This is John Batchelor, conversation with Craig Simons, historian from the US Naval Academy, about

his book Nimitz at War, Chester Nimitz, who commanded the Pacific Fleet

during the Second War, the Pacific Fleet

inherited from the ruin of Pearl Harbor.

Command leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay is the subtitle in this comment by the professor.

We talk of the Doolittle Raid that took place in April of 1942, and how Nimitz regarded it at the time and afterwards,

and how we should understand today how winning a war is also propaganda.

Do Little Raid.

30 seconds over Tokyo was the spectacular book and movie out of the

Doolittle Raid. All the planes were lost. Many of the crew were very badly

beaten up. Some were executed. Why? Here's Greg Simons on Chester Nimitz's thoughts about the Doolittle raid going forward.

More of this later.

Well, he doesn't think it's necessary, but Nimitz was very good at choosing the battles he thought he could win.

And by that, I don't mean fighting the Japanese, I mean fighting those who gave him orders, who worked for him or who worked alongside him.

Pick the battles you're likely to win and those you're not likely to win you just

have to make the best of it and that's what the do little raid was for him.

Remember Nimitz has only four carrier task forces and here's a proposal that's going

to send two of them 50% of his entire offensive capability, off to conduct what amounts to a public

relation stunt of dropping a few bombs on a few Japanese cities and then sacrificing the airplanes themselves by flying them in over China,

perhaps finding Chinese airfields, but perhaps not.

And Nimitz is skeptical that this is in fact a valuable calculated risk, but he's not going to get in the way of a scheme that originated in the White House.