USS California, 1945

During the Guadalcanal Campaign Admiral Halsey USN made a tour of the front lines that was a great morale booster. Admiral Yamamoto IJN decided to do a similar tour of forward basis. Due to U.S. code breaking activities and Ultra, Yamamoto's itinerary was determined. Both the U.S. Army Air Force and U.S. Navy stepped up air attacks generally to cover the assassination mission, and a group of P-38s were purposefully sortied to intercept the two aircraft carrying Yamamoto and his staff. The Army mission was a success and both aircraft were shot down and all, including Yamamoto, were killed. In some respects the killing of Yamamoto was a mistake, and of course could not be publicized until the Japanese announced it, because it may have compromised that the Japanese code had been broken.

I do believe there's gun camera footage of Yamamoto's plane getting shot up and going in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance

Pearl Harbour Dec 7th 1941, Doolittle's raid was a token affair a terrorising of the populace to show they too could be bombed and were vulnerable a great ploy by a great aviator.

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Originally Posted by RT Ellis

a group of P-38s were purposefully sortied to intercept the two aircraft carrying Yamamoto and his staff.

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Right, I remember the details on that one now. I saw an interview of the man that sawed the wing off Yamamoto's aircraft with his guns. He said it just rolled over and went into the jungle...

Yes, the B25 raid was just to show that the mainland was as available as the enemy wanted at any time. Unfortunately they lost the crews.

Some of the crews were lost but not all of them by far. BIll

Correction to my last message. Only three crew members were lost, the remainder were recovered and some were POW's until the end of the war. The Tokyo Raiders held their last reunion in 2013 ; there were only three members that could attend the meeting.
So the decision was made to end the reunions. Bill[COLOR="black"]

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The IJN was unaware the USA was reading their Naval codes but credit due to the execution of the raid was done well yes there were errors in the radar report and the assumption that they were friendlies this is all well and good after the fact but the IJN naval pilots were some of the best in the world at that time each pilot hand picked and having a few thousand hours experience from carriers.
Plus the fact modifying the torpedos so they did not dive into the mud when dropped, but they started the fire that eventually consumed them, I have always admired the lines of the Iowa class battle ships as their design allowed them to go through the Panama canal, an interesting dual between an Iowa and the Mushashi would have been interesting affair to say the least, I think the USA called their is it the L-5 guns at that point in time the best there were despite the latters 18.1" guns

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Originally Posted by Bill Hughes

Only three crew members were lost

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What I mean Bill, was that the crews couldn't return to their station with aircraft largely intact, like a normal raid. I don't count a POW as returned to action unless he has escaped. I'm not about to re-read the story on the raid to split hairs...I don't believe any of their aircraft were serviceable after...and at best some men made it to foreign lands. But no one returned to their point of origin. And they knew that before leaving.

The bombs should have been all incendaries, much of the city was wood and paper. They could have burned Tokyo down as LeMay did years later.