As the United States was recovering from Pearl Harbor, the tide of Japanese invasion swept relentlessly westward across the Pacific, into the Philippines and towards Wake island. A victory was needed, even a moral one, and a variety of groups formed up to sponsor such an act — although nobody had any concrete plans for the form such action would take. An air raid was the most practical route, but no American air bases were close to any high profile targets in Japan. That left the military to organize a daring raid via carrier, right into the heart of Japan.

On this day, April 18th, a group B-25 bombers led by Air Force Colonel Doolittle, took off from the aircraft carrier Hornet bound for Tokyo, Japan. Theirs was a one-way mission: the bombers were land-based, unsuitable for landing on a carrier; and in any case the carrier had to keep a safe distance away from the Japanese mainland to avoid detection. The bombers would fly over Japan and land somewhere, it was hoped, in China.

Their plans had to be accelerate when on approach to Japan the carrier task force ran into some Japanese patrol vessels. Both vessels were quickly destroyed, but it was possible they might have radioed a warning about the impending attack. The B-25s took off 400 miles behind the safe zone, and had a much more difficult time reaching the designated safe zones due to low fuel. Nevertheless, out of the 16 bombers crews, 13 returned whole (one, secretly, by the USSR, who had a treaty with Japan at the time) and only one man was lost of the fourteenth.