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Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
ThirtySecondsOverTokyo.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Produced by Sam Zimbalist
Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo
Based on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo by Ted W. Lawson and Robert Considine
Starring Van Johnson
Robert Walker
Spencer Tracy
Music by Herbert Stothart
Cinematography Robert Surtees, ASC
Harold Rosson, ASC
Edited by Frank Sullivan
Production
company
Loew's Inc.
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • November 15, 1944 (1944-11-15)
Running time
138 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $2.9 million
Box office $6.2 million

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a 1944 American war film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is based on the true story of the Doolittle Raid, America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan four months after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Mervyn LeRoy directed Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Sam Zimbalist produced the film. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo was based on the 1943 book of the same name, written by Captain Ted W. Lawson, a pilot who participated in the raid. In both the book and the film, Lawson gives an eyewitness account of the training, the mission, and the aftermath as experienced by his crew and others who flew the mission on April 18, 1942. Lawson piloted "The Ruptured Duck", the seventh of 16 B-25s to take off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet aka, "Shangri-La."

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo stars Van Johnson as Lawson, Phyllis Thaxter as his wife Ellen, Robert Walker as Corporal David Thatcher, Robert Mitchum as Lieutenant Bob Gray and Spencer Tracy as Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, the man who planned and led the raid. The film is noted for its accurate depiction of the historical details of the raid, as well as its use of actual wartime footage of the bombers in some flying scenes.

In February 1942, just two months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Army Air Forces plan to retaliate by bombing Tokyo and four other Japanese cities—taking advantage of the fact that US aircraft carriers can approach near enough to the Japanese mainland to make such an attack feasible.


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