B-25 Mitchell medium bomber

Although I stand in deep admiration of the
famed B-17 Flying Fortress,...I must admit to
loving the B-25 Mitchell bomber even more. Quoting
Mel Gibson's character from the movie "Forever
Young", a man that can fly a B-25 can do anything." The
B-25 will forever be remembered as the bomber
that first took the war to Japan. After Pearl Harbor
and other disasters in Southeast Asia, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt needed some kind of
victory to encourage the American public. The Army
Air Corp came up with the raid on Japan. The
United States had no land bases where they could
reach Japan, so a carrier strike was the only other
option. On April 18, 1942 a task force under the command of Vice-
Admiral Bill Halsey (a Texan) was to carry 16 B-25 bombers
to within 400 miles of Japan before launching them.
The bombers would strike designated targets in
Japan and then try to make their escape to the Chinese mainland
across the Yellow Sea. Under this plan the planes would
land with about 20 minutes of fuel remaining. The task
force made it to about 600 miles from Japan before being
spotted by Japanese ships. The Japs immediately radioed
the coordinates of the American ships just before being
shelled and sunk. There had never been a bomber-sized plane
launched from an aircraft carrier before,...BUT this was
a mission with an abundance of firsts. Lt. Col. James Doolittle
was the leader of the B-25's and his plane was the first
launched. He planned to drop incendiary bombs to light up
the target for the rest of the squadron. The planes bombed
Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe before heading for China. They
did not do a lot of damage, but did let the Japanese know
they were not immune from the U.S. military.
A lot of the planes had to ditch in the sea, but most made it
to the mainland. My model is based on the plane commanded
by Lt. Ted Lawson. His plane, "The Ruptured Duck", was one
that made it to China. The number '7' meant he was 7th in
line to be launched off the U.S.S. Hornet. Lawson wrote a book
on the mission entitled 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'.