Assessing the Strategic Impact of the Doolittle Raid
73 years ago today, sixteen B-25 medium bombers took off
from USS Hornet (CV-8) to conduct the
first American attack on Japan during World War II. Two weeks after Pearl
Harbor, President Roosevelt asked the Chiefs of Staff to come up with a plan
for attacking Tokyo directly in order to demonstrate to the American public
that the U.S. was capable of carrying the war to Japan. Captain Francis Low,
Assistant Chief of Staff for anti-submarine warfare, is credited with
conceiving the idea for the raid. Lieutenant General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, the
head of the U.S. Army Air Forces, selected Lieutenant Colonel James H.
Doolittle to lead the raid. Doolittle was one of the most experienced military
pilots in the country and had already won two Distinguished Flying Crosses.
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| Model of USS Hornet (click to enlarge) Builder unknown Naval War College Museum Collection |
Doolittle’s crews received three weeks of specialized
training for the mission at Eglin Field and Wagner Field in Florida. Upon
completion, they flew to California and met up with Hornet at Naval Air Station (NAS) Alameda. Task Force 18 departed
Alameda on April 2 and rendezvoused with Task Force 16, centered on USS Enterprise (CV-6), before proceeding to
the western Pacific. The raid launched ahead of schedule on the morning of
April 18 after a Japanese patrol boat spotted the American task force. Concerned
that they would lose the element of surprise, Doolittle’s men took off and flew
the 650 nautical miles to Japan. Their targets included factories, industrial
centers, shore facilities, and naval shipyards. After dropping their bombs,
each aircraft made its way to friendly territory as best it could. Some made it
to China, others crashed in the ocean, and one landed in the Soviet Union.
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| B-25s on board USS Hornet. Immediately to the left is USS Gwin (DD-433) National Museum of the U.S. Air Force |
Anyone familiar with today’s U.S. military knows how much
emphasis is placed on conducting and studying after action reviews (AARs).
Their purpose is to capture lessons learned in combat so that future commanders
can benefit from hard-won experience. In 1946, Chief of Naval Operations FADM
Chester W. Nimitz ordered the Naval War College to conduct a series of studies
on major World War II naval battles that were essentially in-depth AARs.
ADM Raymond A. Spruance, President of the Naval War College,
assigned Commodore Richard W. Bates to conduct these studies. Bates had
graduated from the Naval War College senior class in 1941 and returned to teach
strategy from 1941-1943. From 1943-1945, he served in a number of combat
assignments in the Pacific and was present at the battles of Surigao Strait,
Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa. Bates now headed up the project that became
known as the World War II Battle Evaluation Group. This group produced studies
on the Coral Sea, Midway, Savo Island, as well as a multi-volume report on
Leyte Gulf.
Although the Doolittle Raid was not the subject of its own
study, Bates discussed it in the introduction to the report on the Battle of
the Coral Sea. He noted that the prevailing view of the raid was that it
succeeded in bolstering civilian morale even if the material damage caused was
slight. He quoted the Office of Naval Intelligence report from 1943 which
contained this observation: “Air bombing of Tokyo and the other Japanese
centers of war industry on April 18th, while cheering, was only a
nuisance raid.” Bates also cited Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King’s assessment that
the raid’s most important effect was to lift Allied spirits after the surrender
of American and Filipino forces on the Bataan Peninsula.
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| RADM Richard W. Bates, USN (Ret.) Oil on canvas Anthony Sarro, 1971 Naval War College Museum Collection |
Recent authors of popular histories about World War II have
used Bates’ observation that the raid had “no serious strategical reason” to
suggest that the Naval War College found the raid to be of little consequence.[1] However,
this interpretation is not supported by the rest of the report. Bates argued that
even though the raid was launched
without a defined strategic purpose, it actually did have tangible and serious
effects on the future course of the war. The raid hit Tokyo while Japanese war planners
were meeting to discuss future operations. Up until this point, their armed
forces had enjoyed one success after another. The appearance of American
bombers over the home islands created enormous pressure to ensure that such an attack
was not repeated. As a result, the high command identified a list of new objectives
that included the Solomon Islands, Port Moresby, the Aleutians, and Midway
Island. They also moved up the timetable for the operation against Midway. This
decision ensured that two carriers damaged at Coral Sea, Zuikaku and Shokaku,
could not participate, thus depriving the Japanese of about 140 additional
aircraft in the crucial battle of the Pacific war. Bates pointed out that the
raid had negative strategic consequences for the U.S. as well. The two carriers
that participated in the raid, Hornet
and Enterprise, returned to Pearl
Harbor and were on their way to reinforce USS Lexington (CV-2) and USS Yorktown
(CV-5) during the first week of May. They failed to rendezvous in time to take
part in the Battle of the Coral Sea, leaving historians to wonder how the
American fleet would have fared had it enjoyed a 2:1 advantage in carriers at
that action rather than equaling the Japanese force.
The Naval War College is well known for the role it played
in formulating U.S. plans for the war against Japan. But the College’s impact
on planning did not end once the war started. The World War II Battle
Evaluation Group is a good example of how the College analyzed the results of
naval operations to determine whether or not strategies conceived in peace time
proved sound. In the case of the Doolittle Raid, Bates and his team found that the
lack of a specific strategic goal did not stop the attack from having an
adverse effect on Japanese decision making, thus aiding the American war
effort.
Rob Doane
Curator,
Naval War College Museum
[1]
See, for example, Mike Wright, What They
Didn’t Teach You About World War II (Novato, California: Presidio Press,
1998), 277; James Arnold and Robert Hargis, US
Commanders of World War II (1) (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2002), 49.
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