According to the documentary Going Hollywood: The War Years, for this movie, the MGM studio recreated the section of an air craft carrier flat top on a sound stage large enough to fit four genuine B25 bomber planes whilst a whole sixty foot miniature was also built, placed in the studio tank doubling as the ocean. Moreover, this special effects Academy Award winning movie utilized model planes, hydraulic jacks, wires, motors, pulleys, and a miniature model of Tokyo used to show the bombing of that city with mini explosions.
Actual footage of the B-25 Mitchell bombers taking off from the U.S.S. Hornet was used in the film.
Debut of John Dehner.
Scenes of Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle briefing the B-25 crews on the USS Hornet show a hornet's nest on a branch in the background on the overhead behind Doolittle's left. The presence of the hornet's nest, while possibly a tribute, is an accurate detail. The book upon which the movie is based mentions a dried up hornet's nest hanging nearby as Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle was speaking. The actual Hornet was sunk in 1942 soon after the raid.
The MGM composer Herbert Stothart quotes the catchy title song from the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical "Oklahoma" a number of times in his background score for this 1944 film. As none of the fliers came from that state, no one has ever determined whether it was a bit of unconscious plagiarism on his part, or a subliminal tribute to Americana.
The real Ted Lawson showed-up the day the scenes of Van Johnson's character (Ted Lawson) was having his leg amputated. The mood around the set was quiet and tense.
The scars visible on Van Johnson's forehead at the end of the film are not makeup, they're real. He was involved in a near-fatal car accident the previous year just after filming A Guy Named Joe. The filmmakers chose to accentuate rather than hide these scars for the post-mission half of the movie, since his character Ted Lawson was quite banged up, too. They're particularly evident in the last scene of the movie when he's on the floor talking with his wife.
This film represents one of four movies made by Hollywood during the 1940s which were about or related to the USA military's Dolittle Raid on Tokyo, Japan during World War II. The four movies (the first three considered "fictionalized") are Destination Tokyo; The Purple Heart; Bombardier and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, the latter being the most accurate and least fictionalized of the four.
Twice while the Ruptured Duck is flying over Japan the crew spots Japanese fighter planes and tenses for an attack, but both times the fighters ignore them. This is factual. In an unbelievable coincidence, the Japanese had planned a major air raid drill for the same time in Tokyo, and the fighters thought the American B-25s were part of the drill until the bombs started exploding. Also, according to the book upon which the movie is based the planes' crews were told prior to the mission that there was a slight chance that the Japanese would not recognize them and react because the Japanese air force had a bomber very similar to the B-25.
When Lawson's plane arrives in "Tokyo" and sees the fire and smoke from the previous bomber, Davy Jones, we are not looking at a special effect. During the making of the film, there was a fuel-oil fire in Oakland, near the filming location. The quick-thinking filmmakers scrambled to fly their camera plane and B-25 through the area, capturing some very real footage for the movie.