
Discovering for the first time the story of the Doolittle raid, no-one could fail to be gripped. The 18 April 1942 strike on Tokyo by 16 North American B-25 Mitchells, launched from the USS Hornet and led by Lt Col James Doolittle, has rightly gone down in the annals as an example of extreme heroism against the odds. For many, the book Thirty Seconds over Tokyo provided a vivid introduction. Written in 1943 by one of the raid’s other pilots, Capt Ted Lawson, it spawned an Academy Award-winning feature film of the same name, and fostered many an interest in this memorable mission.