Eighty brave men made a near-suicidal first attack on Japan about four months after Pearl Harbor.

• President Franklin Roosevelt wanted a quick response to the Japanese ambush on Hawaii to demonstrate to the Japanese that they were not invulnerable to attack, and to give a much-needed boost to American morale.
• Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle was selected to plan and lead the Raid from the USS Hornet.
• Much has been written about the daring raid and the frightening escape through China, but little has been written about these brave men's lives before and after the Raid.
• This collection of biographical sketches tells us much about who these men were.

Much of the biographical material was obtained from a private collection of Raider information and memorabilia that Ellen Lawson collected over a fifty-year period. Ellen was the widow of Maj. Ted Lawson—a Raider and author of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.