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4/2/42 General Lewis Brereton, Commanding General, 10th AF, leads 3 Heavy Bombers on raid on enemy shipping in Andaman Island. The bombers claim hits on a cruiser and a transport. 2 US aircraft are damaged by anti-aircraft battery fire and fighters, but all return to base.
4/3/42 6 Heavy Bombers of the 10th AF from their base in Asansol bomb warehouses and docks at Rangoon, starting 3 large fires. 1 of the B-17s fails to return.
4/4/42 10 DC-3’s of Pan American Airways assisting the 10th AF, begin hauling 30,000 gals of fuel and 500 gals of lubricants from Calcutta, India to the airstrip at Asansol, completing the mission on the following day. This fuel, subsequently transferred via Dinjan to China, is for use by Lt. Colonel James H. Doolittle’s Tokyo raiders, already at sea aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet.
4/7/42 General George C. Marshall notifies General Chaney that the War Department officially states that the Eighth Air Force will be established in the United Kingdom (UK) as the intermediate command between USAFBI and the AF commands. During 6th through the 7th the Japanese break the Philippine II Corps front on the Bataan Peninsula, thus necessitating immediate removal of all remaining fighter planes to the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, where for the next 3 days they will fly recon, cover heavy bombers that have been sent to Mindanao from Australia. These aircraft operate against enemy concentrations at Legaspi, Cebu, Iloilo, and Davao. They also fly a strafing attack against aircraft at Davao. After the heavy bombers return to Australia on 12 April, the fighters will continue to fly recon missions until Japanese forces envelop the troops on Mindanao on 1 May.
4/8/42 Harry Hopkins, special diplomatic advisor to President Roosvelt and General George Marshall arrive in London for talks with British service and supply chiefs concerning integration of US and British manpower and war production for action in Europe. Gen. Marshall urges an offensive in the west to relieve pressure upon Russia, and promises a constant flow of US troops, including many air units, to the UK.
4/9/42 Eighth AF Headquarters (HQ) echelon is located at Bolling Field to prepare for their move overseas. In the Philippine Islands, Japanese capture the Bataan Peninsula after 3 months of fighting. US and Philippine forces surrender unconditionally. Japanese artillery emplaced on Bataan opens fire on the island of Corregidor in conjunction with air attacks.
4/12/42 General Hap Arnold commander of US Army Air Force sends air plans for Operation BOLERO, the movement of air and ground echelons to and establishment of 8th AF in Britain, to General Marshall in London. Fifth Air Force, Australia-based B-25’s, staging through the Philippine island of Mindanao, hit harbor and shipping at Cebu while B-17’s carry out single-bomber strikes from Mindanao against Cebu harbor and Nichols Field.
4/13/42 Fifth AF Australia-based B-25’s hit targets in the Philippine Islands for second consecutive day. Staging through Valencia the B-25’s take off just after midnight during 12/13 April and bomb Cebu shipping and installations at Davao. Later in the day the medium bombers again attack Davao, bombing the dock area. SOPAC Admiral Ghormley is assigned as COMSOPAC. He is to command all Allied base and local defense forces (land, sea, and air) in the South Pacific islands, with the exception of New Zealand (NZ) land defenses.
4/14/42 The British Government and Chiefs of Staff accept General Marshall’s BOLERO plan for Allied build-up in UK for attack on Germany.
4/15/42 Headquarters (HQ) of 8th Air Force, VIII BC (Bomber Command) is established in Wycombe Abbey, High Wycombe, England by General Ira Eaker.
4/16/42 Tenth AF Heavy Bombers take off from Dum Airfield near Calcutta to bomb Japanese at Rangoon. 6 B-17’s, guided by flares, bomb the target. Numerous searchlights make it impossible to estimate the bombing results.
4/18/42 Doolittle raid on Japan. 16 B-25’s launched from the US Navy aircraft carrier, Hornet, carry out first AAF attack on Japanese mainland. 15 of the B-25’s bomb in Japan, the principal targets being the cities of Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohoma, and Nagoya. This became known as the Doolittle Raid, led by Colonel James Doolittle. Since the bombers had to be launched earlier than scheduled they are unable to reach planned bases in China and have to be crash-landed or abandoned, 15 in enemy occupied areas of China and the other in the USSR.
4/18/42 Fifth AF units come under control of Allied AF (SWPA) Southwest Pacific Area which is created in Australia to control AAF, RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) and Dutch elements. General MacArthur assumes command of allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA).
4/20/42 General Brett assumes command of Allied AF, which has units based in North and East Australia, with advanced facilities in the Port Moresby area of New Guinea to the North of Australia.
4/22/42 Aircraft begin to evacuate military and civilian personnel and supplies from Burma to India. By 15 Jun the Tenth Air Force has evacuated 4,499 passengers and 1,733,026 pounds of freight.
4/22/42 In the Southern Pacific, a joint United States - New Zealand Naval Command was ordered established under Admiral Robert L. Ghormley. It was to operate separately but in close liaison with General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Herbert F. Leary.
4/27/42 ADVONs of HQ, Eighth AF and of bomber, fighter and base commands, along with the 15th Bomb Squadron, 2d Air Depot Group, and a weather detachment totaling about 1,800 men, sail from Boston for UK.
4/27/42 In Australia, 5th Air Force, US Army Air Services, under General Rush B. Lincoln, take over responsibility as an administrative, supply, maintenance, and engineering command under Allied Air Forces, Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA).
4/27/42 Eighth AF, VIII GASC is activated at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C.
4/29/42 Tenth AF heavy bombers strike dock areas in Japanese held Rangoon.
4/30/42 In Burma, Japanese capture Lashio and begin move to drive Chinese back along Burma road toward China and drive US and British forces back toward India.
4/30/42 In the US Zone of the Interior (ZI) ,the Air Transport Command (ATC) is established.
Q1: What was the Doolittle Raid?
A1: On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25 bombers launched from the USS Hornet carried out the first AAF attack on the Japanese mainland, striking Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, and Nagoya under the command of Colonel James Doolittle.
Q2: When did Bataan fall to Japanese forces?
A2: Bataan fell on April 9, 1942, after three months of fighting, when US and Philippine forces surrendered unconditionally following the collapse of the II Corps front.
Q3: What was Operation BOLERO?
A3: Operation BOLERO was the Allied plan, accepted by the British on April 14, 1942, for the large-scale buildup of American air and ground forces in Britain to support an eventual offensive against Germany.
Q4: What happened to the Doolittle Raiders after bombing Japan?
A4: Because the bombers launched earlier than planned, they could not reach their intended bases in China; 15 aircraft crash-landed or were abandoned in Japanese-occupied China and one landed in the USSR.
Q5: What new command was established in the US on April 30, 1942?
A5: The Air Transport Command (ATC) was established in the Zone of the Interior on April 30, 1942, to manage strategic airlift for the Army Air Forces.
April 1942: Bataan's Fall and America's First Blow Against Japan
a. The mood of the country
April 1942 delivered the single most emotionally charged pairing of events in the entire early-war period: the surrender of Bataan on April 9, followed just nine days later by the Doolittle Raid on April 18. The fall of Bataan, after three months of desperate resistance by starving, disease-ravaged American and Filipino troops, became a national trauma, compounded weeks later by public revelation of Japanese mistreatment of prisoners on the subsequent Bataan Death March. Against that backdrop, the Doolittle Raid landed with outsized psychological impact precisely because of its timing. Militarily modest in material damage, the raid was a calculated morale strike, giving the American public its first tangible proof that the war could be carried to the Japanese home islands, arriving at almost the exact moment public morale most needed such proof.
b. Economic situation and manufacturing capability
This chronology's logistics entries reveal an increasingly capable, if still improvised, wartime supply apparatus. The description of Pan American Airways DC-3s hauling 30,000 gallons of fuel and 500 gallons of lubricant from Calcutta to support the Doolittle mission illustrates how civilian aviation infrastructure was already being folded directly into military logistics operations, months before dedicated military airlift capacity caught up. The April 30 establishment of the Air Transport Command formalized this trend, creating a permanent institutional structure for the kind of ad hoc, mission-critical logistics support seen throughout this chronology. Manufacturing output was also beginning to translate into deployable striking power, evident in the ability to launch a genuinely audacious carrier-based bombing mission against the Japanese mainland just over four months after Pearl Harbor, a mission that would have been logistically and industrially impossible in December 1941.
c. Status, readiness, and supply of US armed forces
The loss of Bataan, following the Fifth Air Force's earlier evacuations from the Philippines and Java, effectively closed out the collapse of American airpower in the Southwest Pacific that had begun in December. The chronology's entry on continued fighter reconnaissance from Mindanao until Japanese forces enveloped remaining troops there on May 1 shows how thoroughly reduced American combat capability in the theater had become, down to scattered aircraft flying reconnaissance rather than organized combat operations. Simultaneously, the buildup toward Europe accelerated meaningfully: Operation BOLERO's formal British acceptance on April 14, and the sailing of the first Eighth Air Force advance echelons from Boston on April 27, mark the genuine beginning of American force projection into the European theater, even as the Pacific theater remained largely on the defensive.
d. Development of fighting men and command structures
April 1942 produced one of the war's most consequential command milestones: General MacArthur's April 18 assumption of command over Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, formalizing the theater command structure that would govern the Pacific counteroffensive for the rest of the war. The parallel establishment of Admiral Ghormley's South Pacific command on April 22 completed the basic geographic division of Pacific theater command that would persist through 1945. In personnel terms, the Doolittle Raid itself stands as a landmark case study in specialized training and command improvisation: volunteer crews trained intensively for a mission whose full purpose was kept secret even from most participants until they were at sea, reflecting the kind of rapid, high-stakes operational planning and personnel development the Army Air Forces was increasingly capable of just four months into the war.
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