If you didn't know Thursday April 18th marked the 70th anniversary of the "Doolittle Raid" on Japan.  On the morning of April 18th, 1942, 16 North American B-25B Mitchell bombers launched a daring raid on the Japanese home islands.  Trying the unheard of technique of launching their B-25's from the deck of an aircraft carrier (USS Hornet, CV-8), the raiders dealt the first blow to Japan since the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Led by the legendary Lt. Col Jimmy Doolittle, the 80 airmen had to depart the Hornet some 170 nautical miles from their intended launch position due to Hornet's task force sighting the Japanese picket boat Nitto Maru.  The aircraft went on to strike targets in Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka.  15 of the 16 bombers proceeded to China and either ditched or crashed, with one Mitchell bomber landing in the Soviet Union near Vladivostok.  This daring raid, while doing little physical damage to Japan's war efforts was a huge boost to the American morale after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.       

Here are a couple of images I processed for the Doolittle Raid anniversary from the 2010 Airpower over Arkansas airshow and the DAV's B-25....enjoy. 

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The second part of this blog entry is photo editing.  If you're a fan of aviation photography and you haven't visited Fencecheck.com, you need to.  It's a great place to enjoy some great images, and learn some useful tips.  Several "how to" threads have been started dealing with various photo editing topics, I thought our audience might enjoy these:  

Some "quick fixes" when opening an image. 

Tutorial on curves for contrast. 

Tutorial on using exposure sliders (JPEG and RAW). 

Reducing noise in images (JPEG and RAW).