VANISHING ACT

A veteran author of military history seeks to “set the record straight” about the Doolittle Raid.

In April 1942, four months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 16 American B-25s dropped a few dozen bombs on and near Tokyo, producing little damage but enraging Japanese leaders and boosting morale in America. Hampton, a highly decorated retired Air Force pilot and author of Lords of the Sky and The Hunter Killers, among other books, does a fine job telling a mostly feel-good story that’s been told many times before while devoting more than half the book to a detail mentioned in passing by earlier historians. After 16 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and dropped their bombs, 15, as ordered, continued on to China, while one, presumably low on fuel, landed in the Soviet Union. Many historians accept the low-fuel explanation, but Hampton turns up evidence that the detour was deliberate. Japanese archives reveal that the plane never flew within 50 miles of Tokyo. Its pilots carried a map of the Soviet Union, and the plane itself possessed the only carburetor not modified for low-altitude, long-distance flying. Hampton makes a reasonable case that the detour’s aim was to examine the landing area for airfields and infrastructure as part of an effort to persuade Stalin to open a “second front” by allowing aircraft, probably American, to bomb Japan from bases only a few hundred miles away. It was a forlorn hope. Although an ally against Germany, the Soviet Union had stripped its Far East defenses in a life-and-death struggle against the Wehrmacht and did not want to offend Japan. Following international law, it interned the five-member crew, treated them well, and quietly arranged their “escape” a year later.

Not quite “the last enduring mystery,” but an intriguing footnote to the legendary raid.