Скачать или смотреть Halsey left his Destroyers BEHIND on the Tokyo Raid? (And Other Doolittle Debits) | Channel Markers

In early 1942, the dubious plan to launch 16 stripped-down Army Air Corps B-25 twin-engine bombers from a US Navy aircraft carrier in a symbolic vengeance raid on Japan was an interservice scheme cooked up for Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in Washington, DC. For Nimitz, who had responsibility for defending Australia, sending one carrier with Army bombers strapped to her flight deck meant sending a second carrier to protect the task force; in other words, he was forced to commit half of his carrier strength to a symbolic but high-risk gesture of American defiance. No one can ever diminish the audacity and courage of Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle and his Army fliers who, forced to depart earlier than planned, took off from USS Hornet (CV-8) in bad weather and from a heaving flight deck, flying toward an uncertain fate. But why did Admiral Halsey, in Enterprise (CV-6), choose to leave his destroyers behind when he made the final run to the target? As it turned out, he could have used them. Doctrine called for destroyers to accompany carriers and cruisers on such a raid. Finally, the timing of the raid could not have been worse for Admiral Nimitz, because even as the Tokyo Raiders were cruising at wavetop toward Japan, naval intelligence was informing Nimitz of a major Japanese move that threatened Australia in the Coral Sea. Could Halsey disengage from the Tokyo Raid and pivot to the South Pacific in time to support Admiral Fletcher, with Yorktown (CV-5) and Lexington (CV-2)? As we shall see, in Navy circles, the less said about Doolittle and the raid, the better.

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Image and video Sources: US National Archives

For further reading, see:

Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1980).

Dik Alan Daso, Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary (Washington, DC: Brassey's Inc., 2003).

Samuel E. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931 - April 1942, Vol. 3, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1948; reprint edition: Naval Institute Press, 2010).

Tyler A. Pitrof, Too Far on a Whim: The Limits of High-Steam Propulsion in the US Navy (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2024).

E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976).

Lisle A. Rose, The Ship That Held the Line: The USS Hornet and the First Year of the Pacific War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995).

Edward P. Stafford, The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise (New York: Random House, 1962; reprint edition: Bluejacket Books, Naval Institute Press, 2002).

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