Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a 1944 American war film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is based on the true story of the Doolittle Raid, America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan four months after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Mervyn LeRoy directed Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Sam Zimbalist produced the film. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo was based on the 1943 book of the same name, by Captain Ted W. Lawson, a pilot on the raid. The film stars Van Johnson as Lawson, Phyllis Thaxter as his wife Ellen, Robert Walker as Corporal David Thatcher, Robert Mitchum as Lieutenant Bob Gray and Spencer Tracy as Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, the man who planned and led the raid.
In the book Lawson gives eyewitness accounts of the training, the mission, and the aftermath as experienced by his crew and others who flew the mission on April 18, 1942. Lawson piloted "The Ruptured Duck", the seventh of 16 B-25s to take off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. The film is noted for its accurate depiction of the raid and use of actual wartime footage of the bombing aircraft.

Plot

In spring 1942, a few months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Army Air Forces plan to retaliate by bombing Tokyo and four other Japanese cities—launching traditionally land-based bombers from US Navy aircraft carriers that can approach near enough the Japanese mainland to make bombing feasible. After dropping bombs planes will continue to Nationalist controlled parts of China, and crews will regroup in Chungking.
Lt.Col. James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy), the architect and leader of the mission, assembles a volunteer force of aircrew, who begin their top-secret training by learning a new technique to make their North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers airborne in the short distance of 500 feet or less, to simulate taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
After depicting the raiders' weeks of hazardous training at Eglin Field, Florida and Naval Air Station Alameda, the story goes on to describe the raid and its aftermath. While en route to Japan, the Hornet's task force is discovered by a Japanese picket boat, which has radioed their position. It is sunk immediately by American gunfire but the bombers are forced to take off twelve hours early at the extreme limit of their range. However, the bombers successfully reach Japan and drop their bombs. Dolittle himself leads the raid with incendiary bombs, designed to aid the following aircraft identify targets.
After the attack, most of the B-25s run out of fuel before reaching their recovery airfields in Nationalist controlled China. Crews are forced to either bail out over China or crash-land along the coast. Lawson's B-25 crashes in the surf just off the Chinese coast while trying to land on a beach in darkness and heavy rain. He and his crew survive, badly injured, but face hardships and danger while being escorted to Nationalist lines by friendly Chinese. Lawson's injuries require the mission's flight surgeon to amputate his left leg above the knee.
The closing stages of the film feature many of the Dolittle Raiders reunited in Chungking, per the original plan, where Chinese sing the Star Spangled Banner, in Mandarin, in an emotional climax. The story ends in the United States with Lawson reunited with his pregnant wife Ellen in a Washington, D.C. hospital. In tears, Lawson tells his wife: "When things were the worst I could see your beautiful face."