The plan was to launch roughly 500 miles from the home islands, leaving the B-25s with plenty of fuel to find their targets, release their bomb loads, and make it to China. Unfortunately, when the convoy was spotted by the Japanese defense network, the planes were forced to launched 150 miles further from Japan than expected.

The targets were military production installations in and near Tokyo, the Japanese capital. The crews had strict orders not to bomb civilian targets or the Imperial Palace. All but one crew managed to hit military targets, but because they had to launch early, they found themselves flying towards China in the dark instead of the early morning light. Fifteen of the crews crash-landed in China; one crew made an emergency landing in Russia and was taken prisoner.