck me as a perfect summation of the Raid:
"It's merely a pinprick -- but it's a pinprick right to their heart."
FWIW. the shock of the Raid provoked the Japanese to approve the attack on Midway that led to the decisive battle in the Pacific, the real turning point of that conflict.