YANKS BOMB TOKYO

This short Castle Films newsreel, produced for the home market, shows the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first American air operation to strike the Japanese archipelago. The film shows the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown as it launches B-25 bomber aircraft It also features footage of practice runs made by the bomber crews and other training. It also contains footage of Capt. Marc Mitscher, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, Admiral Halsey, Gen. Hap Arnold, raiders T.W. Lawson and H.F. Watson, and Madame Chaing Kai-shek. One interesting aspect of the film is that it utilizes footage from a Japanese air raid newsreel, that was shot months before the Doolittle Raid as part of a drill, to show an audience what the effect of the raid would have been on the Japanese civilian population.