Why Rommel Called Patton's Army The Most Astonishing He'd Seen

On April eighteen, nineteen forty two, sixteen American B twenty five Mitchell bombers lifted off the pitching deck of the USS Hornet eight hundred miles from Japan and carried the war for the first time to the home islands of the Empire. Led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, the raid did almost no physical damage, yet the decisions it forced inside the Japanese high command reshaped the entire Pacific war. In this full length documentary account, we trace the story from President Roosevelt's December meeting at the White House through the improvised planning of Navy Captain Francis Low, the training at Eglin Field in Florida, the launch from the Hornet after the Japanese picket boat Nitto Maru sighted the task force, the thirty minutes of bombing over Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka, and the costly aftermath for the eighty volunteers who flew the mission. We follow the raid's strategic consequences through Admiral Yamamoto's decision to attack Midway, the catastrophic loss of four Japanese fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway seven weeks later, and the Imperial Army's brutal Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign in occupied China. Drawing on the United States Strategic Bombing Survey interrogations conducted after the Japanese surrender, including the testimony of Mitsuo Fuchida and Captain Kameto Kuroshima of the Combined Fleet staff, this documentary separates the newspaper headlines of nineteen forty two from the scholarly record recovered since. A history of ordinary American airmen, a Prussian trained Japanese admiral, and the single afternoon that bent the shape of the largest war in human history. Sources for this investigation: The Rommel Papers, edited by B. H. Liddell Hart (1953), Chapter 23, page 523 — for Rommel's quote on the Patton army: https://archive.org/details/THEROMMELPAPERS The German View of Patton, Hoover Institution: https://www.hoover.org/research/german-view-patton Hugh M. Cole, The Lorraine Campaign (US Army Center of Military History Green Book): https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Lorraine/USA-E-Lorraine-1.html Gaining the Advantage: How Patton's Unique Approach Won, Military Review (US Army): https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/PDF-UA-docs/French-UA.pdf The Untold Story of Patton at Bastogne, HistoryNet: https://historynet.com/untold-story-patton-bastogne/ Relieving Bastogne (26 DEC 1944), US Army INSCOM: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/461182/relieving-bastogne-26-dec-1944 Cobra King led 4th Armored Division column that relieved Bastogne, US Army: https://www.army.mil/article/17393/ The Boy Who Got Rommel, Warfare History Network: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-boy-who-got-rommel/ The 30th Infantry Division's Heroic Stand at Mortain, National WWII Museum: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/30th-infantry-division-battle-mortain Keep Em Rolling: 82 Days on the Red Ball Express, National WWII Museum: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/red-ball-express Armored in Lorraine: Battle of Arracourt, Warfare History Network: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/battle-of-arracourt/ The 80th Anniversary of General Patton's Final Battle, US Army: https://www.army.mil/article/289585/ Sonke Neitzel, Tapping Hitler's Generals (Frontline Books, 2013) — for the Trent Park transcripts referenced in the script. Lewis Sorley, Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times (Simon and Schuster, 1992) — for the Patton quote about Abrams.