Jimmy Doolittle

Battle of Sibuyan Sea

In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

The B-25 Mitchell Bomber and the Man Behind the Plane

During the 1920s, roughly two decades before the B-25 Mitchell bomber came into service, U.S. Army Air Service commander Brig. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Doolittle’s Raiders: The Men Who Shaped the Pearl Harbor Payback

By Nathan N. Prefer

In the months that led up to Doolittle’s raiders assembling to strike back at Tokyo, President Franklin D. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Ford’s Willow Run Factory

They said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Long-Range Fighter Escort

On August 17, 1942, the 97th Bomb Group began the opening attack of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ (USAAF) strategic bombing campaign against Germany. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

The Last Doolittle Raider: 75 Years After the Daring Mission

Lieutenant Colonel Dick Cole is 101 years old. In April he attended observances of the 75th anniversary of the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo that marked the first effort by American bombers to inflict damage on the Japanese home islands during World War II. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War

In an age before television and instant communications, Americans wanted to see what was going on in the world’s “deadliest conflict in human history,” and LIFE magazine was making a name for itself as THE war magazine during World War II. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

The Bombing of Berlin by Doolittle’s Eighth Air Force

He was widely regarded as America’s best pilot, he was already a recipient of the Medal of Honor, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force caught up in 1,000-plane bombing missions deep into the Third Reich, and he was mad as hell. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

4 Unsolved Mysteries of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo

April 18, 1942, will forever live in American military glory as the date of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo––a gutsy, never-before-attempted combat mission to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and attack an enemy capital. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Moe Berg: Baseball Player in the OSS

In 1920, a young, handsome Jewish boy from New Jersey took the train from Grand Central Station to Princeton, New Jersey, where he would enroll that fall. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Target: America’s West Coast

It seemed like just another ordinary day at sea. Early on December 7, 1941, a U.S. Army-chartered cargo vessel, the 250-foot SS Cynthia Olson, under the command of a civilian skipper, Berthel Carlsen, was plying the Pacific waters about 1,200 miles northeast of Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii, and over 1,000 miles west of the Tacoma, Washington, port from which she had sailed on December 1. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

National Museum of the Pacific War

The small (population 12,000), central-Texas town of Fredericksburg, about an hour’s drive west of Austin and a little more than that northwest of San Antonio, may seem an odd location for the National Museum of the Pacific War until one realizes that Fredericksburg is the hometown of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz––the Eisenhower of the Pacific Theater. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Zemke’s Wolfpack: Famed P-47 Fighter Group

On May 4, 1943, the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 56th Fighter Group was ordered to meet a formation of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers returning from a run over Antwerp, Belgium. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, or the Consolidated B-24 Liberator?

One of the most frequently discussed arguments to come out of World War II is which was the “better” bomber, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress or the Consolidated B-24 Liberator? Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: Japan’s Naval War Leader

Brave, urbane, and complex, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was Japan’s greatest naval strategist and the architect of one of the most stunning achievements in the history of modern warfare. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Bomber Gunner Ben Kuroki: “Most Honorable Son”

In 1942, many Americans considered anyone of Japanese ancestry to be an enemy, regardless of where they had been born or how long their families had lived in the United States. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Confident Carrier Admiral Marc “Pete” Mitscher

He was a seagoing J.E.B. Stuart who hid beneath weather fronts to make his attacks, and he fought more naval engagements than John Paul Jones and David Farragut combined. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

The Me 262 and the Beginning of the Jet Fighter Age

The Germans knew the bombers were coming, and they prepared even as the U.S. 457th Bomber Group first assembled in the early morning sunlight over faraway London. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

Tactical Thunder: The Ninth Air Force

As the landing craft carrying the invading Allied ground forces of Operation Overlord motored toward the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, they were protected and supported by the largest aerial armada the world has ever seen. Read more

Jimmy Doolittle

WWII Warplanes: The Superb Supermarine Spitfire

In the annals of World War II, one of the most famous airplanes is the British-developed Supermarine Spitfire, an agile, elliptical-wing fighter that has become synonymous with the Royal Air Force victory in the Battle of Britain. Read more