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đˇ The Raiders
Some of you have been asking for more history. This weekâs for you.
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Credit: US Navy
The Doolittle Raid
This week marked the 82nd anniversary of one of the most important PSYOPS missions the United States has conducted.
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Roosevelt wanted to bomb mainland Japan ASAP. The problem was that, at the time, there were no bombers capable of doing it and no airfields anywhere in the region to use.
Then, a Navy submariner came up with the solution. While visiting the Navyâs newest carrier, the USS Hornet CV-8, Captain Francis Low observed that the nearby runway had a practice flight deck painted on it for naval aviators. Coincidentally, a handful of B-25s were also using the airfieldâand their take-off distance seemed remarkably short. With a carrier deck so big and a bomber take-off distance so smallâŚcould B-25s launch from an aircraft carrier?
The Navy conducted a quick feasibility study, approached the Army Air Force, and launched the first joint military action between the services.
Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle was tapped to lead the air mission in what would become known as the Doolittle Raid.
The Plan
Even though the bombers would be carrier-launched, the USS Hornet had to stay far enough away from Japan to avoid detection. At that distance, the bombers wouldâve been well out of range, so the B-25s were modified with tanks to double the amount of fuel carried.
To offset this added weight, the lower gun turret was removed, some comm gear was stripped out, and the tailguns were replaced with black-painted broomsticks.
OBTW: Once these bombers launched in the middle of the ocean, they were committedâthey could not land on the carrier.
On April 18, 1942, it all happened: 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers launched from the deck of the USS Hornetâwithout fighter escort and with almost no defensive systemsâto bomb Tokyo and land at airfields in China.
Spotted
The naval task force was spotted by a Japanese ship, which radioed a report to warn Tokyo. The element of surprise was at stake, so the decision was made to launchâ10 hours ahead of schedule.
As a result, the 16 B-25s (each with a 5-man crew) launched hundreds of miles further than the planned range. The 80 Doolittle Raiders committed themselves to a perilous one-way trip.
All 16 bombers made it to Japan unimpeded, executed textbook daylight bombing runs, turned towards China, and hoped for the best.
Without enough fuel to reach their planned airfields, 15 of the 16 bombers ran out of fuel and were forced to ditch. The one B-25 that managed to find a place to land did so by desperately flying north into the Soviet Union.

Credit: US Air Force
Miraculously, all but 3 airmen survived the ditching, and 73 of the 80 Doolittle Raiders lived to be repatriated (eight were capturedâthree of them were executed, and one died in captivity).
Strategic Impact
While the bombs did very little physical damage, they did have the intended psychological effect. It not only lifted American morale; it changed the entire calculus of the Japanese.
The Doolittle Raid proved that mainland Japan was vulnerable to attack and humiliated Japanese leadership. As a result, the Japanese made the hasty decision to attack US-occupied islands in what would become known as the Battle of Midway. The US intercepted the message, attacked the massive armada en route, decimated the Japanese fleet, and turned the tide of the entire War in the Pacific.
10 Things You Might Not Know
The 80 Raiders werenât told of the mission until after they had volunteeredâthey only knew it was "extremely hazardous"
The mission went from concept to combat in just 98 days
It was the first combat use of the B-25 bomber
The mission was the first time any of the pilots had taken off from a carrier (they practiced on an airfield with the carrier deck dimensions outlined)
The bombers had only 467 feet of takeoff distance
The B-25s flew for 13 hours before running out of fuel
The Japanese executed 250,000 Chinese for helping the Raiders evade capture
The US went public with the raid immediately but kept the details of how the bombers reached Japan a secret for an additional year
Jimmy Doolittle thought he would be court-martialed for the mission going astray. Instead, he was promoted two ranks to 1-star general and awarded the Medal of Honor
This mission is why the Air Forceâs new B-21 bomber is called the Raider

In That Number
$2 trillion
The F-35 programâs lifetime price tag is now estimated to top $2 trillion, mostly due to the Pentagonâs decision to sustain the fleet for an extra decade through 2088.
TRIVIA
Which food does NOT have a military origin?
A) Cheetos
B) M&Ms
C) Skittles
D) Pringles

On the Radar
DARPA and the Air Force revealed they flew an AI-piloted F-16 (X-62) vs a human-piloted F-16 in a dogfight. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall will fly in the AI-piloted X-62 soon, presumably repeating this AI-vs-human dogfight flight test to see it with his own eyes.
The Pentagon selected 13 companies for its next round of projects via the rapid tech fielding program known as APFIT. These companies will receive a total of ~$204m to deliver their defense tech to various users across the DoD. These projects add to the 4 previously announced; 2 more selections are expected later this year. APFIT was created as a tool to rapidly buy ready-for-use tech and propel innovations across the âValley of Death,â and this latest round brings the program total to 38 projects and $500m to date (it started in 2022).
The Mergeâs Take: Itâs a very small toolâroughly 0.17% of the Pentagonâs annual procure budget. That said, the tech it funds could have an out-sized impactâŚbut it's hard to tell. There doesnât seem to be much press, follow-up, or follow-through from previous awards. Where are they now? What worked, what didnât, and why not?
Australia's first Ghost Shark submarine drone prototype was delivered this week. The Ghost Shark is a co-development, co-funded program with Anduril and 3 Australian government entities to build an extra large underwater multi-mission drone.
The Mergeâs Take: This got big social media shout-outs this week for being done on budget and ahead of schedule, amplified due to VC-backed Anduril Industriesâ heavy involvement. However, in the fervor, there was some conflation between the timeline for delivering the first prototype and the production variantâwhich is a gigantic difference. The goal of this project is to iterate through 3 prototypes in 3 years (starting in 2022), deliver the last prototype by mid-2025, and arrive at a production-ready variant by the end of 2025. If this first prototype was truly delivered a year early, the math says it would originally have had to arrive in April 2025âright about the time the last prototype was scheduled to be delivered. Time will tell if our math sucks or how the schedule plays out, but being within budget is itself a monumental feat in defense tech.
They Said It
âthey are very, very secretiveâ
â NASA chief Bill Nelson on how many of Chinaâs so-called civilian space programs are actually military programs

Knowledge Bombs
The Air Force's plan to rapidly buy E-7 Wedgetails is stalled due to cost negotiations
The Air Forceâs first 2 âQuick Startâ programs are a GPS-lite constellation and space-based moving target indication (quick start = donât need to wait on Congress to start a program)
VerdeGo Aero was awarded an Air Force SBIR Phase II to demo the suitability of its hybrid-electric turbine engine for flight testing on unmanned systems
Argentinaâs first F-16 was revealed as it signed a $300m deal to buy 24 jets from Denmark
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