Compass Heading 270
$495.00
Signed & Numbered Print
On 18 April 1942, in a heavy swell, the Hornet launches her 16 Army Air Force B-25
Mitchell bombers, bound for Tokyo, a distance of over 800 miles. Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's B-25, safely airborne and having completed a 360 degree turn, flies over the carrier to check his compass - vital for navigation so far from land - while the number two aircraft rolls down the deck under full throttle. Fourteen
more B-25s, their engines running, are ready to follow their leader into history. Never before had bombers been launched from an aircraft carrier, let alone from a heaving deck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.