More than 100 aircraft still rest at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Trainee pilots needed eight successful touch-and-go landings aboard Sable and Wolverine to be certified, and not all of them were successful. These two retrofitted aircraft carriers were unarmed and lacked elevators and hangers, but they had the distinction of being the world’s first-and only-side-wheel paddle steamer carriers and the first paddle steamers commissioned by the Navy since the 1870s. The Greater Buffalo, built in the 1920s, was renamed USS Sable. Her superstructure was stripped and a 550-foot wooden flight deck fitted. The Seeandbee, a paddle steamer built in 1912, was renamed USS Wolverine. So the Navy retrofitted two aging passenger steamers: the Seeandbee and the Greater Buffalo. needed pilots trained in deck landings, but with all of the fleet’s available carriers facing the Japanese in the Pacific, there were no extra carriers for training. Despite the odds, most of the planes were able to crash land in China as planned.Īfter the successful mission, however, the Navy still faced with a huge dilemma.
The raid was a success, but due to the extreme distance the bombers had to be fitted with an auxiliary fuel tank and lightened significantly, even leaving behind most of their machine guns. The mission was the longest ever flown by B-25s, with Doolittle’s aircraft averaging about 2,500 miles.
The psychological results, it was hoped, would be the recalling of combat equipment from other theaters for home defense…the development of a fear complex in Japan." Material damage was to be the destruction of specific targets. After the mission General James Doolittle explained the aims of his raid: "It was hoped that the damage done would be both material and psychological.
0 kommentar(er)
