‘The Nation Badly Needed an Offensive Action’

On 18 April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Forces entered the annals of World War II history in command of the celebrated Doolittle Raid, which took the war to Japan’s shores for the first time since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Having Army B-25s embarked on board the USS Hornet (CV-8) involved any number of challenges—but also embodied a spirit of interservice cooperation in America’s hour of need.