The Doolittle Raid and the Courage That Followed Pearl Harbor

On this episode of Our American Stories, in April 1942, just four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sixteen B-25 bombers lifted off from the deck of the USS Hornet in a daring gamble led by James Doolittle. Their mission: to strike Tokyo and remind the world that America would not stay on its knees.

Weeks later came the Battle of the Coral Sea, a brutal contest fought entirely by aircraft, where courage, coordination, and sheer will stopped the Japanese advance for the first time. Our regular contributor, Anne Clare, revisits these twin moments of resilience, when a wounded nation began to rediscover its strength.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we return to our American stories, and we love
to tell stories about history on this show. And all
of our history stories are brought to us by the
great folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to
learn all the things that matter in life, all the
things that are beautiful in life. A classical liberal arts college,
and there are so few of them left in this
great country. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale

(00:33):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
I learned more watching the Constitution one on one course
they're free offering than I did in three years studying
law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Up
next to story from writer and Claire on two of
America's first responses to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the

(00:56):
Doolittle Raids and the Battle of the Coral see Take
It Away.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
And The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and other Allied
strongholds on December seventh, nineteen forty one had far reaching consequences,
shocked and angered the United States officially entered the Second
World War on the home front. People of Japanese descent

(01:23):
living in the US faced suspicion and in some cases
interment abroad. The US Navy, damaged but not destroyed, looked
for chances to strike back. Now, as the US was
looking for a chance to strike back, one of the

(01:44):
goals was Tokyo itself. The new commander in the Pacific
World War One veteran Admiral Chester Nimitz, definitely knew that
striking Tokyo was no mean feat. His ships were pretty
severely outnumbered in the Pacific, and in order to get
bombers close enough to strike Tokyo, he'd have to send
an aircraft carrier and escort ships within just a couple

(02:07):
hundred miles of the target. And at that range he
risked both the planes and the ships when he didn't.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Really have any despair. So how could he risk it?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, the answer came in this whole plan that became
known as the Doolittle Raid because it was led by
Lieutenant Commander James or Jimmy Doolittle. Now, an aircraft carrier's
regular complement of planes has a shorter range, but B

(02:40):
twenty five bombers had a range of around twelve hundred
or more miles. So the big idea was that if
pilots could be trained to take off and B twenty
fives from a carrier's short runway. Those extra miles would
make the whole scheme of an attack back on Tokyo far.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Less risky to the ships.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
The problem was that the B twenty fives were too
heavy to land on the carriers afterwards, so they had
to figure out.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
What to do with the planes now.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Doolittle's plan was that they'd actually continue past Tokyo after
dropping the bombs and land in China, because while there
was a lot of conflict going on in China, there
were friendly forces there. The Chinese had groups that were
allied with the Americans, even though Japan was occupying different areas.

(03:37):
They hoped they could find sheltering forces to hide them,
and then eventually they could just make their way back
to the US. Nimits agreed to the plan, so sixteen
B twenty fives and eighty crewmen boarded the USS Hornet
and set out. The plan did succeed in part. Now

(03:59):
the bomber achieved their surprise, they were able to unload
their payloads and to fly on afterwards, things didn't work
out quite as they might have hoped. One crew did
not make it to China. They actually landed near Vladavostock
and were detained there as authorities of the USSR, maybe

(04:20):
overcome with the need to show hospitality to their new allies,
detained them for over a year until they got out.
Eight of the Dolittle Raiders were captured by the Japanese
and imprisoned. Of those, three were executed and one died
as a pow. However, Doolittle himself and the majority of

(04:41):
the others did find shelter with the sympathetic Chinese.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
As planned.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Now, the Japanese authorities really downplayed the importance.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
They called it the do Nothing Raid instead of the
do little Raid.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
However, Admiral Yamamoto is quoted as saying, even though there
wasn't much damage, it is a disgrace that the skies
of the Imperial capital should have been defiled without a
single enemy plane being shot down. As the Japanese planned

(05:19):
their next strokes, their attempt to spread their influence and
control on the Pacific would shortly bring them into a
direct clash with US forces in the Coral Sea. But
before we can really move on to the Coral See,
we need to go back a little bit to the
other American responses to Pearl Harbor. US naval intelligence was scrambling.
They were fairly shocked and embarrassed at how badly things

(05:42):
had gone at Pearl, and it really galvanized the efforts
of people like cryptanalyst Commander Joseph Roschfert and Admirald Nomans's
chief intelligence officer, Captain Edwin Layton, and they really were
struggling to break the Japanese naval code. And in late
April they sent word they discovered something. Maybe it was
spurred by the successful Doolittle raid, but whatever the case,

(06:07):
japan was preparing for a big push to expand their
influence in the Pacific, and it appeared they'd try to
take Port Moresby in New Guinea, which would give them
dominance of the Coral Sea, very close to Australia. So
victory there would give the Japanese a real clear shot
at Australia, as well as potentially cutting Australia's supply lines

(06:29):
with the US, which would really do a number on
Allied efforts in the Pacific. Admiral Nimitz sent the aircraft
carriers Yorktown and Lexington, along with several American and Australian
cruisers to meet this threat, and it turned out the
intelligence was correct. Admiral Yamamoto had sent his own forces

(06:53):
to the Coral Sea, including not two, but three carriers,
so the stage was set for a new kind navy battle.
Aircraft carriers were not brand new on the scene, but
they definitely changed the face of naval warfare in the
Pacific because both US and the Japanese could launch attacks
on each other while still completely out of sight. Now,

(07:16):
of course, the trick is the planes would still need
to be able to find the opposing vessels. This might
not sound hard in theory, but poor weather conditions made
it pretty difficult, especially for the Japanese who had no radar.
The opposing sides spent the fifth and sixth of May.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Searching for each other.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
On the morning of the sixth, US planes spotted smaller
aircraft carrier the Shoho and Sanker. One down, two to go,
but the two remaining were the big carriers.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Due to weather.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
On May eighth, the US planes had difficulty locating the
Japanese carriers, and when they did, one took refuge under
low clouds and escape. The other took three bomb hits
and was temporarily put out of commission. But meanwhile the
Japanese planes had located the Yorktown and the Lexington. The

(08:09):
Yorktown was hit but not sunk. The Lexington, unfortunately, was
not so fortunate. She was hit multiple times. The crew
worked furiously to repair the ship and put out fires,
and for a while it appeared they were succeeding, But
twelve minutes after their ship's log reported that all the
fires below decks were put out, a new entry was

(08:31):
logged that heavy explosions were felt venting up through the
bomb elevators, and in spite of all the crew's efforts,
in the end she had to be abandoned and scuttled,
and that was essentially the end of the Battle of
the Coral Sea. Interestingly, both sides claimed victory. The Japanese
lost their smaller carrier and more aircraft than the Americans.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
However, the loss of the Lexington was a blow to
US forces in the Pacific.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yorktown survived, but had to limp back to Pearl Harbor
trailing an oil slick.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Perhaps the best claim for American.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Victory, though, is the fact that the Japanese plans to
invade Port Morrisby were thwarted for good. As it turned out. However,
the Japanese Navy did have other plans.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
In the works.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
As a new intelligence came in, Admiral Nimitts urged the
workers repairing the Yorktown to hurry up because if his
analysts were correct, she was going to be needed soon
to defend Midway.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
And great jobs always to Monty on the storytelling they
are and his special thanks to Anne Claire telling the
story of the Doolittle Raids and the Battle of the
Coral Sea. And we tell these stories about World War
Two and all of our stories about history because if
we forget what we did, well, we'll forget who we are.

(09:54):
And by the way, for my money, that was a
win for us. You can both victory that the Japanese
had plans with the Coral Sea and we had plans
of our own to stop them, and we did. And
imagine what would have happened in World War two if
Australia had been captured and taken over by the Japanese.

(10:15):
It will be still my heart that that didn't happen.
The story of the Doolittle Raids and the Battle of
the Coral Sea our history stories is always brought to
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. Here on
our American stories.