Posted by
Big Mo on Monday, October 16, 2006 11:34:36 AM
I’ve bogged down reading Frederick Douglass (for reasons that will become apparent when I finally post a review) so to keep this site fresh, here is the first “mini” review.
Title: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Author: Ted Lawson
Publisher: Potomac Books; New Ed edition (reprint of the original)
Date: 2002
Rating: Five stars out of five
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is one of the first grown-up books I ever read. It’s one of most thrilling tales of World War Two, told by one of the pilots who flew the ballsy Doolittle Raid.
After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army and navy had the US and allies on the ropes. By early April, the Japanese had conquered many islands, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Java, Indonesia and were threatening Australia. US and Filipino forces on the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor were close to surrender and the horror of Japanese prison camps.
America needed a morale booster and quick. Ted Lawson and 85 volunteers had been planning and training for months for a secret mission to bomb Tokyo. They would be flying B-25 Mitchells, a medium, 2-engine bomber. The B-25 was never meant for carrier operations. Yet it was chosen for its range and bomb load, and was stripped of most armament and all non-essential parts. Jimmy Doolittle’s plan called for the B-25s to take off from an aircraft carrier, proceed to their targets then land in China. Simple enough, right?
Despite the months of training, things went wrong from the start. The Japanese spotted the approaching American fleet several hundred miles away from the launch point. Rather than blow the whole mission, Doolittle, Lawson and the rest of the crews took off early. Consequently, while all the bombers hit their targets in Tokyo and three other cities, several B-25s ran out of fuel long before reaching friendly territory in China. Some crews were killed, and some fell into Japanese hands and were executed.
Lawson and his crew succeeded in hitting their targets in Tokyo (hence the terrific title) then crash landed in China. Chinese hid the wounded Lawson and his crew until they were able to ferret them to safety.
The physical damage from the raid was negligible, of course, but that wasn’t the point. The psychological results were phenomenal, and succeeded in throwing the Japanese off their stride. It can be argued that the Japanese attempt to take Midway island two months later – and the subsequent smashing decisive American victory – would not have happened without the Doolittle Raid. Roosevelt was also thrilled with the raid, and told reporters hungry for information that the planes took off from Shangri-La.
This raid should never be forgotten, nor the men who did it. The raid came along at the right time: American bombers, hitting the Japanese homeland! Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo should forever stand as a testament to American ingenuity, courage and brazen guts.
Note: The 50-year-old Van Johnson movie depiction of the raid, based on Lawson’s book, is vastly superior to the presentation in the laughably bad schlock-fest “Pearl Harbor” starring Ben Affleck.