On April 18, 1942, an air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities during World War II. This American B-25 Army bomber left 'Shangri-La,' the deck of the USS Hornet, for the historic raid.
Front row: Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle, pilot; Lt. Richard E. Cole, co-pilot. Back row: Lt. Henry A. Potter, navigator; Staff Sgt. Fred A. Braemer, bombardier; and Staff Sgt. Paul J. Leonard, flight engineer/gunner.
Eight of the mission's 16 B-25B bombers on the deck of the USS Hornet. The USS Nashville can be seen in the distance. Coming as it did just months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Tokyo raid gave a big boost to American morale.
On April 18, 1942, Col. Doolittle fastened a medal on the tail of a 500-pound bomb that he and the crew of 16 B-25 bombers dropped on Tokyo during the surprise raid. Only five of the original 80 Raiders are still living. All are in their 90s. Col. Doolittle died in 1993.
With orders in his hand, Capt. Marc A. Mitscher, skipper of the USS Hornet, discussed details of the raid with Maj. Gen. Doolittle, left foreground, as many of the 80 pilots who made the raid stood or squatted around them on the carrier's flight deck.
Some of the bombs from the raid fell at noon in the Waseda University area of Tokyo, shown here on April 1, 1947.
Ryozo Asano, left, spokesman for a group of Japanese family enterprises called the Zaibatsu, inspected the wreckage of a steel plant in Tokyo after the air raid April 18, 1942. He is accompanied by an unidentified aide.
Doolittle Raiders Dick Cole, left, and Dave Thatcher walked past a B-25 Bomber named Pacific Prowler as they arrived for a 65th-anniversary ceremony at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio on April 17, 2007.