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The Ship That Disguised Itself as an Island and Other Lesser-Known WWII Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 6, 2020 35 min

Guadalcanal - Guadalcanal campaign — Marines arriving in Guadalcanal. Encyclopedia Britannica

29. The First Installment on the Payback for Pearl Harbor

B-25 Mitchell bombers aboard the USS Hornet’s deck. Wikimedia

It was the morning of April 12^th, 1942, five months after America was thrust into WWII. As the sun chased away the Pacific night, seamen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and her escorting task force, which had just linked up with the carrier Hornet north of Hawaii, were startled to see the Hornet’s flight deck crammed with strange airplanes. They were bigger than anything seen before on the deck of a US Navy aircraft carrier. The planes were B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, and the daring raid they carried out a few days later was to be their first major combat operation.

The raid resulted from President Roosevelt’s desire, expressed soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, that Japan be bombed as soon as possible to boost public morale. At that stage in WWII, America had no airbases close enough to bomb Japan. So a plan was hatched to bring an improvised airbase, an aircraft carrier, close enough for modified B-25 bombers to strike the Japanese homeland. The result was the Doolittle Raid.

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.