The Doolittle Raid
The unspoken turning point in WW2.
The Doolittle Raid was America’s first bombing run on the Japanese mainland in WW2. It was a response to Pearl Harbor and other Japanese victories in the Pacific. Despite the name Doolittle, this raid did not ‘do little.’ This raid was actually the beginning of the end for Japan in WW2.
In order to allow the raid to happen, the Air Force need to engineer the B-25 bomber so that only two things remained, bombs and fuel. The fuel was needed for the 2,600-mile trip, which was the longest trip ever taken by a B-25. The planes needed to take off from an aircraft carrier and go a very long distance. In order to do this, they needed to remove functions so the plane had less weight and would be more fuel efficient. Also to save weight, they removed the guns and replaced them with brooms so that it looked like guns and fighters wouldn’t attack. The planes also had to operate on reduced people to save weight. This made the attack very risky and the crew knew that there was a good chance that they might die. But ultimately, this was all worth it for the attack.
The outcomes of the attack were more mental than physical. Physically these attacks did little to no damage to Japan. But mentally, they were devastating to Japan because it made the Japanese people lose confidence in their leaders to protect them, and also showed that they were not invulnerable and America could attack them. In America, this provided a much-needed morale boost from the string of losses against Japan. The Air Force also used the Doolittle Raid as a recruiting point for young men because the raiders were considered heroes and made it so that if you were in the Air Force you would also be a hero.
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https://www.britannica.com/event/Doolittle-Raid
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