<p>The launch had been planned for 17 April 17 at sunset, but the American force was spotted by the Japanese early that morning and at 8:00 am Admiral William F. Halsey, commanding the force, ordered the planes off. Doolittle was first. Engines roaring, the B-25 rolled straight along the white lines painted on the carrier deck as wheel guides, rotated, and clawed its way into the air at 8:20. The last of the raiders left the <hi format=ital>Hornet</hi> at 9:20 am. Ahead lay 600 miles (966 km) of flying to the coast of Japan.
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<p>On the basis of cold statistics, the daring raid was a dismal failure. Damage to targets was slight. All of the airplanes and some of the crews were lost. Doolittle was despondent. But viewed psychologically, the mission was a tremendous success.
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<p>For months, the war news had been bad. The US was being beaten badly, the Philippines had fallen and the survivors of Bataan had been moved to prisons on the infamous 'Death March'. Doolittle's raid was the first good news in a long time. More importantly, it was the first bad news for the Japanese. Their government had promised that they were invulnerable; it transpired that they weren't, and the government had lied. The Japanese people never recovered from the shock of that raid. It presaged what was to come and, from then on, they sensed the doom of their Empire.
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<p>The first cause for cautious Allied optimism came early in May in the Coral Sea, the waters off the northeast coast of Australia. The Japanese were driving toward Port Moresby, on the southeast coast of New Guinea, from which their naval forces could control the Coral Sea and threaten Australia, perhaps even support an invasion. The Battle of the Coral Sea raged for several days after the first engagement on 4 May, when US carrier-based air groups hit and hurt a Japanese invasion force sent against Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands. The rest of the battle was fought entirely in air engagements, and the opposing fleets never got to Port Moresby.
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<p>That campaign blunted, Yamamoto headed toward Midway Island, west-northwest of the Hawaiian group. In his hands it would be a useful base from which to threaten the central Pacific basin and Hawaii. But the US had broken Japanese naval codes, and knew every detail about the task force steaming northward toward Midway.
