Doolittle Raid Army Air Force Navy Challenge Coin C _St for Sale

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Doolittle Raid Army Air Force Navy Challenge Coin C _St For Sale

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Doolittle Raid Army Air Force Navy Challenge Coin C _St:
$20.00

World World II

Doolittle Tokyo Raid

1st Time

Army Air Corps B-25 Bombers

Off the Deck of a Naval Vessel

(USS Hornet CV8)

Challenge Coin

This coin is 1 ¾ inches in diameter, with epoxy on both sides.

The Doolittle Raid, 18 April 1942, was the first air raid by the United States to strike the Japanese home island of Honshū during World War II. It demonstrated that the Japanese home islands were vulnerable to Allied air attack, and provided an expedient means for U.S. retaliation for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The Doolittle Raid was the only time that United States Army Air Forces bombers were launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on a combat mission.

The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle, with the North American B-25B Mitchell the airplane selected to carry out the mission. The plan was to launch them from a carrier, hit military targets in Japan, and fly on to land in China.

All 16 aircraft were lost on the mission, and 11 crewmen were either killed or captured. The crews of 14 aircraft, including one interned in the Soviet Union for more than a year,[1][2] were recovered and returned to the United States. While the military significance of the raid was minimal, it proved to be a substantial morale booster for Americans.

Flying the Raid

On 1 April, the 16 modified bombers, their five-man crews and Army maintenance personnel, totalling 71 officers and 130 enlisted men,[15] were loaded onto USS Hornet at Alameda. Each aircraft carried four specially-constructed 500-pound (225kg) bombs. Three of these were high-explosive munitions, and one was a bundle of incendiaries. The incendiaries were long tubes, wrapped together in order to be carried in the bomb bay, but designed to separate and scatter over a wide area after release. Five of these bombs had Japanese "friendship" medals wired to them - medals awarded by the Japanese government to U.S. servicemen before the war. [16] To decrease weight (and thus increase range), the bombers' armament was reduced. Each bomber launched with two .50-calibre (12.7mm) machine guns in an upper turret and a .30-caliber (7.6mm) machine gun in the nose. Two wooden, simulated gun barrels mounted in the tail cones were intended to discourage Japanese air attacks from that direction, and were cited afterward by Doolittle as being particularly effective.[9] The aircraft were clustered closely and tied down on the Hornet's flight deck in the order of their expected launch.

The Hornet and Task Force 18 left the port of Alameda at 10:00 on 2 April and a few days later rendezvoused with Task Force 16, commanded by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.: the carrier USS Enterprise and its escort of cruisers and destroyers in the mid-Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii. The Enterprise's fighters and scout planes would provide protection for the entire task force in the event of a Japanese air attack, since the Hornet's fighters were stowed below decks to allow the B-25s to use the flight deck. The combined force, two carriers, three heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, eight destroyers, and two fleet oilers,[17] then proceeded in radio silence. On the afternoon of April 17, the slow oilers refueled the task force, then withdrew with the destroyers to the east, while the carriers and cruisers dashed west at 20 knots towards their intended launch point in enemy-controlled waters east of Japan.[18]

At 07:38 on the morning of 18 April, while the task force was still about 650 miles (1,050km) from Japan, it was sighted by Japanese picket boat No. 23 Nitto Maru which radioed an attack warning to Japan.[19] Although the boat was fatally damaged by gunfire from the cruiser USS Nashville,[20] Doolittle and Hornet skipper Captain Marc Mitscher decided to launch the B-25s immediately—10 hours early and 170 miles (275km) farther from Japan than planned. After respotting to allow for engine start and run-ups, Doolittle's aircraft had 467 ft (142 metres) of takeoff distance.[21] Despite the fact that none of the B-25 pilots, including Doolittle, had ever taken off from a carrier before, all 16 aircraft launched safely between 08:20 and 09:19. (The 16th B-25 had been included only as a reserve, intended to fly along as an observation and photographic platform, but when the mission was compromised, Doolittle made a command decision to utilize the reserve aircraft.)[22]

The B-25s then flew towards Japan, most in groups of two-to-four aircraft before changing to single-file at wavetop level to avoid detection.[23] The aircraft began arriving over Japan about noon (Tokyo time; six hours after launch) and bombed 10 military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama, and one each in Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka. Although some B-25s encountered light anti-aircraft fire and a few enemy fighters over Japan, no bomber was shot down. Only the B-25 of Lt. Richard O. Joyce received any battle damage, minor hits from anti-aircraft fire.[24] Plane No. 4, piloted by Lt. Everett W. Holstrom, jettisoned its bombs before reaching its target when it came under attack by fighters after its gun turret malfunctioned.[25]

15 of the 16 aircraft then proceeded southwest along the southern coast of Japan and across the East China Sea towards eastern China, where several fields in Chekiang (now Zhejiang) Province were supposed to be ready to guide them in using homing beacons, then recover and refuel them for continuing on to Chungking.[26] One B-25, extremely low on fuel, headed instead for the closer land mass of Russia.

The raiders faced several unforeseen challenges during their flight to China: night was approaching, the aircraft were running low on fuel, and the weather was rapidly deteriorating. None would have reached China at all except for a fortuitous tail wind as they came off the target that increased their ground speed by 25 knots for seven hours.[27] As a result of these problems, the crews realized they would probably not be able to reach their intended bases in China, leaving them the option of either bailing out over eastern China or crash landing along the Chinese coast.[9][28] Fifteen aircraft reached the Chinese coast after 13 hours of flight and crash landed or bailed out; the crew who flew to Russia landed 40 miles (65km) beyond Vladivostok, where their B-25 was confiscated and the crew interned until they managed to escape through Iran in 1943.[1][29] It was the longest combat mission ever flown by the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, averaging approximately 2,250 miles (3,600km).

Doolittle and his crew, after safely parachuting into China, received assistance from Chinese soldiers and civilians as well as John Birch, an American missionary in China. As did the others who participated in the mission, Doolittle had to bail out but fortunately landed in a heap of dung (saving a previously injured ankle from breaking) in a rice paddy in China near Chuchow (Quzhou). Doolittle thought that the raid had been a terrible failure because the aircraft were lost, and that he would be court-martialed upon his return. Doolittle subsequently recommended Birch for intelligence work with General Chennault's Flying Tigers.

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