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A Small Strike With Huge Consequences: The Doolittle Raid That Changed WWII in the Pacific

Khalid Elhassan March 12, 2025 14 min

Doolittle - A B-25 takes off from the USS Hornet, en route to Tokyo — A B-25 takes off from the USS Hornet, en route to Tokyo. US Army

11. A Sudden Stroke of Genius

Aerial view of the Norfolk Naval Air Station in the 1940s. US Naval Aviation News

The US Army Air Forces had long range twin and four engine bombers. However, it had no airbases close enough to Japan for them to take off, bomb Japan, and return. It seemed like an insoluble conundrum. Then one day, US Navy Captain Francis S. Low flew over Chambers Field at Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia, and looked down. Below was a runway painted with the outline of an aircraft carrier’s deck. In of itself, that was not unusual: carrier pilots routinely practiced takeoffs and landings on such simulated decks on the ground. That day, however, there were some twin-engine Army bombers parked nearby. In one of those sudden insights that strike military men from time to time, Low linked the Army bombers to the nearby painted carrier deck outline. Why, he thought, not meld the assets of two services to launch long-range Army bombers from a Navy carrier’s deck?

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.