Within days of suffering stunning losses at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and declaring war on the Empire of Japan, President Roosevelt tasked his top military commanders with the mission of striking the Japanese home islands. With no land bases close enough to Japan from which to launch an air strike, it seemed the only answer would be to launch from an aircraft carrier, if one could get close enough. The problem was that we had no bombers designed to launch from a carrier.
Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Corps, along with his naval counterparts, became convinced the B-25 Mitchell bomber could be modified to take off from a carrier, although there was no way it could land on one. He enlisted Army Reserve pilot, Lieutenant Colonel James H. (Jimmy) Doolittle, an MIT trained aeronautical engineer, to make design modifications and to train a contingent of volunteer airmen to undertake the mission, with every precaution taken to keep it top secret, even from the men being trained for it. Not until well underway were the men told their mission was to hit mainland Japan, with their destination an airfield behind enemy lines in Chuchow, China, providing they had enough fuel to get there. Again given the opportunity to back out of the mission, none of the men did.
The mission plan called for an approach to within 400 miles of the target before launching. On April 18, 1942 while still 650 miles from Japan, the USS Hornet was spotted by a Japanese fishing boat. The launch was immediately ordered despite concerns about fuel and whatever warning the Japanese military might have received. All 16 aircraft launched successfully, all but one hitting their assigned targets, meeting minimal resistance from enemy aircraft and ineffective anti-aircraft fire. Reaching Chuchow, however, proved not so successful. One plane, dangerously low on fuel, diverted to Vladivostock, Russia, and was able to land, but the crew was interned because Russia was not yet at war with Japan. The rest, running out of fuel, crash landed or bailed out over the mainland of China or in the ocean along the seacoast. Amazingly, of the 80 crew members, only three perished in those landings. Many more suffered injuries, some life-threatening. Eight were captured by the Japanese, with three of them later executed, but with the help of the local Chinese people, all the rest eventually made it to safety. The Chinese paid dearly however, as the Japanese slaughtered an estimated 250,000 civilians while searching for the American aviators.