Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Doolittle Raids

Just a little over five months after the devastating Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States  made a daring raid on the Imperial Homeland.  The responsibility to conduct the raid fell upon then Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, a revered test pilot for the U.S. Army Air Corps.   

Sixteen specially modified B-25B bombers carrying 80 men took off at night from the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, which was positioned 500 nautical miles off the Japanese mainland.  The plan had to be rushed as the Hornet was sighted further out than expected.

The Army Airmen participating in Doolittle's raid understood that they were most likely on a suicide mission. Their intended targets were military and industrial targets in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and Yokosuka. One of the sixteen planes had to bail before it reached its target.  

Remarkably despite losing 15 aircraft, only four of eighty men were killed  in the Doolittle Raid, eight became POWS (but three were executed), and one crew was interned after landing in Vladavostok, Soviet Russia.  They were held in the USSR for a year and were "smuggled out" (probably arranged by the Russian Secret Police NKVD because the USSR could not release the prisoners because of the neutrality pact with Japan).





Doolittle expected to be court marshaled as his raid lost 15 of 16 aircraft in pin prick air strikes.  But back in the United States, the daring Doolittle Raids was celebrated as a morale building first strike against Imperial Japan.  The Japanese were caught off guard by the Tokyo Raid and the Imperial Military rearranged forces, which might have turned the tide in the Battle of Midway in June 1942.

Doolittle received the Medal of Honor from President Franklin Roosevelt, with the citation:

"For conspicuous leadership above and beyond the call of duty, involving personal valor and intrepidity at an extreme hazard to life. With the apparent certainty of being forced to land in enemy territory or to perish at sea, Lt. Col. Doolittle personally led a squadron of Army bombers, manned by volunteer crews, in a highly destructive raid on the Japanese mainland."

Doolittle was eventually promoted as a Lt. General and became the highest ranking active reserve officer in modern times. 

Sometimes the bigger battle is won through morale boosting and reminding America of its mission.

Dangerous Illusions of War

President Obama took pride that he unilaterally led US troops out of Iraq in 2011 (without achieving a Status of Forces agreement) and promises to do the same in Afghanistan by 2016.  Casual political observers may now conclude that President Barack Obama has dispensed with the dangerous illusion about optional wars after the aerial bombing  of ISIS and Khorasan Group targets in  Syria. US CentCom claims that the Khorasan Group was in the final stages of an imminent attact on US targets, potentially even in the U.S. Homeland.

However, in the run up to the still unnamed mission from the nascent anti-ISIS coalition, President Obama insisted on being clear about not having American boots on the ground.   

Congress voted for funding to train Syrian rebels, but that training is said to take a year to accomplish.  Now that American airpower decimated ISIS and Khorason targets near Aleppo and Raqqa, Syria, an ISIS pull out would leave a power vacuum.  Without American boots on the ground, who re-establishes order?  Prior to the bombing, former Marine Corps Commandant (Ret.) General James Conway suggested that Mr. Obama's apparent strategy against ISIS did not have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding.

Mr. Obama may still harbor the illusion about cafeteria conflicts, but General Douglas MacArthur's warning that: "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it" rings true today.  

America acting to stop the brutality and belligerence of terrorist armies like ISIS and the Khorason Group which threaten US is a tardy step in the right direction.  However, not having a clearly defined plan of action other than ruling out boots on the ground may keep the chimera alive for the Commander-in-Chief.

h/t: Bob Englehart