by Pete Feigal
April 18, 2022

On this 80th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid, it is well worth considering how dramatically different things might have been but for an attack that some saw as an ineffectual publicity stunt.

In this context, few ever mention the incredible Japanese victory in April 1942 in the Indian Ocean and the potential nightmare an extended attack could have caused there. Things in ’42 could have been much worse for the Allies if Japan had chosen not to attack Midway but Ceylon, British East Africa, Madagascar, even the Suez Canal.

The Doolittle Raid was a brilliant piece of soldiering, thought up, planned and executed in record time. (“Aqaba..from the land!”-Lawrence.) It was a plan of genius, of military propaganda, even theatre, and was as crucial an event as anything in the entire war. Indeed, it started a chain-reaction that eventually led to Hiroshima.

After the tremendous victories of Dec ’41, Jan-Feb ‘42, much of the incredibly powerful Japanese fleet twiddled its thumbs at anchor near Hiroshima. Not until the last weeks in March was Admiral Nagumo, victor of Pearl Harbor, given a real mission. He and his fast carriers had zoomed around in minor carrier strikes, “smashing eggshells with a sledgehammer,” as Mitsuo Fuchida wrote. Precious time was ticking away for the Japanese, who needed to make a strategic design fast: East against the Americans, or West against the British in the Indian Ocean and on to the Suez Canal.

Finally In late March Nagumo was ordered to sail west around Singapore and hit British forces, sea and air, in the Indian Ocean. The orders read “To support the Japanese Army’s advance into Burma.”

It was a huge victory. On 5 April 1942, Nagumo’s Kidō Butai dive-bombers sank an aircraft carrier, HMS Hermes, two heavy cruisers, HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire, a destroyer, and a corvette in an Easter Sunday Raid.

(Above: Hermes. 40 direct hits from Japanese dive bombers. She sinks in 20 minutes, with the loss of 18 officers and 288 sailors.)

(Above: Cornwall and Dorsetshire burning.)

(Above: HMS Resolution and HMS Formidable, on the run to British East Africa.)

The Japanese totally destroyed two British bases in Ceylon, and 93,000 tons of merchant shipping. The Zeroes wrought such chaos among the defending Hurricanes, Swordfish, and Spitfires that Churchill in his memoirs confessed the RAF was never so totally outfought over Europe.

(Above: Spitfires vs Zeros. The British pilots were trained to fight the German pilots, but the almost acrobatic Japanese Navy aviators, many flying since Manchuria in ’36, totally took them by surprise.)

British aircraft losses were heavy. The surviving British battleships and rest of the surviving Indian Ocean fleet fled in confusion and panic to British East Africa. British Naval seapower, after 200 years of hegemony, disappeared entirely from the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean was, for all practical purposes, a Japanese lake. Western historians rarely give this the gravity it deserves…except for Winston Churchill, who quite honestly wrote of his own complete shock and fear at the time.

The total cost to the Japanese for this great victory was just 47 aircraft.

India, Ceylon, Madagascar, the African coast, the Suez Canal, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean itself, lay open to the advance of the Japanese fleet. There was nothing to stop it, but a few outdated British battleships hiding in British East Africa, totally in the dark, with no intelligence or reconnaissance about where the Japanese carriers and fleet were.

But something so incredible happened, that these potentially war-winning opportunities, there almost for the taking, never materialized, and Japan was drawn in the wrong direction, East instead of West. Nagumo was recalled for a new target. And a huge Historical “What If?” was all that was left. The Axis edge in time had run out unused.

The Doolittle Raid

FDR let the Joint Chiefs know on Dec 15th 1941 that we needed to bomb Japan at the first opportunity to boost public morale after the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Navy Captain Francis Low, Assistant Chief of Staff for antisubmarine warfare, thought it could be done, with some B-25 two-engined medium bombers and a flattop named Hornet. They picked the perfect man to plan and lead this piece of military theater: a famous celebrity barnstormer from the Golden Age of Flying, known, loved and respected by the whole country: Colonel James Doolittle, who “Knew No Fear”.

(Above: “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bumble bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the …”)

For a depression-weary nation in the early 1930’s, the Golden Age of Flying came as a welcome distraction. In the decade after the First World War, civilian aircraft designers made America marvel with their broad jump from 200 to 300 mph, and the era of the biplane was coming to an end.

The Barnstormers exchanged their daredevil loop-de-loops for outright speed. Events like the Thompson Trophy pylon race and the Bendix Trophy cross-country derby were all the rage, and flamboyant flyboys like Tony LeVier, Jimmy Doolittle, ‘Speed’ Holman and Jimmy Wedell, won cash prizes and cheated death.

The most outrageous designers of them all were the five Granville brothers from Springfield, MA. The eldest, Zantford “Granny” Granville, basically said: “I’ve got a barn and some scrap metal! Let’s get the boys together and build the fastest plane in the world!” And about 16 weeks later they actually had. For a modern comparison: the Lockheed F-35 has required 29 years of “development.” (Not exactly a fair comparison, perhaps, but hell, where did our American “Gung-Ho!” go?)

Their Gee Bee (for Granville Brothers) Supersportster won the 1931 and 1932 Thompson Trophy, the latter piloted by Jimmy Doolittle, who also flew it to 296.287 mph, a landplane speed record. But then five pilots were killed flying Gee Bees, “Granny” himself crashed, and the company went bankrupt. The Gee Bees had built a reputation of being fast planes, but also of being killers. Jimmy Doolittle was one of the few that could master their evil reputation and was famous for having balls that wouldn’t fit in Yankee Stadium.

Doolittle very quickly ”cast” a brave little band of 80 steely-eyed American volunteers flying 16 B-25B bombers, “rehearsed” them, and led them on this aviation “commando raid”, hitting Tokyo and other targets on 18 April 1942 out of a clear, blue sky. The Japanese were stunned to say the least.

The bombing raid did little actual damage, but killed about 50 people, including civilians, and injured 400. The Americans, still beaten up from Pearl Harbor with few big capital ships but their carriers, were too weak in the Pacific just then for anything but light carrier raids. But concocting this raid, this stunt, was brilliant. Since Japanese homeland air and sea patrols covered only carrier plane ranges, launching modified land-based bombers from further out off a flattop was genius and achieved total surprise.

The effect on the Japanese was profound.

Japanese morale tumbled and America rejoiced, the world was flabbergasted, and Japan was jarred to its very foundations. After only four short months of war, their beloved and sacred Emperor had been exposed to American bombs!

The raid raised doubts and fears about the ability of Japanese leaders to defend Japan itself, but the killing of civilians also steeled Japanese resolve to get some retribution. This was exploited by the Japanese military for propaganda purposes. But mostly, the Raid stung the Imperial Japanese Headquarters into making at last the decision they had been dithering on:, “Which way?” East against America or West towards the Indian Ocean, Africa and the Suez Canal.

In a near-panic, they chose the worst possible course.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto‘s had some plans in the works to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific, an important base “midway” across the Pacific and crucial for American submarines to refuel to be able to reach Japanese shipping lanes east of China. But he wasn’t ready yet and was still seriously considering heading East to the now wide open targets of India, Africa, Madagascar, the Suez Canal and even the Mediterranean.

((Above: Yamato bringing its 18″ guns to bear on the Suez Canal, British-held Malta or even Gibraltar. A major “What if?”)

I have chilling images of the Yamato, Kaga and Akagi steaming up the Suez to aid Rommel against the British in North Africa, and capturing not just the Canal, but the rich oil fields of the Middle East.

(Above: Kaga approaching Cape Town or even Marseilles.)

Scary stuff.

Yamamoto, the daring admiral who had made the Pearl Harbor attack decision, now determined that this Must Not Ever Happen Again; that these upstart and impudent Americans must be taught a major lesson, and pushed forever out of carrier range to strike their Emperor. So he gave the order, “East!” Lure the American fleet out to be annihilated: at Midway. And Japan would seize that enemy base, from which she would ward off all future Doolittle outrages.

So Nagumo was recalled from his Indian Ocean victories, sparing the British fleet and potentially the British Empire and set sail for the Battle of Midway.

(Above: Midway…Armageddon for the Japanese Navy.)

The ultimate outcome of the Doolittle Raid turned out to be of extraordinary strategic importance. That decision to push East received broad support, in large part justified and enabled by the changed political and military landscape created by the Doolittle Raid.

(“Of the 80 crew members, 77 survived the mission. The consequences were most severely felt in China, where Japanese reprisals caused the deaths of 250,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers.”-wiki)

(Above: “Doolittle initially believed that the loss of all his aircraft would lead to his court-martial, but he instead received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two ranks to brigadier general.”-Wiki)

— How World War II Might Have Been Lost but for the Doolittle Raid originally appeared as an answer on Quora.