Seventy years ago today, on April 2, 1942, USS Hornet (CV-8) got underway from San Francisco, enroute to a planned launch point 450 miles from Tokyo. At that point, some six thousand miles west of the Golden Gate, the ship intended to launch sixteen Army B-25 twin-engine bombers to attack Japan.
The plan was to launch the aircraft before dawn on April 19, drop bombs on the targets early that morning, and proceed to air strips in China ten hours after launch. The targets selected to be bombed were in Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka.
By today's standards, the B-25 was a primitive aircraft. It had a very crude radio navigation system dependent on a homing transmitter at an airfield. Otherwise, it would navigate over water with a bubble sextant and printed air navigation tables. The planes did not have any autopilot. The pilot and co-pilot would fly the plane by hand the entire distance of the mission, over 2,000 miles.
They expected to encounter antiaircraft fire and enemy fighter aircraft. To increase the plane's range, two defensive machine guns had been removed, including the tail gun.
Each plane had a five-man crew.
It was not a suicide mission, but every man knew he might not return.
The leader of the mission, LCol Jimmy Doolittle, was an aeronautical engineer with a doctorate in engineering, and one of the most experienced and valuable staff officers in the Army Air Corps. He had to fight for the right to lead the aircraft into combat.
The mission didn't proceed exactly as planned.
More about this later.
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