29. The First Installment on the Payback for Pearl Harbor
It was the morning of April 12th, 1942, five months after America was thrust into WWII. As the sun chased away the Pacific night, seamen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and her escorting task force, which had just linked up with the carrier Hornet north of Hawaii, were startled to see the Hornet’s flight deck crammed with strange airplanes. They were bigger than anything seen before on the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier. The planes were B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, and the daring raid they carried out a few days later was to be their first major combat operation.
The raid resulted from President Roosevelt’s desire, expressed soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, that Japan be bombed as soon as possible to boost public morale. At that stage in WWII, America had no airbases close enough to bomb Japan. So a plan was hatched to bring an improvised airbase, an aircraft carrier, close enough for modified B-25 bombers to strike the Japanese homeland. The result was the Doolittle Raid.