James H. :Jimmy” Doolittle is best known for leading the attack of 16 B-25 Mitchell medium bombers from the aircraft carrier Hornet, with targets in Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka, and Nagoya. The daring one-way mission April 18, 1942 electrified the world and gave America’s war hopes a terrific lift. Doolittle received the Medal of Honor, presented to him by President Roosevelt at the White House, for planning and leading this successful operation.

He became commanding general of the 12th Air Force and then the 15th Air Force in North Africa and then moved from Italy to take command in England. “The 8th Air Force was made up of about 1,000 bombers and long range fighters. We were just getting more P-51s (replacing P-38s), which greatly increased the capacity of the fighter force to cope with German fighters and to protect the bombers,” he recalled.

“We were never able to stop the Germans producing fighter aircraft,” said Doolittle. “But they began running into problems of fuel and replacement of their competent senior fighter pilots. Some of the young replacements were not experienced.”

His bombers’ mission was to cripple the Axis war-making machinery. “Our job was to destroy the German ability to wage war. First, we wanted to destroy their fighter planes, and we did — not as fast as they were able to make them, but to the point where they could only come up to attack periodically toward the end of the war. They would have to save fuel and the crews were no-ways near as confident as the earlier crews. I would suspect they were getting down to the bottom of their fighter pilot barrel … the same as in Japan toward the end.

Air strikes against the German war waging ability laid the groundwork for the invasion of France, for which Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower told his troops, “Don’t worry about the planes overhead. They’ll be ours.”

January 6, 2024