James Doolittle

Doolittle was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on January 2, 1942, and went to Headquarters Army Air Force to plan the first aerial raid on the Japanese homeland. He volunteered and received Gen. H.H. Arnold's approval to lead the attack of 16 B-25 medium bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, with targets in Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka, and Nagoya. It was the first and only combat mission of his military career. 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 paddy in China near Chuchow (Quzhou). He was helped by Chinese guerillas and American missionary John Birch until he could return to the US. Several other fliers lost their lives on the mission.

Doolittle received the Medal of Honor, presented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House, for planning and leading the successful operation. His citation reads: "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."
The Doolittle Raid is viewed by historians as a major public-relations victory for the United States. Although the amount of damage done to Japanese war industry was minor, the raid showed the Japanese their homeland was not invulnerable, and forced them to withdraw several front-line fighter units for homeland defense. More significantly, Japanese commanders considered the raid deeply embarrassing, and their attempt to close the perceived gap in their Pacific defense perimeter led directly to the decisive American victory during the Battle of Midway.

When asked where the Tokyo raid came from, President Roosevelt laughingly said that it was based in Shangri-La. Joining in the same vein, the US Navy named one of its carriers then under construction the USS Shangri-La.

In July 1942, as a Brigadier General - he had been promoted by two grades on the day after the Tokyo attack - Doolittle was assigned to the nascent Eighth Air Force and in September became commanding general of the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa. He was promoted to Major General in November 1942, and in March 1943 became commanding general of the Northwest African Strategic Air Forces, a unified command of U.S. Army Air Force and Royal Air Force units.

Gen. Doolittle took command of the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations in November 1943. From January 1944 to September 1945, he held his largest command, the Eighth Air Force in England as a Lieutenant General, his promotion date being 13 March 1944. Doolittle's major influence on the European air war occurred early in the year when he changed the policy requiring escorting fighters to remain with the bombers at all times. With his permission, P-38s, P-47s, and P-51s on escort missions strafed German airfields and transport while returning to base, contributing significantly to the achievement of air supremacy by Allied Air Forces over Europe.

After the end of the European war, the Eighth Air Force was slated to re-equip with B-29 Superfortress bombers and relocate to Okinawa in the Pacific. However, the sudden end of the war with the atomic bombings of Japan in August 1945 obviated the need for the Eighth Air Force to transfer to the Far East.