MISSIONS THAT CHANGED THE WAR:
On December 7, 1941 Japan sent an air attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor. The death and distruction caused by the attacked enraged the U.S. and President Franklin Roosevelt. In the aftermath of the attack President Roosevelt has his military leaders devise of a plan that will allow the U.S. to strike back at Japan in retaliation. What the men come up with is a plan that is unheard of and possibly a death sentence for the soldiers that take part in it. Putting B-25 bombers on aircraft carriers, put those carriers within range of Japan, and launch the bombers off the carriers so they can do a bombing run on cities in Japan before making an escape to China. It would take the cunning and skills of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle to train the pilots to be able to fly a B-25 off a carrier with barely enough fuel to get to Japan and carry out a mission that will likely be their deaths.

THE DOOLITTLE RAID:
WWII documentaries are always very interesting, enjoyable, and thought provoking to watch. This was the war that changed the world where so much happened that never had happened before. Such things like taking a B-25 bomber, putting it on an aircraft carrier, and then taking off from that carrier. Now for a jet that’s easy, they are small, lightweight, and very fast whereas a bomber is big, heavy, and slow on take off. Bombers need a lot of runway to build the speed they need to take off, runway that carriers didn’t have then. At the time this kind of thing had never been done so there where no pilots that knew how to do it and it was up to Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle to get some pilots trained to take on this insane mission.

I really did enjoy watching this documentary but I didn’t learn that much from it. There’s a lot of information being told by some of the men that took part in this raid along with showing actual footage during the war but it’s mostly just a memoir of what happened during the raid. Even though I wasn’t expecting this to be a documentary giving detailed descriptions of what occurred from the conception of the plan to the end of it but I did figure there would be more than what’s given. Basically this is a documentary that gives the notated version of what happened during the raid, which is still very interesting but for a historian or anyone that’s looking for in depth information this wouldn’t be achieved from watching this DVD set.

However, if you are wanting that basic information that tells you enough of what happened that you can talk about it or get you interested enough to do further study, then the Doolittle Raid is a great watch. I’d seen some documentaries before about the launching of bombers off carriers so that wasn’t too new for me, what was is when the men going on these raids didn’t have enough fuel to make it back out of Japan. Finding out that some of these men where captured, held, and tortured for 3 years because their bombers had just enough fuel to get them to Japan was new to me, along with how some of the men died because of the raid. It’s this kind of information that that makes the documentary interesting and a good watch.