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n his book Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Doolittle Raid pilot Ted Lawson recalls the moment his B-25 bomber reached the coast of Japan – the first land he had seen, he tells us, after being at sea on the USS Hornet for nearly three weeks. "It looked very pretty," he writes:"Everything seemed as well kept as a big rock garden. The little farms were fitted in with almost mathematical precision. The fresh spring grass was brilliantly green. There were fruit trees in bloom, and farmers working in their fields waved to us as we pounded just over their heads. A...

The Doolittle Raid wasn't just an operation of the Army Air Force. The Navy made its own plans, took its own risks, and has its own story that deserves to be remembered. Beyond Doolittle: The Navy Role in the Doolittle Raid | 15:16 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.53M subscribers | 55,154 views | April 18, 2025

The wreck of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Hornet has been discovered in the South Pacific, 77 years after Japanese forces sunk the ship in a fierce battle. The research vessel Petrel, owned by the estate of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, discovered the Hornet three miles under the ocean surface off the Solomon Islands late last month. The Hornet, the last U.S. fleet carrier to be sunk by enemy fire, lost 140 hands under a relentless Japanese air bombing attack at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26, 1942. As Imperial Navy surface forces...

Robert L. Hite, blindfolded by his captors, 1942

Oshkosh - As they flew over Tokyo, Richard Cole and David Thatcher realized with relief that Japanese anti-aircraft gunners had never before fired at enemy planes. As the first Americans to strike Japan's home islands during World War II, Cole and Thatcher found that the ack-ack-ack of the flak guns did little damage to the 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers that achieved fame as the Doolittle Raiders. It was only four months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and Japanese military commanders had promised their nation that it was invulnerable. The American crews lost all their planes and their...