Long ago, Landmark Books published a story titled “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” which recounts the experiences of one Ted Lawson, pilot of the B-25 christened “The Ruptured Duck,” before, during, and after the Doolittle B-25 raid early in the War. The account is autobiographical, though I suspect that Landmark Books encouraged Lawson to write a version that could be marketed to younger readers, like the rest of their titles.
The book’s title, while somewhat cheesy, does allude to the fact that the bulk of the story pertains to their extensive training before the fact, and the months of traveling across rural China with nasty injuries and a single leg afterward.
The book was made into a movie not long after, though I do not expect that the adaptation is any good.
Even so, the book is still better than “Pearl Harbor.”
If you’re picky about details, you will find PH’s rendering of the Doolittle raid nothing short of grating.
There was another book that I read about the same time that was a series of vignettes, reconstructed from the diaries of soldiers throughout the war. I do not remember what it was called, but it’s out there.
@CyanoticWasp You’ve read Guadalcanal Diary!? My dad found that for me when I was going through a WWII phase. The same exact copy, we surmised, that he read when he was a kid. Read that thing to bits.
I’ve never met anybody else who’s even heard of it.