How many troops were in the battle of Doolittle Raid?

Answer 1

The Doolittle Raid wasn't a "battle" - and really there were no "troops" in it. A "battle" is an armed confrontation between two or more groups. The groups can be small or large. The word usually refers to a conflict on land but is sometimes applied to naval engagements at sea and even more rarely, to air campaigns (the Battle of Britain is the only one that comes to mind at the moment). It usually refers to combat during formally declared wars, but it can also describe small-scale conflicts between police and rioters, for example.

A "raid," on the other hand, is a much more specific term. It applies to a mission undertaken by a small force with the intent to disrupt operations or cause panic in enemy territory - typically in less-heavily guarded areas.

"Troops" is a collective term (like a "flock" of birds) referring to a group of soldiers. Properly used, it refers only to the army and it's only used in the plural. That's why there were none in the Doolittle Raid. That was a bombing mission in 1942 carried out by navy pilots and crews flying army bombers. It is a famous action because it was a direct response to the attack on Pearl Harbor; the bombs were dropped on Tokyo, the Japanese capital; and the planes weren't designed to take off from an aircraft carrier - but that was the only way to get them close enough to hit Tokyo with any hope of surviving the mission. (They couldn't return to the carrier - they had to fly over Japanese-held coastal Asia into China.)

With only 16 bombers and crews totalling 80 men, the raid was militarily insignificant but it had enormous value for building American military confidence and public support.