Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Plot Summary: The amazingly detailed true story of "The Doolittle Raid" based on the novel of the same name.

Ever since I first saw this film when I was about 12 years old I've wanted to buzz San Francisco's Oakland Bay Bridge in a B-25. The closest I've come to it is taking a picture of the Bay Area including the Oakland Bay Bridge from the window of a commercial airliner-yawn.This film is my personal favourite dealing with aviation in wartime.

Van Johnson does his all-American boy bit and emerges as an appealing portrait of an ordinary guy, rather than the slavering war monger Ted Lawson could have been turned into. He's so naive he doesn't even hate the Japanese. He once had a friend who had a Japanese gardener who seemed like "a nice enough fellow." His prevailing desire? Not "Kill More Japs," but, "Gee, I wish this war was over." Phyllis Thaxter does an adequate job of hiding her anxiety beneath her love for her "fella." The film is long and in many ways more detailed than the book and, hold on, in some ways an improvement. Lawson's book is short and to the point and dwells on his horrible wound in a way that a wartime movie could not. Mitchum's role is expanded and made complex by his not-quite-hidden attraction to Lawson's wife, Ellen. True, sometimes the mushiness goes over the top. The jitterbugging is unnecessary and I don't suppose we really need the last dance to "Auld Lang Syne," and yet when one of the wives whispers to her husband (two characters we hardly know), "I love you," over and over, the sense it evokes isn't one of bathos but of the anguish of impending loss and the helplessness people feel in the face of it. There are small details that seem true. Lawson is called up for his last flight while still hung over and he spills aspirin all over the bathroom floor while getting his gear together. The launch scenes aboard the Hornet are bullet biters. Everything seems barely organized chaos. Wind shrieks, clothing flaps, rain and spray splatter everyone, people shout to make themselves heard over the shattering noise and vibrations of aeroplane engines, last minute favours are asked and granted, and one never knows if the left engine will quit or whether the dorsal turret will work. And there has rarely been a more vivid conveyance of the sense of flight at low level, first over the sea, then over geometrical patterns of agriculture. Everything seems to be moving -- and moving too fast, almost, for comprehension. And always the roar and rush of engine and wind. I don't know why the list of locations for this film didn't include the coast of California, where the encounter between bombers and land was shot. The bombing itself, involving models, is good even by today's standards. The crash of the B-25 into the massive surf during a rainstorm off the Chinese coast is over in a minute and we see Lawson staggering on the beach, staring at the double tail of the ruined aeroplane emerging from the ocean, saying mournfully, "I lost my ship. I lost my ship." Little of this is in the book. The Chinese are portrayed as sympathetic and as helpful as their conditions allow. The amputation of Lawson's leg is handled with surprising realistic detail. The scene makes it clear that he can feel the first bite of the surgeon's scalpel despite his spinal injury. "Boy, when you said you were gonna cut high you weren't kidding." It doesn't get better, either. There's a clever scene of Lawson hallucinating a phone call to Ellen while he is stranded in timber country and a tree is sawed down and felled outside his window, but this comes as a relief since it removes us from the source of Lawson's pain. Lawson's return to safety and his reluctance to see his wife again because of his perceived deformity is as brief as convention allows. Thank God, nobody refers to him as "half a man."

Sadly, one point the movie didn't mention, was the terrible price the Chinese paid for their help in getting the fliers out of China and back home.

General Chang Kai-Shek didn't want to support this operation as he knew what the Japanese would do in retaliation and he was right.

Under the orders of Emperor Hirohito, the Japanese, after learning that the Chinese had helped the American fliers, began a ruthless campaign of murdering Chinese men, women and children in retaliation for the raid. In fact, at least one village was wiped out due to Japanese troops.

It was a heavy price for the Chinese to pay for America to get partial revenge against what they suffered at Pearl Harbour.

There's nothing dated about the cinematography employed here. When the Ruptured Duck flies over Tokyo, you feel like you're right there in the cockpit and the crew's low-altitude escape to China is nothing less than harrowing.The main character, Ted Lawson, was the original technical advisor, but he was replaced by Dean Davenport (Lawson's co-pilot) after Lawson was re-called to active duty. Most of the flying scenes were done with actual B-25's accurately marked and even the take-off, which was done on a sound stage, used real aircraft on an aircraft carrier mock-up. The scenes that used miniatures were also well done for the time (before digital effects).

This film is pure Americana & though made while the war was still on & only two years after the events portrayed in the film took place manages to be a balanced non flag waving film all the more amazing because the outcome of WWII was still in doubt at the time. There is even a scene with Lawson & another pilot played by Robert Mitchum on the deck of the Hornet the night before the mission discussing the morality of dropping hundreds of tons of high explosives on civilians. With outstanding black & white cinematography from Harold Rosson & Robert Surtees (with black & white cinematography of this calibre who needs colour) this is cinema at it's absolute best.

Though not an aviation film Destination Tokyo (1943) directed by Delmer Daves is worth a look as it tells the true story of a U.S. submarine sneaking into Tokyo Bay and placing a spy team ashore in order to provide information (such as weather reports) for the first air raid over Tokyo... The Doolittle Raid.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo Trivia:

• Though the actual mission was planned as a publicity stunt rather than a military manoeuvre, MGM felt that a picture based on the dramatic events of the bombing would contribute to public morale. Seizing on the opportunity for high profile propaganda, the War Department co-operated within the limits of security, providing twelve B-25 bombers along with pilots to fly them. Because an aircraft carrier could not be loaned to the production, MGM's head of Special Effects, Buddy Gillespie, was called in to reconstruct the dramatic launch of the bombers. Employing miniatures built on a scale of one inch to one foot, Gillespie built a 60-foot version of the aircraft carrier Hornet, and launched it in the studio's 300 square foot water tank. Miniature bombers attached to an overhead trolley with piano wire were then shot, and the photography combined with newsreel footage. The result was a breathtaking sequence that could have been lifted directly from an actual Air Force documentary.

• Refreshingly free of contrived heroics and forced wisecracks, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was a huge critical and commercial success when it opened for the first time in 1944. Thrilling audiences to the tune of $4.5 million - a huge figure at that time - and garnering an Oscar for Best Special Effects, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was labeled by Newsweek Magazine as "one of the finest war movies to date," and that still holds true today.

• James Doolittle who lead the actual raid & Henry H. Arnold Chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces (1942–46) were technical advisors for the film.

Back