 but the carriers had been spotted by a Japanese fishing boat that had been blown out of the water, but you couldn't be sure they hadn't gotten a radio message off already. So the decision was made to launch Doolittle way too far away. It meant they were going to have to come over to Tokyo, drop their bombs, and then too far to fly back to the carriers, so they'd have to continue on into China to try to get to as far into China as the unoccupied parts.