The First Heroes

Description

In April 1942, 16 planes took off from a US Navy carrier in the mid-Pacific. A squadron of young, barely trained flyers under a famous daredevil, Jimmy Doolittle, they were America's first retaliation towards Japan since Pearl Harbor. Their mission: to bomb Japan's five main cities including Tokyo. Critically compromised by the discovery of the US fleet by Japanese spies, they were not expected to come back. Having successfully delivered their bombs, most of the squadron ran out of fuel and were forced to crash land in Japan, China and the Soviet Union. The stories of their journeys home are as heroic as that of the raid itself. Incredibly of the 80 flyers who left the ship, 90 per cent eventually returned alive to the US. "The First Heroes" tells the extraordinary story of the daring raid and shows for the first time the real story of what was to be the turning point in the war against Japan.

Craig Nelson is the author of three previous books; his writings have appeared in Salon, Blender, Genre, and a host of other publications. He was an editor at HarperCollins, Hyperion, and Random House for almost twenty years and has been profiled by Variety, Interview, File, Manhattan, Inc., the Daily News, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out. He lives in New York City.

The story of the Doolittle Raid lifts off the page, as rich and engrossing as any legend, and Craig Nelson proceeds to bring to vivid life the dramatic story behind the story. This is an astounding feat. Nelson is an amazing storyteller' -- Doug Stanton, author of In Harm's Way 'In this passionate and intimate history, Craig Nelson reminds us that America's first response to Pearl Harbor was neither tepid nor undramatic, but rather one of warfare's boldest chapters of righteous revenge' -- Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers