[colorado tanker]

The bombers were stripped of everything nonessential. The rear gun was even replaced with a broom handle. They revved the engines to max before the brakes were released. They went through a special training program to learn all the tricks to do it. They took a B-25 out to sea off Norfolk, tried it and found out it damn well worked!

Doolittle took off in the first bomber so every man would see for himself that it could be done.

[SunkenCiv]

I recall listening to a documentary about it (just bits and pieces) — the second pilot watched Doolittle run off the end and drop out of sight, and by the timing he had to start his takeoff run after such and such a count. He’d started moving before Doolittle’s plane had made enough airspeed to rise where it could be seen from his windshield, but he started anyway, both trusting Doolittle’s calculations and not wanting to be shown up by him. :’) Also, the weather turned sour, which actually wound up helping them. They arrived at their targets from different directions, flying out of cloud cover. Japanese who happened to look up just assumed the planes were Japanese.