What Would Have Happened had the #7 Doolittle Raider Landed?

[Dan Jones]

I picked up a old, mint copy of "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" recently while passing through New York and reread it while on holiday. Raider #7 (Lt Lawson's crew) crashed while trying to land on a beach in China. Their plan was to land, spend the night, and then fly deeper into friendly territory the following morning in the daylight. Both engines quit on final and they went into the water, and the crew (particularly Lawson himself) were all badly hurt, but I was just wondering what you all thought might have happened next had the landing been successful?

Have a good weekend.

Dan

[John Dupre]

Aside from the crew being largely uninjured probably not much more than happened to most of the other crews that made it to China. The engines quit because they were out of gas. I doubt they could have gotten any gas from nearby the next day or several days. A B-25 on a beach would have made a good target for searching Japanese planes and likely bring a landing team onto the beach. So the crew would have had to start hiking out. Uninjured the hiking would probably have gone better. The Japanese would likely have recovered the bomber unless the crew burned it before they started hiking out.