Vanishing ACT: The Enduring Mystery Behind the Legendary Doolittle Raid over Tokyo

A lingering question about one of WWII’s most famous bombing missions gets answered in this suspenseful account from historian Hampton (Valor). Four months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a squadron of B-25 bombers took flight from a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Pacific and headed for Tokyo. One plane, however, veered north toward the Soviet Union. Hampton debunks the official explanation—that, low on fuel, the plane needed to make an emergency landing. Citing conversations with copilot Bob Emmens’s grandson and with Japanese researchers, Hampton contends Plane 8 had a secret objective: to assess the feasibility of a Soviet airfield for use by American armed forces. He notes that pilot Ed York had a map of the area and describes how York had overseen a clandestine switch to a less fuel-efficient carburetor. The idea, Hampton contends, was that when they landed in the Soviet Union, the low fuel level in their tank would back up their cover story. Recreating the flight with dialogue and loads of technical details, Hampton captures the tension in the cockpit, depicting York as a suave mastermind who through no fault of his own lands himself and his crew in Soviet internment—a 13-month ordeal. Though Hampton sometimes pads the story with superfluous reflections (“With hindsight, Russia’s road to communism seems inevitable based on its recent three hundred years of history”), he still spins a good yarn. This WWII caper captivates. (May)

Correction: An earlier version of this review mistakenly referred to the dialogue between aircrew members as “imagined.”