Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James

Rogers and if it is your first time here we are dedicated to military history

from Napoleonic battles and Cold War confrontations to the Normandy landings and 9-11.

In this episode we are looking at one of the greatest bravest most daring missions in American

military history, the do-little raid.

In 1942, after the humiliation of the assault on Pearl Harbor, America had to show that it had some offensive clout.

It was determined to do this.

And so James Doolittle, the ever charismatic figure went straight to President Roosevelt with a pretty ambitious plan.

The proposal was to fly B-25 medium bombers without fighter escort off a US aircraft carrier, the USS Hornets, and to attack Tokyo, the capital of the Japanese

Empire. Quite the ambition. Now this episode was first recorded for Dan Snow's history hit,

and in it he talks with Michelle

Paradis the author of Last Mission to Tokyo. They talk about the mission itself

but also the fascinating story about the fight for justice for the do little crews that were captured, tortured and killed by the Japanese after the mission.

So here is Michelle Parades on the do little raid. Michelle, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

This is one of those remarkable stories from the Second World War. Was the do little raid audacious or was it desperate?

I think it can be both, can't it? The United States is in a real bad way in 1942.

Everywhere in the world the allies are being pushed back. The

Japanese are bombing Australia at that point and the United States has

literally nothing to show for it other than loss and defeat.

The baton death march is in early April.

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