Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (107 page)

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, had studied at Harvard and understood American resilience. His number one fear was an American strike against Tokyo, the home of the emperor.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

In response to President Franklin Roosevelt’s demand that America strike back against Japan, Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Fleet commander, encouraged his subordinates to develop a plan for a carrier raid against Tokyo.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, a famed racing and stunt pilot, was a pioneer in American aviation.
(NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE)

Lieutenant General Henry “Hap” Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces who had learned to fly from the Wright brothers, tapped his staff troubleshooter Jimmy Doolittle to plan the raid, which would involve flying Army bombers off a Navy carrier.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr. commanded the Navy’s task force of sixteen warships and ten thousand men.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Captain Marc Mitscher served as the skipper of the
Hornet
, the 19,800-ton flattop that carried Jimmy Doolittle and his raiders to Japan.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Sailors look on as sixteen Army B-25 bombers, tied down and with wheels chocked, crowd the deck of the carrier
Hornet
en route to bomb Japan.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

A smiling Jimmy Doolittle, surrounded by his raiders, fastens a Japanese medal to the fin of a 500-pound bomb in a ceremony on the
Hornet
’s deck on the eve of the raid.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Army airmen on the deck of the
Hornet
hustle to load ammunition in advance of the raid. Each plane carried four bombs to drop on Japan, as well as .30- and .50-caliber machine guns for defense against Japanese fighters.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

The task force encountered a string of Japanese picket boats early in the morning of April 18, 1942, including this one, which was destroyed by a combination of gunfire and attacks from American planes.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

Nashville
sailors hold up an exhausted Japanese prisoner of war, rescued from one of the destroyed picket boats.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)

One of the sixteen B-25s races its engines in preparation for takeoff for the raid against Tokyo. Heavy winds and fierce seas sent waves over the bow of the towering carrier.
(NATIONAL ARCHIVES)