It is commonly believed that only two photos taken during Doolittle’s raid on Japan survive since all the B-25 bombers were lost after the raid. The two photos, reportedly both taken by the navigator Clayton Campbell of B-25 40-2247 piloted by Lt. Edgar E. McElroy, were subsequently used in the intelligence analysis report Japanese Air Target Analyses as shown below. Be sure to click on the next two images to see their high-resolution, unannotated versions.
Where were they taken? Using the following aerial photo of Yokosuka Naval Base taken in November 1944 as a reference, I drew blue lines and yellow lines to indicate the areas respectively covered by Photo d and Photo f (Target 278) shown above.
In the aerial photo below (ca. 1947), you can even see the barracks that are on the foreground of Photo f.
The mission report filed by the crew of 40-2247 described “Bombs were released as planned, from East to West across workshop and building slip area”. The flight path of 2247 in the figure below also corroborates that Photos d and f above were taken by McElroy’s crew.
Today Yokosuka Naval Base is the homeport of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) of the US Navy.
Although it is generally believed only two photos survived, I found three other photos in National Archive which also claim to be taken during the raid. They all carry the same captions on the back as shown here:
The three photos were taken a few seconds apart. For me, it is really difficult to tell where they were taken or whether they were indeed taken during the Doolittle raid.
