The 16 Bombers That Pushed Japan Into Midway

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ April 18, 1942, 7:38 in the morning. A Japanese picket boat 750 miles off the coast radios that it has seen American carriers, and Tokyo concludes there is a day to prepare. On the deck of USS Hornet sit sixteen Army B-25s, stripped for range, with broomsticks painted black in their tails for guns, and none of them able to land back aboard. Halsey launches ten hours early. The bombers cross Honshu at noon, and not one is shot down. The physical damage is small. In Tokyo, the argument over Admiral Yamamoto's plan for Midway, which the Army had refused to support five days earlier, ends three days later. Seven weeks on, four Japanese carriers are burning off Midway, and the men who flew the raid are scattered across China, in Soviet internment and in Japanese cells.