Good Sites for Kids

The Doolittle Raid

April 18, 1942

"This force is bound for Tokyo."

Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, 13 April 1942

Doolittle Raid

 

This is a B-25 flying off the USS Hornet (CV-8) on 18 April 1942. B-25s were Army bombers. They were not supposed to be able to fly off the deck of an aircraft carrier, but they did. Jimmy Doolittle and his men made it work, helped by Hornet's crew and the rest of the US Navy.

 

Doolittle Raid Over Tokyo (Newsreel). A WWII B&W film made into a 9:37 video. This is what the people of America saw at the movies in 1942. This brings home the feelings Americans had back then - that we were in a bleak, stone-cold, deadly war.

 

Doolittle Raid on Tokyo Happened This Day in 1942

 

USS Hornet (CV-8), the first aircraft carrier and seventh naval vessel of that name, was sunk 27 October 1942 during the Battle of Santa Cruz, near Guadalcanal. She was barely one year old.

USS Hornet (CV-12), of the Essex class, the second carrier and eighth naval vessel of that name, went into action in the Pacific in March 1944, and wrote her own proud history. Hornet is now a museum ship in Alameda, California.

 

USS Enterprise (CV-6) escorted the Hornet. Enterprise aircraft sunk several small Japanese ships that were in the way. Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown were identical triplets (called the Yorktown class). Only Enterprise survived the war, after being "totaled" by kamikaze attacks in 1945. She was scrapped in 1960.

 

Task Force 16 is a solid re-telling of the facts of the raid, and has a list of ALL the ships that went on the raid.

 

Map of the Doolittle raid

CBS News story about the raid.

 

Wikipedia article about the Doolittle Raid.

 

About the B-25 medium bombers.

 

Doolittle Raid on Japan, 18 April 1942 US Navy history site.

 

A ton of photos of USS Hornet and the Raid.

 

Art of the Doolittle Raid - some accurate, some highly imaginative.

 

Biography of Lieutenant General James Doolittle, Medal of Honor.

 

 

 

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B-25B line art from: Rickard, J (6 February 2007),

North American B-25B: Top Plan, http://www.historyofwar.org/Pictures/pictures_B-25B_top.html