On July 7, 1937, the "Lugou Bridge Incident" broke out, and Japan began a full-scale invasion of China. In September 1939, World War II broke out, and fascist Germany won victory in Europe. In September 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan concluded a military alliance. In 1941, in order to extricate itself from its predicament, Japan began to pursue a southward expansion strategy, and the United States adopted a number of embargo measures against Japan in order to safeguard its interests in China and the Asia-Pacific region. In order to completely solve the problem of restrictions on the transportation of strategic materials such as oil, rubber, and steel, Japan decided to destroy the US maritime power in the Pacific Ocean and remove obstacles to its southward expansion.
Pearl Harbor is located at the southern tip of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands and is the main base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. In early 1941, Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, planned an attack on Pearl Harbor, and made careful arrangements before the war to deceive and paralyze the United States. In the early morning of December 7, 1941, more than 350 Japanese planes carried out a frantic attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base. The U.S. military was defenseless and hastily defended itself amid the sound of **. This day became the most tragic war disaster day in the history of the United States, and was designated as the "Day of National Shame". The entire attack ended within 90 minutes, and at a small cost of losing 29 planes and five special submarines, Japan sank and damaged eight US battleships, more than 10 other large ships, and more than 20 small and medium-sized warships anchored in the harbor, destroyed about 180 US planes, killed and wounded more than 3,500 US troops, and destroyed and damaged most of the facilities in the harbor and on the island. The "Pearl Harbor Incident" announced the outbreak of the Pacific War, completely involved the United States in World War II, and brought about a series of subsequent results, such as the collapse of the fascist Axis powers, the victory of the anti-fascist alliance, and the dominance of the United States in international politics.
On December 8, 1941, Roosevelt delivered his famous "national humiliation" speech in Congress, angrily denouncing the Japanese invaders, and then signed a statement of formal declaration of war against Japan. At the beginning of 1942, Japan was rampant in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, and the U.S. military was losing one after another in the face of Japanese attacks, which caused the morale of the American people to drop to its lowest point. In order to arouse the confidence of the population, Roosevelt ** decided to carry out air strikes on Tokyo, Japan at all costs. To this end, the US side has meticulously planned a top-secret "Air Special No. 1 Plan," that is, using the Navy's newest and largest aircraft carrier, the Hornet, carrying the Army's newest and moderate-sized modified B-25 bombers, and escorting a task force, secretly sail to a place close to Japan but outside the combat radius of Japan's land-based bombers and the sphere of influence of patrol ships, take off from the Hornet to bomb Japan, and then fly to a Chinese airfield to land instead of returning to the Hornet. The Hornet and its convoy were quickly evacuated after the bombers took off to avoid a Japanese attack. Aircraft landing in China can be incorporated into the "10th Air Force" operating in the China-Burma-India theater to support China's war of resistance. The completion of the "Air Special One Project" required the close cooperation of the Army and the Navy, with Colonel Duncan in charge of the Navy and Jimmy Doolittle appointed Jimmy Doolittle to modify the aircraft, train pilots, and carry out the operation.
On April 2, 1942, the USS Hornet left San Francisco with 16 modified B-25 bombers, escorted by six warships, including the heavy cruiser USS Vincennes, bid farewell to the majestic Golden Gate Bridge, and disappeared into the boundless rain and fog of the Pacific Ocean. The next day, the Navy also deliberately released a false message saying: "In order to prevent the Japanese landing, these planes are being transported to Hawaii." On April 5, another fleet led by Vice Admiral Halsey, with the USS Enterprise as the core, also quietly set off from Pearl Harbor and sailed due north. Five days later, the fleet joined forces with the fleet led by Captain Mitchell of the USS Hornet in designated waters in the North Pacific Ocean and became Task Force 16, under the command of Halsey. For this operation, the 16th Task Force of the US Navy, including two aircraft carriers, the USS Hornet and the USS Enterprise, four cruisers, eight escort destroyers, two submarines, and two oil tankers, dispatched a total of about 10,000 officers and men.
According to the original battle plan, the bombers were scheduled to take off 500 nautical miles from Tokyo, and the take-off time was scheduled for the afternoon of 18 April. In the early hours of 18 April, Halsey and Doolittle's original plans were disrupted by the discovery of patrolling Japanese fishing boats and ships and the overhearing of Japanese telegrams from ships. At 8 o'clock in the morning, the aircraft carrier Hornet was 700 nautical miles away from Tokyo, and to release the bombers 200 nautical miles ahead of schedule meant that the chances of the pilots surviving were greatly reduced. Moreover, the early action also meant that the bombers would have to bomb the Japanese mainland during the day, which undoubtedly reduced the chances of the pilots surviving. In order to prevent leaks and ensure the success of the raid, at 8 o'clock, Halsey sent a telegram to the Hornet: "Plane sortie!" Good luck to Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle and his brave squadron. God bless you all. At 8:25, Doolittle's plane took to the skies. At this time, they were 668 nautical miles from Tokyo. After the last B-25 bomber took off, Halsey ordered Task Force 16 to turn around and turn back. At 12:30, Doolittle led his plane to the target and dropped revenge bombs on Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe and other places.
The 30-second air strike by the US military over Tokyo shattered the myth of "absolute security" on the Japanese mainland. The air raid was the first direct foreign attack in Japan in 2,600 years, and it caused great consternation among the Japanese people. It was a secret, risky, one-off, and even tragic revenge operation that was carefully planned and fully prepared, creating a military legend in the history of the Pacific War. The operation is known as the "Doolittle Air Raid". Doolittle became an American hero overnight, and in less than two years he was promoted from lieutenant colonel to lieutenant general and commander of three numbered air forces, unprecedented in the history of the American Air Force. In the history of American warfare, this is the only time that a combat mission was carried out by a bomber of the Army Air Corps taking off from a Navy aircraft carrier. The bombing mission proved that the Japanese mainland could not effectively defend itself against Allied air attacks, and also washed away the shame of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
There is also an important part of the "Kongte 1 plan", that is, the B-25 bombers do not return to the Hornet after completing the bombing mission, but fly to China's coastal airfields to land and refuel. For the sake of secrecy, the US side informed Chiang Kai-shek that it was required to build four to five runways capable of landing B-25 bombers in Zhejiang, Guangxi, and Yunnan by the end of April 1942, but did not mention the specific plan. Judging from the final results, the US military planned to land at Quzhou Airport, and the construction of this airport was the most important.
In December 1941, Chiang Kai-shek assigned this task to He Yingqin and Gu Zhutong. Gu Zhutong was the commander of the Third Theater at that time, and he expanded Quzhou Airport with the standard of taking off and landing large bombers. The Jiangshan Municipal Archives has a large number of records about the requisition of wood, bamboo, bamboo rafts, masonry, carpentry, rafters, and migrant workers at that time, and these archives truly and exhaustively record the process of Jiangshan people's participation in the construction of Quzhou Airport. At present, the earliest file of the Jiangshan City Archives related to the construction of Quzhou Airport (then known as Quxian Airport) is that on December 22, 1941, Jiangshan County ** received a telegram from Lu Zhongxiu of the Office of the Administrative Inspector of the Fifth District of Zhejiang Province and the Security Headquarters, ordering that the timber used for the construction of the Quxian Airport should be requisitioned before the end of December without delay. According to the archives, for the construction of Quxian Airport, Jiangshan County acquired a total of 76,903 logs, planks and bamboos of various specifications, including 743 giant materials with a diameter of 40 centimeters. At the time of acceptance, due to the small diameter of the middle diameter, some.
The second and third pieces of wood are counted as only one, so the actual number should be much more than 76,903. In the ice and snow, 76,903 pieces of wood and bamboo were cut down from the mountains one by one by the people of the country, and they had to be carried to the railway station and wharf one by one, and the difficulties experienced along the way were unimaginable.
In order to prevent the expansion of Quzhou Airport, the Japanese army frequently bombed and strafed the construction site. When enemy planes attacked, the people took refuge in ditches or under trees, and could not build during the day, so they rushed to repair them overnight at night, freezing in the cold, rain or shine. In less than two months, the airport runway was expanded to 1,600 meters, the width was increased to 60 meters, the take-off and landing width was increased to 150 meters, the giant stones were 60 centimeters thick, and 3.6 million trees with a diameter of more than 20 centimeters and 900,000 bamboos were used. After the expansion of the airfield, it can accommodate 50 B-25 bombers. According to the "Fifty Memories" of Huang Shaohong, then chairman of Zhejiang Province, in the winter of 30 years, a total of 14 counties of Jin, Qu, Yan and the Department sent 500,000 migrant workers, with an anti-Japanese enthusiasm, without machinery and without any engineering equipment, in less than half a year, Quzhou Airport was built by manpower, which is incredible.
After completing the mission of bombing Japan, the Doolittle crew returned to Quzhou Airport and landed as originally planned. However, due to the lack of fuel caused by the early take-off time and poor communication, the pilots were unable to dock with Quzhou Airport in time, and the planned ground guidance was not in place, so the pilots had to abandon the plane and parachute when they flew to the vicinity of China's coastline.
Except for one of the 16 bombers (Unit 8), which was lost in the middle of the flight to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union, the crew members of the remaining 15 bombers were forced to abandon the plane and parachute and spread over an area of about 500 square kilometers (an area where the Sino-Japanese front was intertwined, and the sea, land and mountains coexisted), and all 15 planes crashed. Among them, the plane crashed on the eastern coast of Zhejiang, the plane crashed in the mountainous area of western Zhejiang, and the plane crashed in the eastern part of Jiangxi; Plane No. 11 crashed in southern Anhui. The fate of the 80 crew members varied: 5 were detained by the Soviet Union, 1 died, 2 fell into the sea and disappeared, 8 fell to the Japanese (3 were killed, 1 died of illness in prison, 4 were imprisoned until they were released at the end of the war), and 64 were rescued by the Chinese (including 6 rescued by the Jiangshan people).