America strikes back after Pearl Harbor

After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led America’s first retaliatory air raid on Japan. The Doolittle Raid has gone down in history for its daring and valor and earned Doolittle a promotion to Brigadier General and the Medal of Honor.

Florida’s hidden role: Training the raiders at Eglin Field

Florida has a part to play in the story as it was at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base in the western Florida panhandle that Doolittle and his fellow raiders trained.

An unprecedented challenge

The logistics of the raid were daunting. Japan was too distant for even the long-range bombers of the time to reach. Aircraft carriers could get closer but carried only smaller aircraft with limited range and firepower. No long-range bombers had ever taken off from a carrier before.

A decision was made to train an all-volunteer bombing crew at Eglin Air Force base in Florida. The base had gunnery and bombing ranges and multiple airstrips to practice short take offs day and night. The Gulf of Mexico provided a perfect substitute for the Pacific.

The mission commander assigned to the crew was Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, a former World War I pilot who had become famous as a speed record breaker. As his crew of “Doolittle Raiders” grew more experienced, runways were shortened. The Raiders practiced wave-top flying over long distances of the Gulf of Mexico, in order to avoid visual and radar detection. In the third week of March, 1942, the raiders flew at wave-top height from Eglin to Fort Meyers. They turned West and flew across the gulf to Texas, where they simulated a bombing run. Then they descended and flew back to Florida at an altitude of 50 feet. It was the final training test and all of the crews passed.

Doolittle Raiders’ triumph raises national morale

On April 18, 1942, the raid was carried out in earnest. Sixteen Doolittle Raiders, flying B-25B Mitchell bombers, successfully launched from the USS Hornet aircraft carrier off the coast of Japan. They bombed Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya. Although their payload of bombs was too small to cause significant damage, the raid shocked the Japanese and greatly lifted Allied morale. The public learned about the raid a month after it took place, when Roosevelt made the announcement at a ceremony in which he awarded Doolittle, by that time promoted to Brigadier General, the Medal of Honor. Doolittle’s crew of Raiders were all awarded Distinguished Service Crosses. The public–and the Japanese–were kept in the dark as to how the raid had been launched. Roosevelt and the War Department weren’t talking. Roosevelt simply teased that the raiders had come from “Shangri-La.”

At left: President Roosevelt pins the Congressional Medal of Honor on Jimmy Doolittle’s jacket. New York Daily News, May 20, 1942