Fate of the crewmen Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 crews who had reached China eventually found safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. Of the 16 planes and 80 airmen who participated in the raid, all either crash-landed, were ditched, or crashed after their crews bailed out, with the single exception of Capt. York and his crew, who landed in the Soviet Union. Despite the loss of these 15 aircraft, 69 airmen escaped capture or death, with only three
killed in action. When the Chinese helped the Americans escape, the grateful Americans, in turn, gave them whatever they had on hand. Eight Raiders were
captured. Some of the men who crashed were aided by
Patrick Cleary, the Irish
Bishop of Nancheng. The Japanese troops retaliated by burning down the city.
Missing crewmen following their capture by the Japanese (20 April 1942) The crews of two aircraft (10 men in total) were unaccounted for: those of 1st Lt. Dean E. Hallmark (sixth off) and 1st Lt. William G. Farrow (last off). On 15 August 1942, the United States learned from the Swiss Consulate General in Shanghai that eight of the missing crew members were prisoners of the Japanese at the city's police headquarters. Two of the missing crewmen, bombardier
S/Sgt. William J. Dieter and flight engineer Sgt. Donald E. Fitzmaurice of Hallmark's crew, were found to have drowned when their B-25 crashed into the sea. Both of their remains were recovered after the war and were buried with military honors at
Golden Gate National Cemetery. The other eight were captured: 1st Lt. Dean E. Hallmark, 1st Lt. William G. Farrow, 1st Lt.
Robert J. Meder, 1st Lt.
Chase Nielsen, 1st Lt. Robert L. Hite, 2nd Lt. George Barr, Cpl. Harold A. Spatz, and Cpl.
Jacob DeShazer. All eight captured in Jiangxi were tried and sentenced to death at a military trial in China, and then transported to Tokyo. There the Army Ministry reviewed their case, with five of the sentences being commuted and the other three being executed. Out of the 80 crewmen, three were killed in action, eight were captured, and three were killed in captivity by the Japanese. The surviving captured airmen remained in military confinement on a starvation diet, their health rapidly deteriorating. In April 1943, they were moved to
Nanjing, where Meder died on 1 December 1943. The remaining men—Nielsen, Hite, Barr and DeShazer—eventually began receiving slightly better treatment and were given a copy of the Bible and a few other books. They were freed by American troops in August 1945. Four Japanese officers were tried for war crimes against the captured Doolittle Raiders, found guilty, and sentenced to hard labor, three for five years and one for nine years. Barr had been near death when liberated and remained in China recuperating until October, by which time he had begun to experience severe emotional problems. Untreated after transfer to
Letterman Army Hospital and a military hospital in
Clinton, Iowa, Barr became suicidal and was held virtually incommunicado until November, when Doolittle's personal intervention resulted in treatment that led to his recovery. DeShazer graduated from Seattle Pacific University in 1948 and returned to Japan as a missionary, where he served for over 30 years. When their remains were recovered after the war, Farrow, Hallmark, and Meder were buried with full military honors at
Arlington National Cemetery. Spatz was buried with military honors at
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Of the surviving prisoners, Barr died of heart failure in 1967, Nielsen in 2007, DeShazer on 15 March 2008, and the last, Hite, died 29 March 2015.
Service of returning crewmen Immediately following the raid, Doolittle told his crew that he believed the loss of all 16 aircraft, coupled with the relatively minor damage to targets, had rendered the attack a failure, and that he expected a
court-martial upon his return to the United States. Instead, the raid bolstered American morale. Doolittle was promoted two grades to
brigadier general on 28 April while still in China, skipping the rank of colonel, and was presented with the
Medal of Honor by Roosevelt upon his return to the United States in June. When General Doolittle toured the growing
Eglin Field facility in July 1942 with commanding officer Col.
Grandison Gardner, the local paper of record (the
Okaloosa News-Journal,
Crestview, Florida), while reporting his presence, made no mention of his still-secret recent training at Eglin. He went on to command the
Twelfth Air Force in North Africa, the
Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean, and the Eighth Air Force in England during the next three years. in 1942 All 80 Raiders were awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross, and those who were killed or wounded during the raid were awarded the
Purple Heart. Every Doolittle Raider was also decorated by the Chinese government. In addition, Corporal David J. Thatcher (a flight engineer/gunner on Lawson's crew) and 1st Lt. Thomas R. White (flight surgeon/gunner with Smith) were awarded the
Silver Star for helping the wounded crew members of Lt. Lawson's crew to evade Japanese troops in China. Finally, as Doolittle noted in his autobiography, he successfully insisted that all of the Raiders receive a promotion. Twenty-eight of the crewmen remained in the
China Burma India theater, including the entire crews of planes 4, 10, and 13, flying missions, most for more than a year; five were killed in action. Nineteen crew members flew combat missions in the
Mediterranean theater after returning to the United States, four of whom were killed in action and four becoming prisoners of war. Nine crew members served in the
European Theater of Operations; one was killed in action, and one,
David M. "Davy" Jones, was shot down and became a POW in
Stalag Luft III at Sagan, where he played a part in
The Great Escape. Altogether, 12 of the survivors died in air crashes within 15 months of the raid. Two survivors were separated from the USAAF in 1944 due to the severity of their injuries. The 17th Bomb Group, from which the Doolittle Raiders had been recruited, received replacement crews and transferred to
Barksdale Army Air Field in June 1942, where it converted to Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers. In November 1942, it deployed overseas to North Africa, where it operated in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations with the Twelfth Air Force for the remainder of the war.
Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army began the
Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign (also known as Operation Sei-go) to prevent these eastern coastal provinces of China from being used again for an attack on Japan and to take revenge on the Chinese people. An area of some was laid waste. "Like a swarm of locusts, they left behind nothing but destruction and chaos", eyewitness Father Wendelin Dunker wrote. The Japanese killed an estimated 10,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle's men. People who aided the airmen were tortured before they were killed. Father Dunker wrote of the destruction of the town of Ihwang: "They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10–65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it ... None of the humans shot were buried either". The Japanese entered
Nancheng (
Jiangxi), population 50,000 on June 11, "beginning a reign of terror so horrendous that missionaries would later dub it 'the Rape of Nancheng, evoking memories of the infamous
Rape of Nanjing five years before. Less than a month later, the Japanese forces put what remained of the city to the torch. "This planned burning was carried on for three days," one Chinese newspaper reported, "and the city of Nancheng became charred earth." When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread
cholera,
typhoid,
plague infected fleas and
dysentery pathogens. The Japanese biological warfare
Unit 731 brought almost of
paratyphoid and
anthrax to be left in contaminated food and contaminated wells with the withdrawal of the army from areas around Yushan, Kinhwa and Futsin. Around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces. According to Chinese records, the campaign resulted in over 20,000 civilians murdered, 30,000 more captured or missing, and more than 100,000 houses burned in
Quzhou alone.
Shunroku Hata, the commander of Japanese forces in the campaign was sentenced in 1948 in part due to his "failure to prevent atrocities". He was given a life sentence but was paroled in 1954.
Additional perspectives Doolittle recounted in his autobiography that at the time he thought the mission was a failure and he would be demoted upon return to the US. This mission showed that a B-25 takeoff from a carrier was easier than previously thought, and night operations could be possible in the future.
Shuttle bombing runs (taking off and landing at different air bases) were shown to be an effective carrier task force tactic since there was no need for the ships to wait for the returning aircraft. The American pilots, instead of landing as planned, were forced to bail out due to a lack of ground lighting to provide guidance. Chinese airfield crews recounted that due to the unexpected early arrival of the B-25s, homing beacon and runway torch lights were not on for fear of possible Japanese airstrikes (as had happened previously). If
Claire Lee Chennault had been informed of the mission specifics, the outcome might have been very much better for the Americans: Chennault had built an effective air surveillance net in China that would have been able to provide updated arrival information about the raiders to the airfield crews, and could have confirmed that there was no risk of Japanese airstrikes, allowing the landing lights to be lit at the time necessary to allow safe landings. Chiang Kai-Shek awarded the raiders China's highest military decorations, and predicted (in his diary) that Japan would alter its goals and strategy as a result of the disgrace. Indeed, the raid was a shock to staff at Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. As a direct consequence, Japan attacked territories in China to prevent similar shuttle bombing runs. High command withdrew substantial air force resources from supporting offensive operations in order to defend the home islands. The
Aleutian Islands campaign was launched to prevent the US from using the islands as bomber bases to attack Japan—this required two carriers that otherwise would have been used for the
Battle of Midway. Thus, the raid's most significant strategic accomplishment was that it compelled the Japanese high command into ordering a very inefficient disposition of their forces, and poor decision-making due to fear of attack, for the rest of the war.
Mitsuo Fuchida and
Shigeyoshi Miwa considered the "one-way" raid "excellent strategy", with the bombers evading Army fighters by flying "much lower than anticipated". Kuroshima said the raid "passed like a shiver over Japan" and Miwa criticized the Army for claiming to have shot down nine aircraft rather than "not even one". == Effect ==