Sixteen Army bombers launch off a Navy carrier to hit Tokyo four months after Pearl Harbor
What happened
Sixteen B-25B Mitchell bombers, each crewed by five men, launched from the deck of the USS Hornet on 18 April 1942 and struck targets in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Kobe. The mission required stretching the B-25's normal range from about 1,300 to roughly 2,400 miles and training crews to get a 28,000-pound bomber airborne in the short runway the Hornet's deck allowed, far shorter than a B-25 typically needed. All sixteen crews reached their targets and dropped their bombs, but because a Japanese picket boat had spotted the task force early, forcing an earlier launch than planned, none of the planes had enough fuel to reach their intended landing fields in China. Eleven of the sixteen crews had to bail out in total darkness once their fuel ran out; some were captured, and three of those captured were executed.
Why it matters
The physical damage to Japan was minor, but the raid did two things that mattered more. It proved to the American public, only months after Pearl Harbor, that the Japanese home islands were not out of reach, a badly needed lift to wartime morale. It also incensed Japan's military command enough that they moved up their timetable for an attack on Midway Island, a decision that fed directly into Japan's defeat there less than two months later.
How we know
The raid is documented through official Army Air Forces mission records, the personal accounts of the surviving Doolittle Raiders, many of whom gave oral histories and reunited for decades after the war, and postwar Japanese military records describing the decision to move up the Midway operation.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. The Doolittle Raiders · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineWorld War II59 events · From a staged skirmish at a bridge outside Beijing to a charter signed in San Francisco, the deadliest conflict in history, every event sourced.View all →