North American B-25 Mitchell

Or is she? For weeks, a hand-picked group of pilots and their aircraft have been undergoing special training at the Eglin Air Base in Florida.

The plan is to transport a small force of B-25 Mitchell bombers by aircraft carrier to within 400 miles of Japan.

From there, they'll launch a bombing raid on Tokyo.

The Mitchell is a compromise.

But this will be Jimmy Doolittle's most challenging and dangerous mission yet.

Four months after the devastating attack at Pearl Harbor, America is finally ready to strike back.

The USS Hornet sets sail from San Francisco with 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers strapped to her deck.

They're too big to be stored below.

I don't know if you can even get that book anymore.

But have you ever heard of the 1945, I, we were talking about this, the 1945 B-25, uh, Mitchell bomber airplane that, that crashed into the, uh, um, Empire State Building? It was July of 1945.

Um, and it hit between the 78th and 80th floors, and 14 people, uh, died in that.

But they, they came up and put the fire out.

And even better, when you do do your promise to you set up 5,000 years ago, in 5,000 years, you can unblur your camera, which is what people have been asking for since we started the podcast.

And you can have a beautiful setup like I do with the B-25, the three Typhoon Ducks, one has flown away recently.

unfortunately it's like toy story uh obviously i've got another duck that's out of frame for this episode which is rude of me my bad guys i've got not one not dos but three coins uh one from the polish heritage one from the chinook one from the typhoon we've got three lovely pin badges and uh this that's fallen over so she probably picked that back up right Obviously, the Typhoon Display Team tag.

And we also have three cars in the background.

He was 45 years old, wearing Lieutenant Colonel's leaves, and he walked into General Hap Arnold's office with an idea.

Take Army Air Force's B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, strip them down for extended range, modify them for carrier operations, load them with bombs, put them aboard a Navy aircraft carrier, sail within striking distance of the Japanese home islands and launch.

The bombers would hit Tokyo and other targets, then keep flying west until they could land in Nationalist China.

There was no way to recover the aircraft aboard the carrier.

In January of 1944, General Jimmy Doolittle takes command of the 8th Air Force.

Doolittle, who had led 16 B-25 Mitchells off the deck of the USS Hornet against Tokyo in April of 42, who understood viscerally what audacity in the air could accomplish.

He takes command and he changes the rule.

He tells his fighter pilots, you are not chained to the bombers anymore.

A pilot named James Harold Doolittle agreed to fly the R1 in the 1932 Thompson Trophy race.

You know Jimmy Doolittle? By 1942, he was leading 16 North American B-25, Mitchells off the deck of the carrier Hornet in the first American airstrike on Tokyo, a raid that was one part military operation and two parts pure defiance.

But in 1932, he was already a legend in his own right.

He held multiple speed records.