None other than the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ordered an air strike on Tokyo as early as December 1941. His military advisors, however, were at a loss as to how to carry out that order. There were no Allied airfields close enough to the Japanese home islands to enable the Army Air Force heavy bombers to launch such an attack. Using naval aircraft, launched from aircraft carriers, implied the ships would have to approach to less than 300 miles of the Japanese coast and this was viewed as suicidal under the strategic circumstances of the time. Nonetheless, Roosevelt pressed the armed forces to produce a plan.
A possible solution was proposed in mid-January 1942. Credit for the idea goes to one Captain Francis Lowe. His idea was developed into a formal proposal by Captain Donald Duncan. The Army Air Force B-25 Mitchell medium bomber was suggested as a land-based aircraft capable of being launched within the confines of an aircraft carrier, yet having sufficient range to reduce the risk to the carriers to an acceptable level. Field testing began in February, on board the USS Hornet (CV-8), and this validated the concept. By the beginning of April 1942, as the Japanese were completing their conquest of the Philippines, US forces were ready to launch a raid on Tokyo.
A total of sixteen B-25 bombers were to be placed on the flight deck of the USS Hornet which would then approach to within 500 miles of Tokyo. A path-finding bomber would be launched several hours before the rest of the aircraft (in the late afternoon) and it would drop incendiaries on the intended targets in Tokyo (near dusk), to illuminate the objectives for the other bombers which were intended to arrive after dark. Once the objectives had been attacked, the bombers would have to fly on to air bases in China for recovery because, while a Mitchell B-25 could take-off from an aircraft carrier, it could not land on an aircraft carrier. There was very little margin for error.
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