This is an IHeart podcast.

This is our American stories, and we love to tell stories about our nation's history.

Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading historians.

Ambrose passed away in 2002,

but his storytelling accounts can now be heard here

in our American stories thanks to those who run his estate.

Here's Ambrose telling the story of America's payback for Pearl Harbor.

Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, and the Japanese response, the story of America's payback for Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo,

and the Japanese response, the Battle of Midway.

And we're telling this story because on this day, in 1942, the Doolittle raid occurred.

The first good news to come to the American people, the first good news produced by the American

Armed Forces came on April 18, 1942, almost five months into the war before there was any

kind of an American counter strike against the Japanese.

It came on April 18th, and it came in the form of Jimmy Doolittle's famous raid over Tokyo.

But it was a very risky operation for the Americans to mount.

Again, using that what we're now, it was now becoming recognized as the holy new weapon of war at sea, the aircraft carrier.

And the aircraft carriers that we had,

the Hornet and the Enterprise and the Lexington and the Yorktown,

the only ones we had in the fleet,

had escaped Pearl Harbor because they weren't there.

They were used to mount this raid, which meant they had to sail pretty close to Tokyo

within about 300 miles, which is for them a very high-risk operation.

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