The Doolittle Raid 1942: America's first strike back at Japan
This is another in the excellent series of books from Osprey. The books contain lots of information and pictures, often pictures that I have not seen elsewhere. The book also contains various, well-done maps. As usual, I will only point out a few things found in the book, although the entire book is worth buying and adding to ones collection.
The book starts off by noting that the raid involved relatively few resources, and was organized and executed in relatively little time. It was a complete surprise to the Japanese, and it basically changed the course of their thinking. It caused them to start paying more attention to the area near their own islands and divert attention and resources from their push in the south. It also raised American morale considerably.
The book goes into an examination of the opposing commanders and the opposing forces, as do other books in the series, and this section is also extremely well done.
The book notes that, at the time, the Japanese homeland defense was fragmented, and the Imperial Japanese Navy, Army and Air Force basically didn't talk to each other much at all.
B-25s were going to be used in the raid. Although they could take off from aircraft carriers (more precisely, it was hoped they could take off from aircraft carriers), they could not land on them, thus meaning they would have to land somewhere in China, hopefully.
The book does an excellent job of following each plane and the overall attack. Since the planes came in from different directions, it's no wonder the Japanese were confused. The book covers what the targets were, what targets were actually hit, and what the damage was.
It also includes the ultimate fate of the air crews, and how some of them were imprisoned in the Soviet Union, some landed in China and got free, and some got taken by the Japanese. Of those, some were executed, some became prisoners-of-war.
The fact that the Chinese helped some Americans escape had a terrible result, and that was that the Japanese military took reprisals against the Chinese, killing perhaps a quarter-of-a-million civilians.
From a totally objective approach, it is noted that all the planes were lost, along with some of the crews, and that the physical damage done was not significant. The psychological damage done to the Japanese, and the positive psychological effect the raid had on the Americans, though, was significant.
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