The Doolittle Raid

I watched and read a piece today on this 1942 raid on Japan.  While the raid did little damage to Japan's infrastructure, it boosted America's morale.

My uncle Stan (my mom's brother) was on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor during the infamous Japanese raid. Later, with three others, he flew in a PBY plane to deliver instructions and pictures of targets, to those on the US Hornet aircraft carrier as it steamed towards Japan. No radio communications were allowed. The information delivery system was crude, yet effective. The information was placed into a plastic bottle, which was literally tethered to a clothes line.........the other end literally tied to a 2 X 4 piece of wood. This was dropped from the plane, and those on the Hornet fished it out of the sea.

Months later, my uncle's PBY plane was shot down, crash landing into the sea.  Two were killed, while two lived, including my uncle who was largely unhurt.

The "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo has been documented in the book Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo .

The raid was also memorialized by Hollywood in the 1944 film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, starring Spencer Tracy as Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle.

"The amazingly detailed true story of "The Doolittle Raid" based on the personal account by Doolittle Raider Ted Lawson. Stunned by Pearl Harbor and a string of defeats, America needed a victory - badly. To that end, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, a former air racer and stunt pilot, devises a plan for a daring raid on the heart of Japan itself. To do this, he must train army bomber pilots to do something no one ever dreamed possible - launch 16 fully loaded bombers from an aircraft carrier! Remarkable in its accuracy, this movie even uses film footage from the actual raid."

Excerpts from wikipedia Doolittle Raid :

"The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. It demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attack, served as retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and provided an important boost to American morale. The raid was planned, led by, and named after Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, later General of the United States Air Force. 

The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it had major psychological effects. In the United States, it raised morale. In Japan, it raised doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the home islands . . .

Doolittle initially believed that the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial, but he instead received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two ranks to brigadier general.

It was a brilliant propaganda move with virtually no military value. The Japanese totally blew it. After all, the entire attacking force was essentially destroyed! (The bombers that landed in China were confiscated and the crews interred, even though China was supposedly an ally.)

Also, the Japanese could have played up the fact that our absolute maximum gut-straining effort was to attack Japan with SIXTEEN medium bombers. Big whoop! It actually showed how weak and impotent we were at the time.

If the Japanese had reacted sanely, they could have taken Midway, destroyed the weakened Pacific Fleet, and threatened Hawaii. But they botched it, in no small part because the propaganda worked.

The awful movie, "Pearl Harbor" does a decent job of depicting the Doolittle raid, though with the usual plethora of historical inaccuracies.

Arigatō, Kebin Ruisu.

Apparently Kevin argues that it worked well.

Militarily, a failure. Diplomatically, a success. But it should have been neither.

The attack freaked out the Japanese and made them switch their focus toward neutralizing the Pacific Fleet (again). That was actually the smarter course of action. If they had taken Midway--and they should have---we might not have been able to hold Hawaii. The war would have been lengthened by two years or more.

So we goaded them into the proper strategy and were insanely lucky that it didn't work. Imagine what the outcome of Midway would have been if they hadn't sent half their fleet to the Aleutians.

We like to wave the flag and beat our chests, but the truth is that we've been a very lucky nation, and in 1942, we kept hitting royal flushes.

Actually, the Doolittle raid did have military value. The Japanese were so rattled by the raid that they kept planes and pilots to protect the home islands afterward when they weren't needed. It also brought on the  Aleutian island raid because they thought the attack came from Alaska. If the I.J.N. had those 2 extra carriers at Midway, the outcome could have been different.

Opinions of the effects of the Doolittle raid vary.

Here's one which differs from that of Kevin Lewis:

"Although the damage of the raid was negligible, the strategic results of the Tokyo Raid were significant. For the Americans, the strike was a tremendous boost to American morale after Pearl Harbor and a string of American defeats. Doolittle became a national hero, jumping from Lieutenant Colonel directly to Brigadier General and earning the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In Japan, however, the threat to the emperor caused a real reaction, as the Imperial Japanese military leaders were embarrassed in their inability to protect the emperor and the Home Islands. The result was to accept and even speed up the timetable for the Japanese attack on Midway Island. Due to the dispersion of their forces at the time, the Japanese had to use many coded messages to coordinate the attack and had to continue to use old codebooks, both of which helped American code breaking efforts and ultimately enabled the U.S. Navy to hand the Imperial Japanese Navy a crushing defeat in the Battle of Midway.

The Doolittle Raid was an example of an insight made practical through determined leadership and service cooperation that led to surprising the enemy and achieving strategic effect.

[Boldface added - DD]

Ref: Doolittle Raid Shows Insight and Strategy

All's well that ends well. 

They didn't hit the Aleutians because they thought they were a threat. They thought that the Pacific Fleet would sail to defend the islands, and the Main Body (the force that attacked Midway) would be positioned between the Fleet and Hawaii. Of course, the code-breaking scotched all that.

The Japanese military's main error was in using deception rather than simple brute force. They could have thrown SIX carriers into the battle, rather than four---plus, they never brought their capital ships into the battle at all!

Given that there was no real threat to the home islands at the time, I still classify the Doolittle raid as highly successful propaganda rather than a meaningful military move. 

There's a great historical parallel. In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, Germany started by attacking airfields and shipping. The RAF was stretched thin to the point of collapse. Then the Brits scraped together a few long-range bombers and hit Berlin. Hitler went apeshit and ordered Goring to switch to terror-bombing London. Another example of "propaganda bombing" the other guy's capital city. The raid itself did little damage.