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Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Not long after the Pearl Harbor attack, United States Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle assembles two dozen North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers with volunteer crews at Eglin Field, Florida, for a secret mission. Among them is Ted Lawson and his crew, co-pilot Lieutenant Dean Davenport, navigator Lieutenant Charles McClure, bombardier Lietuenant Bob Clever and gunner-mechanic Corporal David Thatcher. Given the opportunity to decline the mission, the crews opt to stay on, including Lawson whose pregnant wife Ellen joins him at Eglin Field.
The crews are taught to take off from a runway only 500 feet long by a naval aviator from nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station. Lawson's plane acquires the nickname Ruptured Duck with nose art to match. Doolittle leads the group on a low-level flight at hedge-top height to Naval Air Station Alameda, California where their planes are loaded aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. He informs the men their mission is to bomb Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya. They will launch from the carrier 400 miles from Japan and after dropping their payloads continue to designated landing spots in parts of China controlled by Nationalist forces and regroup in Chungking. When an enemy surface vessel discovers the convoy, the crews are forced to take off twelve hours earlier than planned, to attack in broad daylight over Japan and land after nightfall in China.
Doolittle leads the raid, dropping incendiary bombs to mark key targets for the others. The Ruptured Duck arrives over Tokyo to find some targets already burning, and attacks its targets as planned. Anti-aircraft fire bursts harmlessly around them, and confused enemy fighters ignore them. Ruptured Duck continues toward China and runs low on fuel approaching the coast in darkness and heavy rain. Lawson attempts a belly landing on the beach and crashes in the surf. With the exception of Thatcher, the entire crew is badly injured: Lawson's left leg is laid open to the bone, and McClure's shoulders are broken. Friendly Chinese soldiers help them, and the Americans face hardships and danger while being escorted through Japanese-held territory. In the absence of medical supplies, the injured men endure terrible pain, and Lawson's leg becomes infected. Delirious, he dreams of Ellen.
A Red Cross banner hangs in the village of Xing Ming where Doctor Chung offers to take them to his father's hospital, 19 miles farther. He informs the men the Japanese have captured one of the other crews, and they hurry into the hills just before Japanese search parties arrive to burn the village down. No surgeon is at the elder Dr. Chung's hospital, but Lieutenant Smith's crew is on its way with Lieutenant "Doc" White, who volunteered as gunner. The Japanese approach, and the able-bodied Americans leave, except for Doc. He amputates Lawson's leg well above the knee, using the single dose of spinal anesthesia in their possession. It wears off too soon. Lawson passes out and dreams of Ellen.
A chorus of Scouts singing " The Star-Spangled Banner ", in Mandarin, celebrates Lawson's first day out of bed. When the elder Dr. Chung gives Lawson an heirloom bracelet for his wife, Lawson is puzzled. He does not remember talking about her. When he totters on his crutches, he becomes distraught at the idea of Ellen seeing him without a leg. They hurry to Ch'ang Chou to rendezvous with an American plane that takes them home.
General Doolittle visits Lawson in the hospital and tells him he has work for him to do. Lawson does not want to see Ellen until he obtains a prosthetic leg and learns to walk properly. Ellen arrives unannounced. Lawson forgets his missing leg and stands; he falls and Ellen rushes to him and the two embrace on the floor.