...since the Billy Mitchell's didn't have the range to return to the U.S. and they were too big to land on the carrier USS Hornet that had brought them to within 650 nautical miles from Japan.
From Wikipedia:
After the bombing -
Fifteen of the sixteen aircraft then proceeded southwest along the southern coast of Japan and across the East China Sea toward eastern China, where several fields in Zhejiang province were supposed to be ready to guide them in using homing beacons, then recover and refuel them for continuing on to Chongqing, the wartime Kuomintang capital.[14] The primary base was at Zhuzhou, toward which all the aircraft navigated, but Halsey never sent the planned signal to alert them, apparently because of a possible threat to the task force. One B-25, piloted by Capt. Edward J. York, was extremely low on fuel, and headed instead for the closer Soviet Union.
<snip>
Fifteen aircraft reached the Chinese coast after thirteen hours of flight and crash landed or bailed out; the crew who flew to the Soviet Union landed 40 miles (65 km) beyond Vladivostok, where their B-25 was confiscated and the crew interned. It was the longest combat mission ever flown by the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, averaging approximately 2,250 nautical miles (4,170 km). Although York and others were well-treated, diplomatic attempts to return them to the United States ultimately failed. Eventually they were relocated to Ashgabat, 20 miles (32 km) from the Iranian border, and York managed to "bribe" a smuggler, who helped them cross the border and reach a nearby British consulate on 11 May 1943.[2][3] The smuggling was actually staged by the NKVD, according to declassified Soviet archives, because the Soviet government was unable to repatriate them legally in the face of the neutrality pact with Japan.
<snip>
Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers. Of the 80 airmen that participated in the raid, 69 escaped capture and death. When the Chinese helped the Americans escape, the grateful Americans in turn gave them whatever they had on hand. The people who helped them, however, paid dearly for sheltering the Americans.
The Japanese military began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese from helping downed American airmen. All airfields in a range of some 20,000 square miles (50,000 km2) in the areas where the Raiders had landed were torn up.[27] The use of germ warfare and other atrocities were committed, and those found with American items were shot. The Japanese killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle's men.
War is Hell.
(ps:
Just a nit. The raid took place 71 years, April 18, 1942.)
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