ALAMEDA, California — The USS Hornet Museum recently completed an international cultural exchange with the Doolittle Raid Memorial Hall in Quzhou City, China, commemorating the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II.
As part of the exchange, USS Hornet Museum volunteer and documentary filmmaker George Retelas delivered a rare original 16mm film reel depicting the Doolittle Raiders’ training at Eglin Field in March 1942.
In return, the Doolittle Raid Memorial Hall presented the museum a fragment from aircraft No. 9, “Whirling Dervish,” one of the 16 B-25 bombers launched from the USS Hornet during the Doolittle Raid. The rear fuselage piece was recovered from the crash site in eastern Jiangxi Province, according to museum officials.
On April 18, 1942, after successfully striking military and industrial production targets in Japan, the crew of Whirling Dervish bailed out over China and were rescued by local civilians, “exemplifying the heroic cooperation between the U.S. and China during World War II,” museum officials noted.
The B-25 artifact will become the centerpiece of the USS Hornet Museum’s Doolittle Raiders exhibit.
The rare original 16mm silent film was donated to the museum by the Knobloch Family. It documents the Doolittle Raiders training in B-25s at Eglin Field in March of 1942 prior to embarking on the USS Hornet for the raid on Tokyo.
Led by Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, the 1942 raid marked the first U.S. air strike against the Japanese homeland following Pearl Harbor. Sixteen B-25B Mitchell bombers, each with a five-man crew and no fighter escort, were launched from the USS Hornet to target military and industrial facilities in Tokyo and beyond.
Though the material damage was limited, the psychological impact was profound: Morale soared in the United States while fear and doubt spread through the Japanese leadership. In retaliation, the Japanese military launched the brutal Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians who had aided the downed American airmen.
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