Five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt and military leaders decided to boost American morale by undertaking a daring offensive against Japan. Forced to launch early from the aircraft carrier Hornet after being spotted by Japanese fishing boats, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle and his 16 B-25 bombers flew to their targets. But the early launch forced 15 crews to bail out or ditch their aircraft instead of landing in China as intended. What was supposed to be “thirty seconds over Tokyo” became an odyssey of escape for some crewmembers that lasted fourteen months and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese patriots. 272 pp | 35 images