The Doolittle Raiders that bombed Japan were meant to land in China - and they all did, except for one that diverted to the Soviet city of Vladivostok, due to consuming fuel at a higher rate than expected.
I’m wondering why the Raiders didn’t just plan to all head for Soviet territory to begin with. It would be 1) geographically closer than China, thus less distance flown, and 2) China was a pretty dicey proposition given the presence of the Japanese invaders. Land near the right people and they’d help you, but land near the wrong people and you’d be killed.
The Soviets were the Allies, too, although they were neutral with regards to Japan, and probably would have treated American crewmen decently. The fact that everyone involved in the equation would be white Caucasian would have probably helped as well (much easier to conceal white Americans in a place like the Soviet Union than in China).
The Soviet Union could not afford a two front war in 1942. Putting an ally in that kind of situation for what was essentially a propaganda coup could have damaged cooperation in Europe against Germany.
The Soviets were both desperate to keep Japan out of the war since they had to focus all their efforts against the Germans, and also Stalin still had a deep mistrust of the Western allies to begin with, fearing they might be deliberately provoking Japan into action against the Soviets to further weaken them.
The fate of the one plane crew that did make it to the Soviet Union is instructive, and pretty interesting to boot. From Wikipedia:
The 16th aircraft, commanded by Capt. Edward York (eighth off—AC #40-2242) flew to the Soviet Union and landed 40 miles (64 km) beyond Vladivostok at Vozdvizhenka, where their B-25 was confiscated and the crew interned.
Although York and his crew were treated well, diplomatic attempts to return them to the United States ultimately failed, as the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan and therefore obligated under international law to intern any combatants found on its soil. Eventually, they were relocated to Ashkhabad, 20 miles (32 km) from the Iranian border, and York managed to “bribe” a smuggler, who helped them cross the border into Iran, which at the time was under British-Soviet occupation. From there, the Americans were able to reach a nearby British consulate on 11 May 1943. 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 and unwilling to openly flout its treaty obligations with Japan in light of the fact that Vladivostok and the rest of the Soviet Far East were essentially defenseless in the face of any potential Japanese retaliation.
For reasons others have already stated Russia didn’t want a war with japan. They signed a non-aggression pact with japan in 1941. However they did help the american airmen who landed in Russia escape into british held Iran. Except the americans didn’t know the Russians were helping them. They thought they had escaped on their own. An NKVD officer posing as a civilian introduced them to a “smuggler” who dropped them at a border post. The airmen crawled through barbed wire to get into Iran. Unknown to the airmen the “border post” was a mock-up built so the airmen would not know they were being helped. There is a really good writeup on it in the April edition of World War II magazine.
In September, 1943, 51 crew from the US Eleventh Air Force began a two year stint in Kamchatka after being forced down in Soviet territory during a raid on the Kuriles. They weren’t treated harshly by the Russians, but like the rest of that country their rations and living conditions were pretty miserable. Given the choice, I would have taken my chances in China where I could be potentially rescued by US forces.
The Russians had good reason to suspect that Japan would furiously respond to them giving shelter to and repatriating American airmen. The Doolittle Raid was a tremendous embarrassment and loss of face for the Japanese, who took it out on the people of China after the U.S. airmen were given refuge there. An estimated quarter of a million Chinese were slaughtered in retaliation.
The one Doolittle raid crew that landed in Russia and had a lengthy internment there was treated
“decently” in that they weren’t starved or deprived of medical care, but conditions were harsh.
This part of the question is confusing. Conceal the airmen from whom? In the USSR they would be interned so there isn’t any need for concealment.
The reason was that the crews could get out of China but it was t thought they could get out of the USSR.
Most of the aircrew who made it to China were able to get out. The area they landed was in Chinese control although they couldn’t stop the Japanese from invading. There were actually Chinese airbases there which were in bomber range of Japan.
One of the earlier war plans being developed by the US would have included invading Formosa (Taiwan) in order to secure the sea and air around that part of China.
The Doolittle raid shocked Japan to its various vulnerabilities, including the potential for bombing from Chinese based airbases so Japan took that area.
“Took that area” is an understatement. From the same Wikipedia article cited earlier:
After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign (also known as Operation Sei-go) to prevent these eastern coastal provinces of China from being used again for an attack on Japan and to take revenge on the Chinese people. An area of some 20,000 sq mi (50,000 km2) was laid waste. “Like a swarm of locusts, they left behind nothing but destruction and chaos,” eyewitness Father Wendelin Dunker wrote. The Japanese killed an estimated 10,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle’s men. People who aided the airmen were tortured before they were killed. Father Dunker wrote of the destruction of the town of Ihwang: “They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10–65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it … None of the humans shot were buried either …” The Japanese entered Nancheng, population 50,000 on June 11, "beginning a reign of terror so horrendous that missionaries would later dub it ‘the Rape of Nancheng.’ " evoking memories of the infamous Rape of Nanjing five years before. Less than a month later, the Japanese forces put what remained of the city to the torch. “This planned burning was carried on for three days,” one Chinese newspaper reported, “and the city of Nancheng became charred earth.”
When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. Chinese estimates put the civilian death toll at 250,000. The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, plague infected fleas and dysentery pathogens. The Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 brought almost 300 pounds of paratyphoid an anthrax to be left in contaminated food and contaminated wells with the withdrawal of the army from areas around Yushan, Kinhwa and Futsin. Around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.
The Soviets were wise to stay off Japan’s shit list.
And next thing you know, Japan is allowing German agents to use Manchuria as a staging base for German saboteurs to attack weapons factories in Siberia. Helping American aircrews get home was not worth the risks.
Perhaps the Soviets, who would have been the ones to have to violate their obligations as a neutral power and thus borne all the risk, were not willing to rely on the US government to keep its press in line for what would doubtless be a major propaganda coup (yet another great story about the Doolittle Raid)? After all, if a leak makes it harder for the Soviets to stay out of the war against Japan…
(Put another way, if you’re thinking about this from the US perspective, you’ve got the wrong perspective).
Are you talking about the Manhattan Project? Because that had been infiltrated by the Soviets since Day 1.
Exactly! The Soviets really, really didn’t want to get involved in the war against Japan, who had already whomped them 40 years prior, until Hitler had been taken care of.
that is what the russians did essentially. the american airmen officially escaped from Russia into Iran. Unknown to them and the rest of the world the russians had engineered the escape. The airmen get to go home as heroes and the russians dont have to worry about the japanese response.
I’ve read that one planning proposal was to fly all the bombers to the Soviet Union and declare them to be part of the Lend-Lease assets being transfered there, but this was not adopted.
As that material was covered in the linked article and this GQ and not GD, I didn’t quote from the article.
There are some other good sources on that and I’ll try to find them later. Certainly Japanese war crimes are not as well understood by the casual reader.
The GQ answer seems to me that the planners’ intention was to get the crews back and the best bet was to have them land in territory then controlled by Chinese Nationalists.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, FDR was pushing for a retaliatory strike directly at the Japanese homeland to build American morale. It looks like the concept was proposed on January 10, 1942, so just a month after PH.
Reading the various accounts of the planning of the raid, its reported as given that they would fly on the China.
They seem to understand that there would reprisals against the Chinese but FDR wanted the attack.