A Bold Stroke Brings Sudden Hope: April 1942

Then, out of the blue, newspapers printed an astonishing report as uplifting to morale as Pearl Harbor had been depressing: on April 18th, 1942, American aircraft had bombed Japan!

On the 21st, President Franklin D. Roosevelt confirmed that US Army Air Forces bombers, led by legendary aviator Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, had raided Tokyo and four other Japanese cities. For a few days, at least, the pall of gloom lifted. America's spirits soon soared. The Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 92.70 in April 1942 and closed at 174.30 on August 31, 1945.

A cheerful Roosevelt told the press that the twin-engined aircraft had come from mythical "Shangri-La," but in fact they had flown off the pitching deck of carrier Hornet in the stormy, cold North Pacific. Nothing like this combined Army-Navy operation had ever before been attempted. Spotted by Japanese spy ships, the Americans were forced to take off far earlier than planned, yet all sixteen bombers miraculously eluded enemy air defenses and flew toward China and Russia, desperately low on fuel. Their heroic story is told here.

Almost all Doolittle Raiders belonged to the 17th Bombardment Group (Medium), which was based at Pendleton Field, Oregon, from June 1941 until February 1942. Eighty men in sixteen B-25B Mitchell medium bombers on that April day struck one of the most daring blows for freedom recorded in American history. To them, to their fellow US airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines who sacrificed life and limb in World War II and to their comrades-in-arms, living and dead, is this memorial dedicated.