Doolittle raid how many died

Aden Jones — Engineer Gunner: Cpl. Everett Holstrom — Co-Pilot: Lt. Harry McCool — Bombardier: Sgt. Robert Stephens — Engineer Gunner: Cpl.

Bert Jordan — Pilot: Capt. David Jones — Co-Pilot: Lt. Rodney Wilder — Navigator: Lt. Joseph Manske — The crew bailed out off the coast of China, resulting in two crewmembers drowning. The remaining three swam to shore, were captured and interred as prisoners of war. Ted Lawson — Co-Pilot: Lt. Dean Davenport — Navigator: Lt. Charles McClure — Bombardier: Lt. David Thatcher — After conducting the raid, the crew landed in Russia where they were interred for more than a year.

All returned safely home in Harold Watson — Co-Pilot: Lt. James Parker — Navigator: Lt. Thomas Griffin — Bombardier: Sgt. Wayne Bissell — Engineer Gunner: Sgt. Eldred Von Scott — Richard Joyce Co-Pilot: Lt. Royden Stork Navigator Bombardier: Lt. Horace Crouch Engineer Gunner: Sgt. Edwin Horton Charles Greening Co-Pilot: Lt.

Frank Kappeler Bombardier: Staff Sgt. Army bombers, under the command of daredevil pilot Lt. Jimmy Doolittle, thundered into the skies over Tokyo and other key Japanese industrial cities in a surprise raid designed to avenge the attack on Pearl Harbor. For the 80 volunteer raiders, who lifted off that morning from the carrier Hornet , the mission was one-way. After attacking Japan, most of the aircrews flew on to Free China, where low on fuel, the men either bailed out or crash-landed along the coast and were rescued by local villagers, guerrillas and missionaries.

That generosity shown by the Chinese would trigger a horrific retaliation by the Japanese that claimed an estimated quarter-million lives and would prompt comparisons to the Rape of Nanking. American military authorities, cognizant that a raid on Tokyo would result in a vicious counterattack upon free China, saw the mission through regardless, even keeping the operation a secret from their Pacific theater allies.

This chapter of the Doolittle Raid has largely gone unreported—until now. Long-forgotten missionary records discovered in the archives of DePaul University for the first time shed important new light on the extent to which the Chinese suffered in the aftermath of the Doolittle raid. American aircraft carriers not only could launch surprise attacks from the seas and land safely in China but could possibly even fly bombers directly from Chinese airfields to attack Japan.

The Japanese military ordered an immediate campaign against strategically important airfields, issuing an operational plan in late April, just days after the Doolittle raid. Survivor accounts point to an ulterior objective: to punish the Chinese allies of the United States forces, especially those towns where the American aviators had bailed out after the raid.

At the time, Japanese forces occupied Manchuria as well as key coastal ports, railways and industrial and commercial centers in China. The United States had neither boots on the ground nor faith that the Chinese military could repel any farther advances by occupying Japanese forces. Details of the destruction that would soon follow—just as officials in Washington and Chungking, the provisional capital of China, and even Doolittle, had long predicted—would come from the records of American missionaries, some of whom had helped the raiders.

The missionaries knew of the potential wrath of the Japanese, having lived under a tenuous peace in this border region just south of occupied China. Stories of the atrocities at Nanking, where the river had turned red from blood, had circulated widely.

The men wear boots and a helmet. They are carrying sub-machine guns. Vandenberg had heard the news broadcasts of the Tokyo raid in the mission compound in the town of Linchwan, home to about 50, people, as well as to the largest Catholic church in southern China, with a capacity to serve as many as a thousand. Days after the raid letters reached Vandenberg from nearby missions in Poyang and Ihwang, informing him that local priests cared for some of the fliers. Their clothing was tattered and torn from climbing down the mountains after bailing out.

We gave them fried chicken. Retired Lt. Richard Cole, the last survivor of the Doolittle Raid, the first U. He was Cole was one of 80 men sent to target factory areas and military installations in Japan on April 18, The daring raid stunned Japan and is credited with boosting U.

After bombing targets in northwest Tokyo, Cole's plane turned toward China with plans to land at an airfield. But things went awry when authorities at the airfield heard their engines, assumed it was Japanese and turned off the lights.

Cole and Doolittle couldn't find a place to land at night.