On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25s under the command of Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle were launched from the carrier Hornet , flew 650 miles to Japan, dropped their bombs on Tokyo and other targets, and escaped to China and neutral Soviet territory. Although a very small affair in comparison with the B-29 strikes three years later, the Doolittle raid was a severe psychological blow to Japanese military leaders and had far-reaching strategical effects. At the same time, the raid provided an electrifying boost to American morale. Glines, former editor of Professional Pilot magazine, relates this exciting story in full: the bold conception of the mission, the selection of its leader (Doolittle was known as a "master of the calculated risk"), the difficult preparations, the hair-raising "thirty seconds over Tokyo," and the ordeals of those crewmen who fell into Japanese hands in China. Glines also tells the almost unbelievable story of "the last Doolittle raider." Lt. George Barr, convinced that his liberation was an elaborate Japanese trick, was shunted around the U.S. military-medical circuit and ended up in a mental ward. Doolittle himself, by then a general, traced him, rescued him from bureaucratic oblivion, and set him firmly on the road to recovery. Photos.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book is a detailed recounting of the carrier launched B-25 raid against Tokyo, Japan on 18 April 1942. The book opens with a brief, one chapter, recap of the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. This chapter is followed by four chapters detailing the evolution of the idea of a carrier born bomber attack- the initial idea, the investigation of possible bomber types, the special modification to the bombers, crew training and, finally, the carrier Hornet sailing from San Francisco loaded with 16 B-25 medium bombers.

The chapters that follow detail the unexpected encounter with Japanese picket ships which forced an earlier than expected launch of the strike force, a plane by plane description of their respective flights from the Hornet to Japan, and the fate of those planes after the strike on Tokyo and vicinity. (Most of the bombers made it to China with their crews either bailing out over the land or ditching in the ocean near the coast. One crew landed in the Soviet Union and one entire crew and three survivors of a second were captured by the Japanese – 4 of these men survived 40 months of captivity.)

The remainder of the book discusses the impact of the raid on Japan and Japanese military thinking, the ordeals faced by the 8 who were captured and the repatriation of the POW's to the United States at the end of the war. The book is well written and does an excellent job of conveying the many facets of the mission-technical, political, and personal - to the reader. ( )