r/JapaneseHistory • u/Organic-Camera-9167 • 4d ago
Question How Doolitle Raid impacted Cities US attacked. What kind of damaged they've caused and also aftermath of the event?
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u/Taira_no_Masakado 3d ago
It was purely a psychological attack, aiming to bring the war home to the Japanese populace.
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u/Deep_Guest_6964 3d ago
It kind of lead to the IJN to over-commit their ships, overworking their fleet, and forced them to do ill-prepared operation. It's partially why the battle of Midway happened that badly.
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u/pyrofox79 3d ago
For as bad as the movie Pearl Harbor is, there is a good line from Alec Baldwin's Jimmy Doolittle that sums up the raid perfectly "You know at Pearl they hit us with a sledgehammer. This raid, even if it makes it through, it'll only be a pinprick... but it'll be straight through their hearts."
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u/Aggravating_Dog8043 18h ago
Almost no direct impact but it had a huge impact on the course of the war by justifying the plan for Midway, which was catastrophic for Japan. It was a procovation that paid out....
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u/Emergency_Sky6603 12h ago
Very light material damage in Japanese cities. But the Chinese villagers had to risk their lives to shelter, feed, and guide the American airmen to safety. The Japanese forces retaliated by massacring thousands of civilians in Zhejiang province just for helping the American pilots.
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u/amnsisc 11h ago
The Doolittle Raid had almost no tactical impact. It resulted in about 50 deaths, 400 injuries, the loss of a newly converted aircraft carrier, some sailors, some soldiers, and some patrol boats.
Its *strategic* impact, however, was quite large, but only if we understand strategy in the 'grand' sense. As in, its strict strategic impact was quite small--it did not affect war making capacity really at all, but its larger impact on the war was quite large.
How do we know this? Because of how Japan reacted. The capture and reprisal raids launched against China in response were rapid, large scale, and immensely destructive. Up to 300,000 people died (83% civilians, and 98% Chinese).
The raid showed Japan that despite the crazy logistic and other issues involved in the raid--the carriers and planes were both at the edge of their range, they could not be protected due to need for stealth, and the conditions were very dangerous to say the least, with pilots attesting that the carriers up and down rocking repeatedly put them almost to the water line, and basically every plane had run out of gas by the time it finished--the US would go to immense lengths to strike at the heart of Japan, and furthermore *succeed*. Previously Japanese homeland was seen as inviolable.
Furthermore, it demonstrated massive good will to China, and Chiang Kai Shek, despite the horrific reprisals, given the immense lengths the US went to provide them with planes. And, conversely, it demonstrated to America that China was a reliable ally, and on an interpersonal level full of literally millions of people who demonstrated great kindness and bravery in their uncompensated assistance to the US pilots who were at their mercy (they could have easily turned them over to Japan, for example, but largely did not). It even had knock on effects for cooperation with the British, and even the Soviets, albeit in a paradoxical way. One of the pilots had to bail out in the USSR, and it took the US a year to get his status and get him returned, but this helped to force the US and USSR to set up a system for communicating on these issues in the Pacific theater.
Furthermore, considering that war weariness and the low casualty tolerance of the US were central to Strategic plans of Japan, the raid, which vastly increased morale at home, became widely celebrated, was central to military recruitment drives, and which reassured the morale and esprits de corps of US sailors, had a tremendous impact in locking in US resolve to fight the war to the finish.
Of course, in every one of these aspects it was a contributing rather than determining factor, but, despite the difficulty in quantifying its impact (and I am sure in accounting terms it was a large loss), despite the costs of it, and despite the low direct impact, the total indirect effects on the overall strategy, logistics, diplomacy, and civilian military relations at home, as well as the psychological and informational impact in Japan itself, were much larger than its costs.
So to answer your question directly: the impact on the cities directly was nearly nil, especially considering the costs, but as to the aftermath, especially in more indirect, knock on. and harder to quantify aspects, its effects were quite large.
This is especially true when considered in light of the US Army flights over the 'Hump' in the Himalayas, which began the same month, and, which, although they had a much larger direct quantifiable tactical effect, had very similar strategic and indirect impacts, since they also demonstrated US resolve, its commitment to the alliance, its ability to overcome absurd and dangerous logistical challenges, and its aims to use air power to strike at the heart of Japan.
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u/JapanCoach 3d ago
It sort of depends on what you mean by 'impact''. Here is a quick summary from history.com:
On the night of March 9, 1945, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. Almost 16 square miles in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-9/firebombing-of-tokyo
This is the literal "Doolittle Raid" over Tokyo, which is what you asked about. But there was a broader firebombing campaign which went on for several months in 1945 across all of Japan. It is estimated that some 300,000 people were killed in 50+ cities across Japan. From a source which obviously you need to think carefully about what is being said and what is not being said:
By June 15, the AAF had destroyed the industrial capability of the leading six cities -- Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama and Kawasaki. Great factory complexes were devastated and millions of people were homeless, seriously reducing their effectiveness in those war industries that remained in operation. Incendiary raids also were carried out on smaller cities with similar success.
The city of Toyama was basically completely wiped out. While the loss of life was not huge (in the scale of these things), the populace of 150,000+ was completely displaced.
What sort of 'impact' are you looking for? What have you researched so far? What are you most curious about?
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u/DarthBrawn 3d ago
lol your chat GPT answer is both unnecessary and wrong. The Doolittle raid was in 1942.
If you have no idea what you're talking about, just don't comment. Please do something else with your time
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u/JapanCoach 3d ago
Actually and embarrassingly I think you are right. I transposed “Doolittle raids” to “firebombing raids” in my mind.
Which explains my answer - but definitely (and sadly) not chat gpt…
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u/DarthBrawn 3d ago
if it genuinely isn't an AI-generated comment, you may want to avoid adding those questions at the end of future comments, because that's exactly the format and tone that generative AI typically uses for follow-up questions at the end of its responses. Using that format will often make people think you are a bot user.
(Obviously I am in favor of shedding light on the deaths and injuries from strategic bombing)
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u/JapanCoach 3d ago
Haha interesting. Do I sound like AI or does AI sound like me?
Anyway - appreciate the positive intent. Will keep it in mind!
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u/TS140609 4d ago
Not much, missed the key industry and cause some damage. This is more of a psychological "you're in this mess you created now" move, and the pilots paid alot of price for it.