while militarily insignificant in terms of damage, it was monumental in setting the tone of the war. contrary to what the japanese thought, the US was never going to allow Japan to stay behind a defensive perimeter while the US sued for peace. the doolittle raid showed that, it tagged the japanese homeland as the target. that shocked the japanese and forced them to recalc the need for home defense.
but to me, the most significant thing was that the raid was basically a suicide raid. it showed the USA would do whatever it took, at any cost, to acheive total victory. that was the essence of the japanese miscalculation, they totally missed that aspect of US culture.
could they have really conceived that less than 5 years after the pearl harbor raid, there country, and particularly the top 20 cities would be in absolute ruin, including two nuclear strikes?
one never knows where war will go.
Actually, it should have been painfully obvious.
There were more paved roads in California than in all of Japan. I don’t even want to guess how we compared for miles of railroad. Or steel production.
The first A6M “Zero” prototype was carried from the factory to the airfield in an oxcart. Using trucks damaged the aircraft (remember the roads?). Subsequent production aircraft traveled the same way or in horse-drawn carts.
The US GDP was over four times that of Japan in 1941.