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From the Publisher: Ted W. Lawson's classic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo appears in an enhanced reprint edition for the sixtieth anniversary of the legendary Doolittle Raid on Japan. "One of the worst feelings about that time," Ted W. Lawson writes, "was that there was no tangible enemy. It was like being slugged with a single punch in a dark room, and having no way of knowing where to slug back." He added, "And, too, there was a helpless, filled-up, want-to-do-something feeling that [the Japanese] weren't coming -- that we'd have to go all the way over there to punch back and get even." Which is what "the Tokyo Raiders" did. Lawson gives a vivid eyewitness account of the unorthodox assignment that eighty-five intrepid volunteer airmen under the command of celebrated flier James H. Doolittle executed in April 1942. The plan called for sixteen B-25 twin-engine medium bombers of the Army Air Forces to take off from the aircraft carrier Hornet, bomb industrial targets in Japan, and land at airfields in China. While the raid came off flawlessly, completely surprising the enemy, bad weather, darkness, and a shortage of fuel caused by an early departure took a heavy toll on the raiders. For many, the escape from China proved a greater ordeal. This anniversary edition features a foreword by noted aviation writer Peter B. Mersky and an introduction by Mrs. Ellen R. Lawson, Ted Lawson's widow, as well as twice as many photographs as the original book, several published here for the first time.… (more)
User reviews
Ted wrote this book shortly after the events, which enabled him to remember a lot of the details. It's also an interesting artifact of its time: the smattering of 1940s lingo, and the wartime hatred of the enemy in statements like when he hopes for a "series of future raids which, I pray, will blow Japan off the map of the world." He gives several reasons for his hatred. I was hoping for an anniversary afterword that might share his perspective years or decades later, to see what if anything changed about his opinion of his performance and the Japanese. No such luck, although there's a good 2002 introduction by his wife that's worth re-reading after you're done (in recent enough editions.)
Extra kudos for immortalizing Johnny Beep-Beep, my kind of driver. For other recommendations I'd point to "Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan". It could serve well as a sequel to this book, since it is similarly a record of events by somone (a Japanese navy man) who was present, and describes how the Doolittle Raid precipitated the too-hasty Japanese attack on Midway that wasn't necessarily their wisest strategic course of action.