 operation under the command of the army air force's most famous pilot general james do little he'd been training his men for a couple of months for this how to take B-25s off of the deck of an aircraft carrier it seemed impossible to get a big two engine bomber fully loaded with fuel and bombs off of the aircraft carrier but they practiced down in florida and got pretty good at it and then practiced at sea and got so they could do it and on april eighteenth they launched too far away from the target