WW2 Missions That Changed The War | Enola Gay, Doolittle, Flying Tigers | The Complete Documentaries
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Missions That Changed The War: Enola Gay, The Doolittle Raid and the Flying Tigers Missions in China. Hear stories from the voices of the heroes and aces at the very center of the action. Narrated by Gary Sinise.
The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused the destruction of about three quarters of the city. Enola Gay participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in a secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead.
After the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. In May 1946, it was flown to Kwajalein for the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll. Later that year it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, and spent many years parked at air bases exposed to the weather and souvenir hunters, before being disassembled and transported to the Smithsonian's storage facility in Maryland, in 1961.
The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. Although the raid caused comparatively minor damage it demonstrated that the Japanese mainland was vulnerable to American air attacks. It served as retaliation for the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and provided an important boost to American morale. The raid was planned by, led by, and named after Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (later a Lieutenant General in the US Army Air Forces and the US Air Force Reserve).
Under the final plan, 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers, each with a crew of five, were launched from the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet, in the Pacific Ocean, off Japan. There was to be no fighter escort. After bombing military and industrial targets in Japan, the B-25 crews were to continue westward to land in China.
Total crew casualties: 3 KIA: 2 off the coast of China, 1 in China; 8 POW: 3 executed, 1 died in captivity, 4 repatriated.
MORE excellent info on exactly what happened to all 80 Dolittle Raisers after the Raid: 👍
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_RaidOnly 3 of the 16 crews failed to reach Chungking. Capt. Edwin J. York, who had led the third flight of planes into Tokyo, was desperately short of fuel and was forced to land near Vladivostok. He and his crew were interned by the Soviets in various locations for more than a year before they managed to “escape” into British- and Soviet-occupied Iran. Their “escape” was, in fact, an elaborate NKVD operation that had been staged to repatriate the Americans while giving the Soviets plausible deniability with the Japanese, with whom they were still nonbelligerent. Two crews were captured by Japanese forces in China after bailing out, one near the coast and one near Lake Poyang. The Chinese attempted to purchase the freedom of the captured air crews, but they were unsuccessful. Four of the raiders remained prisoners of the Japanese until the end of the war. One, Lieut. Robert J. Meder, died of dysentery in 1943. Three—Lieut. Dean Hallmark, Lieut. William Farrow, and Sgt. Harold Spatz—were executed by the Japanese in October 1942.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Doolittle-RaidThe raid on Japan killed about 50 people and injured 400, including civilians. Damage to Japanese military and industrial targets was minimal but the raid had major psychological effects. In the United States, it raised morale; in Japan, it raised fear and doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the home islands, but the bombing and strafing of civilians also steeled Japanese resolve to gain retribution, and this was exploited for propaganda purposes.[4] It also pushed forward Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's plans to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific, an attack that turned into a decisive defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by the US Navy in the Battle of Midway. The consequences were most severely felt in China, where Japanese reprisals caused the deaths of 250,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers.
April 19, 2019: The last surviving airman of the Doolittle Raid, Richard “Dick” Cole, died last week at the age of 103. He was Lt. Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle’s co-pilot.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/the-doolittle-raiders-and-chinese-revisionist-history/The Flying Tigers:In China’s most desperate hour, Chiang Kai-Shek turns to the United States for help. The Japanese are bombing Chinese population centers mercilessly. China’s decimated air force is powerless to stop them. Chiang dispatches his American consultant - former U.S. Army Air Corps officer Claire L. Chennault - to obtain the airplanes and pilots needed to defend China. Tex Hill resigns his Navy Commission and volunteers.
A small group of American aviators fought in their first battle in World War II.Their mission was unusual: They were mercenaries hired by China to fight against Japan.
They were called the American Volunteer Group and later became known as the Flying Tigers. Though only in combat for less than seven months, the group became famous at the time for its ability to inflict outsize damage on Japan's better-equipped and larger aircraft fleet.
Their victories came when Japan seemed unstoppable. The AVG was a bright spot in history when everything was bleak and black, and they have received a lot of recognition for that.
In the West, 1939 is considered the start of World War II.
But in Asia, China and Japan had been at war since 1937.China was already fighting its own civil war between the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek and Communist forces. The two sides came to a truce to fight against the Japanese. China, however, had little air power to fend off Japanese bombings.
Enter Claire Lee Chennault, a U.S. Army aviator, instructor and tactician, once described by Time magazine as "lean, hard-bitten, taciturn." Health problems and disputes with his superiors pushed him into retirement from his position with the Army Air Corps in 1937, at age 43.
