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Was the Doolittle Raid a Mistake?
Recent events have me thinking about military strategy, and the importance of morale. I found myself mulling over the famous Doolittle raid during World War II.
For those who might not recall the details, this was an air raid on Tokyo in April 1942 by a handful of American bombers, B-25 Mitchells, which were land-based bombers but were, in this instance, launched off the carrier Hornet. The damage to Tokyo was minimal, but the propaganda victory was significant, after a series of catastrophic American and allied losses in the first months of the war.
I’ll present a case that the Doolittle raid diverted critical naval resources from important operations, with real military and naval significance, in the south Pacific region. You all can then critique my evaluation, and also decide for yourselves whether the morale boost from the Doolittle raid was worth the cost in other locations.
I’ll provide a few links at the end, for anyone wishing to double-check my account or read more, mostly from the official Navy historical site (the Naval Historical and Heritage Command, history.navy.mil).
I. Background
As I’m sure you all know, the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, devastated the US Pacific Fleet. The Japanese had 6 fleet carriers at the time, all used in the Pearl Harbor attack — Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku.
The silver lining for the US Navy was that none of our carriers were at Pearl. At the time, we had either 5 or 7 fleet carriers, depending on how you count them. Saratoga, Lexington, Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet were solid fleet carriers, though Hornet was brand new and still working up. We also had Ranger and Wasp, often counted as fleet carriers, though they were smaller and poorly protected, and we tried to avoid using them in the Pacific (they did perform good service in the Atlantic).
So at the start of 1942, the Japanese had a 6-5 advantage in fleet carriers in the Pacific. This increased to a 6-4 advantage when Saratoga was torpedoed in January 1942 and knocked out of action until shortly after the Battle of Midway in early June.
This was the naval situation in the Pacific at the start of the Doolittle raid.
II. The Doolittle Raid
On April 1, 1942, Hornet took aboard 16 stripped-down B-25 Mitchells in San Francisco Bay. The B-25 was a medium bomber, with two engines, a maximum bomb load of 3,200 pounds, and a crew of five. Hornet could not carry its normal air complement along with the B-25s, so she rendezvoused with Enterprise en route, on April 13, and both carriers proceeded toward Japan.
Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, commanding the B-25 squadron, took off for the Tokyo raid on April 18, 1942. The attack was launched earlier than planned, from a distance of 650 miles rather than 500, because the task force might have been spotted by a Japanese ship. During the launch, an unfortunate sailor slipped on the windswept and wet flight deck, losing an arm to the propeller blades of the last of Doolittle’s planes to take off.
The 16 B-25s successfully bombed targets in Tokyo and the surrounding area, and one damaged the Japanese light carrier Ryujo. The official naval history concedes that “the material damage inflicted by Doolittle’s raiders proved small.”
All 16 of Doolittle’s planes were lost, with 15 crashing in occupied China or off its coast, and one making it to Soviet territory, where the crew was interned. Ultimately, 69 of the 80 airmen safely returned to the US fairly promptly, including Doolittle, who received the Medal of Honor. Three Americans died in the raid itself, four died in Japanese captivity, four survived being held as POWs by the Japanese. Of the 69 who returned, the 5 who landed in the Soviet Union were technically required, under international law, to be interned by the Soviets until the end of the war, but were allowed to “escape” within a year. (Remember that the Japanese and the Soviets had a non-aggression pact until the very end of the war.)
As a bean-counting accountant, in terms of material damage, the Doolittle raid was probably a failure. The damages were minimal, and we lost 11 highly trained, heroic airmen — 7 killed and 4 captured by the Japanese — plus 16 valuable bombers. But war is not just about dollars and cents.
Evaluated in itself, I think that the Doolittle raid was a great success. No one thought that a mere 16 medium bombers were going to cause significant damage to a nation of 80 million. But it showed that we could strike back, and the message to the Japanese was quite ferocious. It was something like: How do you like this? This is just the first tiny drop from the bitter cup that you are going to drink, to the dregs. We’re going to send your Navy to the depths, slaughter your soldiers, burn your cities to the ground.
It is a good historical lesson. Thus far, in all of human history, it seems to me that the single most foolish thing that the leaders of any country can do is to get the Americans really, really mad. Bad idea, Tojo.
III. The Problem in the Coral Sea
My critique of the Doolittle raid relates to naval events elsewhere. Remember that, at the time, we had only 4 fleet carriers in the Pacific. Hornet and Enterprise were carrying out the Doolittle raid. That left Lexington and Yorktown to hold off Japan’s 6 fleet carriers elsewhere. Saratoga was still being repaired in Puget Sound.
The stage was set for the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first carrier-against-carrier battle in history.
Admiral Nimitz, commanding the US Pacific Fleet, had intelligence that the Japanese intended to make a seaborne attack on Port Moresby, on the southern coast of New Guinea. He dispatched Lexington and Yorktown to counter this threat, and the two carriers rendezvoused on May 1, 1942, in the vicinity of the Coral Sea. The intelligence was accurate. The two newest and best carriers in the Japanese fleet, Shokaku and Zuikaku, were there to cover the invasion, along with the (smaller) light carrier Shoho.
But as a result of the Doolittle raid, Enterprise and Hornet couldn’t get there in time.
Enterprise and Hornet returned to Pearl Harbor on April 25, and departed for the South Pacific five days later, on April 30. However, they could not reach the Coral Sea until the battle, fought between May 4 and May 7, was over.
The Battle of the Coral Sea is generally considered a tactical draw, or perhaps a narrow tactical victory for the Japanese, but a strategic victory for the US. In the event, we lost Lexington and Yorktown was significantly damaged (though she would be repaired with extraordinary speed at Pearl). The Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho, but more importantly, their best two fleet carriers were put out of action. Shokaku was seriously damaged and had to return to Japan, while the undamaged Zuikaku lost so much of her air wing that she, too, was out of action for a while.
Less than a month later, on June 4, our 3 surviving Pacific fleet carriers — Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet — would meet the other 4 Japanese fleet carriers — Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu — near a tiny island called Midway. We would lose Yorktown. The Japanese would lose all four.
My critique of the Doolittle raid involves the answer to this question: What would have happened if Enterprise and Hornet had been at the Coral Sea?
IV. Hypothetical Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway
So what would have happened, but for the Doolittle raid? We can never know. We can only make an educated guess. Here is my educated guess.
In this hypothetical, we would have had a 4-2 advantage in fleet carriers at the Coral Sea. A month later, at a 4-3 disadvantage, we would sink all 4 Japanese carriers, losing only 1. So my educated guess is that we would have sunk both Shokaku and Zuikaku at the Coral Sea, with either zero or 1 carriers lost on our side.
The Japanese probably would have launched the Midway attack anyway, as they did so without their two carriers that were at the Coral Sea. The outcome of Midway would have been the same for us, or perhaps better, if all 4 American carriers had survived the hypothetical battle of the Coral Sea. We lost 1 carrier at Midway (Yorktown), and I think that we would have lose either zero or 1 in my hypothetical.
I think that the most likely outcome is that, but for the Doolittle raid, we would have lost a total of 1 fleet carrier in the combined, hypothetical battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. In the aftermath of Midway, we would have had 3 fleet carriers remaining in the Pacific — plus Saratoga, which had completed repairs before the battle and was en route, but didn’t arrive in time to fight at Midway. The Japanese would have lost all 6 of their fleet carriers.
Heading into the battles off Guadalcanal, we had a fleet carrier advantage, in the real world, of 3:2 — Saratoga, Enterprise, and Hornet vs. Shokaku and Zuikaku. In my hypothetical, we would have had an advantage of 4:0.
Note that this does not count one borderline carrier on our side, Wasp, and two borderline carriers on the Japanese side that were completed in mid-1942, Hiyo and Junyo. The latter two were converted passenger liners, on the weak side and with a limited air arm, though sometimes classified as fleet carriers.
Shokaku and Zuikaku were back in action within about 2 months, in a series of naval battles around Guadalcanal, which our Marines invaded on August 7.
V. Playing Out the Hypothetical
Enterprise was heavily damaged by Shokaku and Zuikaku at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on August 24, 1942, being knocked out of action until October. We did sink the Japanese light carrier Ryujo in this battle — the same one that was damaged in the Doolittle raid. Hornet had not arrived for this battle, though Saratoga was there along with the borderline Wasp (meaning borderline between a light carrier and a fleet carrier).
Saratoga was badly damaged by a submarine attack a week later, on August 31, and knocked out of action until November. Wasp was sunk by a Japanese submarine attack on September 15, 1942. For the next month or so, Hornet was our only active carrier in the Pacific. Enterprise returned to action on October 24, just in time.
Well, just in time to watch Hornet go down, and to be badly damaged again. In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 25-27, 1942, Enterprise and Hornet faced heavy odds: fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku, again, plus the borderline Junyo and another light carrier, Zuiho. Fortunately, Hiyo had turned back due to an engine room fire.
The Santa Cruz Islands was a victory for the Japanese, as Hornet was sunk and Enterprise damaged. Shokaku and Zuiho were heavily damaged on the Japanese side.
At this point, the damaged Enterprise was our sole carrier in the Pacific. Arguably because of the unintended consequence of the Doolittle raid, we had lost Lexington, and Yorktown, and Wasp, and Hornet — and Saratoga, while not sunk, was damaged and out of action. The Japanese still had Zuikaku, and the borderline Hiyo, with Shokaku and Junyo under repair.
It’s not clear whether any of this would have happened in my hypothetical. Would have the Japanese have risked the Guadalcanal operation, with no fleet carriers at all? They would have had the borderline, converted liners Hiyo and Junyo, plus the light carriers Ryujo and Zuiho, to take on (probably) 4 American fleet carriers plus the borderline Wasp. They were desperate, but perhaps not that desperate.
In the event, the present looked bleak at the end of 1942, though the future was bright. In December, the mighty Essex was commissioned, namesake of a new class of over two dozen American fleet carriers, the best carriers of the war by a wide margin, none of which would be lost. But at the time, we had only the damaged Enterprise in operation for a brief period, and the Saratoga returning from repairs in November.
We were so desperate, in mid-1943, that we went into action with the so-called “USS Robin,” an apparently new fleet carrier. It’s a great story. The Robin was actually the HMS Victorious, borrowed from the British and modified to handle American aircraft. It operated with the Saratoga briefly, covering a couple of amphibious invasions. You can read more about it here.
In the long run, of course, any negative consequences of the Doolittle raid would have made little difference. By mid-1944, American naval and air power were overwhelming in the Pacific, and the Japanese were doomed.
VI. Sources
If you’re interested in reading more, you can check out the following from the official US naval history website.
Battles: Doolittle Raid, Coral Sea, Midway.
Carrier service histories: Lexington (CV-2), Saratoga, Yorktown (CV-5), Enterprise, Wasp (CV-7), Hornet (CV-8).
Saratoga and Enterprise survived through the war. I’ve included the ship numbers for Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, and Hornet, because all of these names were used again for Essex-class carriers.
Published in History
Nope. Before Midway, there was still a chance for the Japanese to win the war. Afterwards, they were finished. Guadalcanal still had to be won, but the IJN was on its back foot from then on out.
and
So in your outcome,
My conclusion: Doolittle’s raid set up the Battle at Midway as an unintended effect to the great benefit of the Allied force.
All told, Doolittle’s Raid was an unmitigated success and eminently worthwhile.
Look at the timeline
Yes, they had time to climb back to altitude (I do not know the Japanese fuel state which would have depended on what time they launched, how long they were on station, what they burned at mil power, etc.) Yet, they had 3 waves of torpedo bombers down low (employment of the torpedoes dictates this) so the likelihood is that they reset to a mid altitude as opposed to going high again. That would put them out of place for a dive bomber attack.
It was really complicated. The first strike on Midway recommended a second. That plus the attack by land-based bombers from Midway convinced Nagumo to rearm his second wave with general purpose bombs, but then the scout plane that hadn’t reported in yet announced that they had spotted a sizeable number of enemy ships, so it was back to torpedoes and armor-piercing bombs. Nagumo also wanted to recover the first strike’s aircraft or else they would end up ditching, which meant delaying refueling his fighters. The Japanese decks were covered with torpedoes, fuel hoses, and two types of bombs and his fighters were still chasing the surviving torpedo bombers when the USN dive bombers showed up.
Which makes a lot more sense. The Torpedo bombers did their dives at 200MPH (the Zero could go up to 370 MPH); they had to release the torpedo at 115MPH (or the trip was worthless), and then they had to evade and gun jink until they could climb away at 700 ft per min while the Zero could get over 3000FPM.
The torpedo runs took time and we don’t know what the starting position was when the times were recorded. In other words, we don’t know how long the engagement lasted.
80 year post hoc admiraling is so easy and rewarding.
Yep. Guadalcanal was still touch and go and a loss there would have more than offset any advantage won at Midway. Had the Japanese regained their foothold on Guadalcanal and taken over the runways there, there was a good chance that Australia might have fallen or at least been in desperate straits.
Midway was important, but it was three days of being lucky, with really bad tactics, poor training, and a whole lot of luck. Guadalcanal was six months of the Japanese navy kicking our butts for control of an area that if they held it would have let them control the southern Pacific. It would have extended the war perhaps for years.
Had we lost Midway, we would still have had a severe shortage of carriers, the battle of Guadalcanal would not have gone much differently based on Midway. The Japanese had substantial ground based air assets, and if we didn’t have Guadalcanal, we would have had almost nothing.
We still would have won the war, but it would have been a lot longer.
Taking an island when you’ve lost your navy? Nope. That transforms the asset of possessing the island into a liability. Midway meant that the Japanese were going to lose their navy.
But their surface fleet regularly sent our ships to the bottom.
I’m not saying Midway wasn’t important, but to me Guadalcanal cinched it for the US.
Surface fleets had been surpassed. It was overwhelming airpower by day that forced the Japanese to resupply Guadalcanal by destroyer, then by submarine, by night.
No, that’s a myth. The Japanese surface fleet pummeled the American fleet time and again. It wasn’t until we had a large number of carriers that it could be said that surface fleets had been surpassed, and even then they were still potent.
But we’re expressing opinions, not facts, so neither opinion is wrong.
Yes. They did. How did that work out for them?
Brian, this is so strange. Did you read my post? At the end of Sec. II, I wrote:
So I don’t think that it’s fair to say that I was oblivious to this.
Whether this morale benefit was worth the cost is the question that I raised in the OP. Rather than calling me names, perhaps next time you could just explain the reasons that you think that the morale boost was worth the risk and the cost.
Well, anything is possible, I guess. But it seems highly unlikely that having twice the force available would have been worse for us. I mean, if you’re in command, would you rather have 4 carriers, or 2?
I come down with Parshall on this one. Midway was a tremendous victory, and very important, but it’s a mistake to view it as the sole “turning point.” Guadalcanal, and the naval battles surrounding it, was absolutely critical in wearing down the Japanese.
To be clear, I don’t think that there was something particularly important about Guadalcanal as a piece of real estate. It could have been some other island, hypothetically. The important thing was to get our guys to a place where they could fight the Japanese on reasonably even terms, with air cover and the ability to supply them. When they got such a chance, the Marines proved that they could out-fight the Japanese.
Calling you a libertarian is name calling? Where did I call you a name, Gerry?
Calling me a “libertarian who thinks that emotion doesn’t matter” is name-calling, isn’t it? I mean, me? A libertarian?
I’m sorry if I overreacted to this one. When I’m called “oblivious” to something that I actually did address, and when my mischaracterized post is then called “crap,” I have a negative reaction.
I don’t think you can overstate the impact of the morale boost from the Doolittle raid.
Hindsight makes things obvious. It’s easy to say now that we were always going to win the war. But I have some scrapbooks of newspaper articles from December 1941-through March or so of 1942 that my uncle put together. We were getting our asses kicked all over the Pacific. The fear in the contemporaneous journalism is palpable.
The damage may not have been much. But showing that we could hit them at home was important.
Jerry, I sent a link to this post to the moderators of the Battle of Midway Roundtable for their review and consideration. We’ll see if your premise actually gets posted to the Roundtable for group discussion (I warned them that Ricochet was a center-right political forum).
I was unaware being categorized as a libertarian was name calling.
I have been reading Victor Davis Hansons book on WWII. I have read more about WWII than any other war or history by a large margin. To me it is the go-to text on how to look strategically and geopolitically about WWII.
I think both the Dolittle raid and the battle of Midway are overstated on how important they were in the long-term strategic level. They only helped end the war sooner so Americans loss less life and spent less money. And in the end, help save millions of mostly Chinese lives by ending the war in 45 as opposed 46 or 47. However, with the atomic bomb development, I am not sure if the war really would of gone on much longer than it did. Especially with the fall and Berlin and the Russians transferring that military might to one front Maybe the only thing you can claim is we were able to get the Japs to surrender before we had to let the Russians have a bigger slice.
The Japs were never ever going to change the end outcome only the cost. The question is did Midway, Dolittle and Coral Sea help or hurt the Russians? So could we have had the Japs done sooner and not given them the north Korea occupation if Corel sea was a deceive American win? Or if Midway was lost and the Dolittle raid ended in disaster would the Russians of gotten all of Korea and some of Japan?
Now yes a lot of this is hindsight but we were worried about the Soviets however we mostly cared about US soldiers and loss of life. That is what the leaders were trying to reduce. The raid I believe moved a lot of economic and strategic resources to defensive versus offensive against us and our Allies. To me, that is wherein the long run it help make the war shorter, therefore, reduce Soviet influence and loss of life of US Troops and Allies and even larger Chinese population.
So although it might have had as you argue small short-term benefits and huge downside risk. The long-term strategic implication of forcing the Japs to react to us and use their much more limited time and resources was critical. We were trying to buy time to get the massive pipline of ships and troops online. That was what the Raid was all about and it succeeded. Remember the Japs knew they could not beat us. Their goal was always to get some sort of peace deal. So the moral for Americans was critical politically so that would not gain traction with the public and politicians to sign a peace deal. Yes you could say the American midset was not going to change but people and politics are fical. Why risk it, make sure you politically have the most important resource as a general backing you up. The American worker. It was the American worker that was going to beat the Japs.
I just want to say I enjoyed both the post and the comments. Thought-provoking, indeed.
I have also played armchair admiral more than once, but on what I would consider far easier turf: whether the naval strategy of actually landing marines at irrelevant islands (like Iwo Jima) was bat-guano insane. It was. It was an interesting Ricochet debate years ago, with marines holding out that since the blood of good men was spilled, their sacrifices must not have been in vain.
The advantage of a battle in the ocean is that end-runs and off-side maneuvers make the possibilities far more interesting.
Iwo Jima was not an irrelevant island. It was located on the flight path between Saipan and Japan and was needed as an emergency landing strip. Planes were already using the airstrip there just a few days after the invasion.
I think I’ve read that more aircrew were saved by landing on Iwo Jima than men were killed in the invasion.
I think Peleliu was one of them that they should have just left alone.
I’m not going to dig it up, but there is an incredible animated video of the Doolittle Raid on YouTube. It was a really involved and disbursed attack. I always assumed that they just went for basically targets of convenience and got the hell out of there. The whole nation got the message real fast.
It was used. Probably not to the extent that they thought they would, but that was as much because the B-29s didn’t need it as often as they thought it might.
a further though on the morale boost aspect of the Doolittle raid.
it’s a little bit comparable to flight 93 on 9/11. On a terrible day, it provided a huge boost to know we could and did fight back in the midst of a horrendous defeat.
Wiki quotes:
You read rank propaganda.
That term “Combat damage” is doing a lot of work there.
The B-29 was famous for having a *lot* of engine problems (often on take-off, but also in flight).
‘Emergency refueling” discounts planned refualing, by which the use of Iwo Jima allowed aircrews to hit targets further up, or to embark on more flexible mission plans. It also denied the Japanese the use of the island, from which they could menace our bombers or exert control over “other available islands”.