Battle of Midway

Battle of Midway
Part of World War II, Pacific War
U.S. Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber at Midway U.S. Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber at Midway
Date June 4 – June 7 1942 Location Vicinity of Midway Island Result U.S. tactical and strategic victory
Belligerents
United States	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Frank J. Fletcher Raymond A. Spruance	Chuichi Nagumo Isoroku Yamamoto
Strength
Three carriers, about 50 support ships	Four carriers, about 150 support ships
Casualties and losses
1 carrier, 1 destroyer sunk; 307 killed	4 carriers, 1 cruiser sunk; 2,500 killed

The Battle of Midway took place on June 5, 1942 (June 4 – June 7 in U.S. time zones). Only one month after the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the Pacific War (1937–1945).

The Japanese attack on Midway, which also included a feint to Alaska by a smaller fleet, was a ploy by the Japanese to lure the American carrier fleet into a trap. The Japanese hoped to avenge the bombing of the Japanese home islands two months earlier during the Doolittle Raid (an air raid on Tokyo), plug the hole in their Eastern defensive perimeter formed by U.S. control of Midway, finish off the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and perhaps even take Hawaii. Had the Japanese achieved their objective at Midway, the northeastern Pacific Rim would have been essentially defenseless against the Japanese Navy, since the remaining U.S. naval ships were fully deployed halfway around the world in the North Atlantic. However, the Midway attack, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, was not part of a campaign for the conquest of the United States mainland, but for the elimination of the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, in order to gain for Japan a free hand in establishing regional hegemony, its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Before the Battle

Midway itself was not especially important in the larger scheme of Japan's intentions: they were keen on concentrating on invading New Caledonia, the Samoa Islands, and Fiji, in order to isolate Australia, so as to help expand and consolidate their newly-acquired SE Pacific territory. However, the Midway Islands were the closest remaining U.S. base to Japan, and would therefore be strongly defended by the U.S.

7 December 1942

On 7 December, 1942 two destroyers "Sazanami" and "Ushio" commanded by Commodore Koname Konishi started a 23 minute artillery bombardment. The Sixth Marine coastal defense battalion returned fire with 76 mm and 127 mm artillery and scored hits on both enemy ships.

The Plan

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's battle plan was typically complicated and intricate. Like most Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) strategic doctrine, it was designed, in part, to lure major parts of the U.S. Fleet into a fatally compromising situation. Yamamoto's main force of battleships and cruisers trailed his carriers, and was intended to take out whatever part of the U.S. Fleet might come to Midway's support. The execution was rushed in response to the "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo by U.S. Army B-25's flying from a U.S. carrier in April, a severe psychological shock, demonstrating the Japanese military could not prevent attacks against the Japanese home islands. Yamamoto's plan was predicated on the idea that Enterprise and Hornet, forming Task Force 16, were the only carriers available to the US Pacific forces at the time, since Lexington had been sunk and Yorktown had been severely mauled at the Battle of the Coral Sea just a month earlier; and Saratoga was unavailable, undergoing repairs on the West Coast after taking torpedo damage.

The military buildup

By May 1941 from the airfield on Midway operated:

United States Navy

• 14 PBY-5 Catalina,seaplanes
  • and 2 Dutch PBY-5 Catalina seaplanes evacuated from Dutch West India.

United States Army Air Force

• 4 B-26 Marauder, medium bombers
• 17 B-17 Flying Fortress, heavy bombers

United States Marine Corps

• 19 Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless, dive bombers
• 17 Chance-Vought SB2U-3 Vindicator, dive bombers
• 21 Brewster F2A Buffalo, fighters
• 7 Grumman F4F-3A Wildcat, fighters

U.S. Intelligence

U.S. naval intelligence (in cooperation with the British and Dutch) had been reading parts of the primary Imperial Japanese Navy communications system (JN-25, an enciphered code) for some time, and since the most recent version changed just before the Pearl Harbor attack, had made considerable progress on the new version. The abundance of radio intelligence harvested from the Japanese Navy’s "wild-goose chase" of the Doolittle Raid task force, further compromised JN-25. By May, the Americans knew that the Japanese were preparing to launch a massive offensive in early June, and could hope to ambush them. One code element was unclear, however. Location AF was clearly to be the major point of attack, but it was unclear where AF was. Some at Hypo were convinced it was Midway; others, mainly at OP-20-G in Washington, believed AF to be in the Aleutian Islands. However, there was no cryptographic way of settling the issue. An ingenious suggestion by a young officer, Jasper Holmes, at Station Hypo, helped discover the Japanese plan. He asked the Midway base commander to radio Pearl Harbor, in a compromised cypher, reporting drinking water was running low, due to a breakdown of the water plant. An intercept not long after noted AF had fresh-water problems, and the attack force should plan accordingly. AF was therefore identified.

Information from JN-25 decrypts came in slowly, and not until the very last minute CINCPAC Admiral Chester Nimitz had enough information to put together an ambush for the Midway attack force. He had Vice Admiral William Halsey's two-carrier task force—but Halsey himself was stricken with skin disease, and had to be replaced with Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Halsey's escort commander).

Nimitz called back Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's task force from the South West Pacific Area. Yorktown (CV-5) had been severely damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea, but Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard worked around the clock to patch up the carrier. In 72 hours Yorktown was transformed from a barely-operational wreck, headed for a long stay at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, into a working (if still compromised) aircraft carrier. Her flight deck was patched, whole sections of internal beams were cut out and replaced, and a new air group was put on her, from the naval station's own planes. Admiral Nimitz showed total disregard for established procedure in getting his third and last available carrier ready for battle—repairs continued even as Yorktown sortied. Just three days after pulling into drydock at Pearl Harbor, the ship was again under steam, as its band played "California, Here I Come".

Meanwhile, as a result of their participation in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku was laid up, at Truk in the Caroline Islands, waiting for an air group to be brought to her to replace her destroyed planes, while the lightly damaged Shokaku was awaiting repairs. Yamamoto's haste placed scouting submarines out of position and left insufficient time to refit Shokaku, while his dispositions, in keeping with typical naval doctrine at the time, put his carriers in the van, his battleships well back for the "decisive battle" (per Mahan). This crippled Nagumo's scouting (most scout planes were with the battleship escort force); when Nimitz did not react exactly as Yamamoto had planned, Nagumo would not know until it was too late. (Yamamoto, at sea in Yamato, would be unable to warn him in any case, for fear of breaking radio silence.) Nimitz, by contrast, knew exactly where Nagumo was, thanks to the (often-neglected) PBYs, and kept Fletcher (his "senior officer present afloat") in the picture from shore headquarters (where Yamamoto should have stayed).

USS Yorktown is hit by an aerial torpedo

The Battle

Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo launched his initial air attacks at dawn on June 4; Japanese carrier aircraft bombed and heavily damaged the U.S. base on Midway. American long-range bombers based on Midway, including B-17s, made several attacks on the Japanese, with little effect, and Midway-based fighter pilots, many flying outmatched obsolete Brewster F2As (British name, Buffalo), made a heroic defense of Midway. These efforts by Midway-based aircraft led the Japanese strike leader to signal Nagumo another mission would be necessary to neutralize the defenses, before the landing task force (proceeding independently from the southwest) could land troops.

Land-based planes from Midway had also attacked the Japanese task force, including six TBF Avengers in their first combat operation (five were shot down), B-26 Marauders (armed with torpedoes), and high-flying B-17 Flying Fortresses. The Japanese shrugged off these attacks with almost no losses or battle damage.

Coupled with these attacks, the message from his air group commander persuaded Nagumo to order his on-deck reserve planes (armed with torpedos, in case American ships were sighted) be taken below and re-armed with general purpose contact bombs for use on land targets. Now, Yamamoto's flawed dispositions and Nagumo's inadequate scouting resources came to roost. Partway through rearming, a scout plane from the cruiser Tone, which had been delayed 30 minutes due to catapult problems, signalled the discovery of a sizable American naval force to the east.

Nagumo now had half his reserve force armed with contact bombs (which would be useless in an attack on armored ships), and the initial strike winging back for its return. The admiral made the fateful decision to wait for his first strike force to land, then properly remount his forces for an overwhelming strike on the newly-sighted enemy ships, even though Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, leading Carrier Division 2 (Hiryu and Soryu) and considered the heir to Admiral Yamamoto, signalled to Nagumo that he recommended striking immediately with the forces at hand.

With fuel hoses snaking across their hangar decks as refuelling operations were hastily completed, the Japanese carriers were at their most vulnerable. Adding to their peril, the change from torpedoes to bombs and back again resulted in volatile munitions being simply stacked on the deck and not returned and stowed safely in the magazines.

With Fletcher in overall command from Yorktown, but led by Spruance in Enterprise, who had better knowledge of the present operational situation, U.S. carrier forces had the advantage of knowing, through decryption of Japanese Navy communications, the enemy plans and intentions. Spruance had launched a pre-emptive attack from his carriers Enterprise and Hornet against the Japanese carriers. Anti-aircraft fire and fighters shot down 35 out of 41 TBD Devastator torpedo bombers, including every plane of Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8 (see also George Gay). These slow and vulnerable torpedo-bombers had gotten separated from the other American carrier planes, including their protective fighter screen, and were thus attacking unescorted, and barely above sea level.

The only hope the Americans had was their dive bombers, of which squadrons from the three US carriers were in the air. Some pilots had lost their bombs, however, after testing new electric arming switches over the ocean, and pilots had not been given accurate directions to the Japanese fleet. Following a Japanese destroyer which had been attacking an American submarine (the Submarine Force's only significant contribution to the battle), Commander Wade McClusky managed to put his SBD Dauntless dive-bombers from Enterprise overhead just as refuelling was completed and aircraft for the second strike were about to take off.

The eight earlier attacks had brought the defending Zeros fighters down low, almost to sea level. A cascade of lucky breaks gave the US dive bombers a clear run at their targets, devoid of air cover and covered with aviation fuel and stacked ordnance. In an incredible six minutes, the SBDs made their attack runs and left three Japanese carriers—Akagi, Kaga and Soryu— ablaze from stem to stern, scoring multiple dive-bomb hits. All three carriers would be abandoned and sunk. The core cadre of elite Japanese pilots, painstakingly trained in the prewar years, and responsible for much of the Japanese success of the first six months of the war in the Pacific, were killed or incapacitated, while still aboard their ships.

During the events of the morning, Hiryu had become separated from the three other now-sinking carriers. Undamaged, this carrier was able to launch a small strike on Yorktown, which was severely damaged. Yorktown survived both this and a second attack, only to be sunk during salvage efforts by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine on June 7. The same torpedo salvo sank the destroyer Hammann, which had been assigned to remain with Yorktown. With Yorktown damaged and abandoned, full command of the battle passed from Fletcher to Spruance. Aircraft from Enterprise in turn attacked Hiryu and set her ablaze, and damaged the destroyer Isokaze.

As darkness fell, both sides took stock, and made tentative action plans. Yamamoto initially decided to continue the effort, and sent a cruiser raiding force to bombard the island that night. Having lost four carriers, which were both the heart of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the air cover for his surface forces, however; he changed his mind and recalled the force.

Spruance, in tactical command, decided to maintain his position off Midway, close enough to intercept any Japanese moves toward the island, but maintaining enough distance so as to not run into a night action with the more powerful Japanese surface forces still in the area, which his carriers were impotent against at night.

While beating its retreat in close column at night, the Japanese cruiser Mogami failed to adjust its course correctly for a column turn, and rammed the port quarter of the cruiser Mikuma. The following morning, Spruance's scout planes discovered the two crippled cruisers, and Spruance launched a strike. Mikuma was sent to the bottom, while Mogami managed to successfully fend off the bombers, and live to fight another day.

Aftermath

Having scored a decisive victory, American forces retired. The loss of four fleet carriers—leaving only Zuikaku and Shokaku—stopped the expansion of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific, and put Japan on the defensive. What made it a turning point for the Japanese Navy was that they lost their dominating force of large numbers of carriers with well-trained pilots, and from this, the Japanese would never recover.

Hiryu under B-17 attack (it would be a similar sight for dive bombers)

Impact on War

Midway is called the turning point of the Pacific War. Although this is clear in hindsight, it may not have been obvious at the time. The IJN was still stronger than the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and won the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands later that year.

Midway's true relevance became clearer as the war progressed. The Imperial Japanese Navy never really recovered from the loss of four fleet carriers, and while the the crew of Yorktown mostly managed to escape, many highly-experienced crewmen from the Japanese carriers were lost. Far worse for the Japanese war effort overall, Admiral Yamaguchi - one of the most intelligent and capable men of the Japanese officer corps - went down with his ship, while Admiral Fletcher survived the loss of Yorktown and continued to be a prominent commander in the American Pacific war effort. Both the US and Japanese navies were considerably reduced in striking power by the battle - the U.S. Navy would boast only one carrier in the Pacific in the latter half of 1942 - but the Japanese were unable to exploit their numerical advantage.

The true importance of the Battle of Midway can be assessed by examining the counter-factual of assuming the destruction of the US aircraft carrier fleet. The United States would likely have had to devote much greater resources to rebuilding their aircraft carrier fleet, possibly delaying amphibious operations in the Mediterranean and at Normandy. Some feel that technological advances in other areas, such as the Manhattan Project, may also have been impacted by the necessity of reforming naval power in the Pacific, perhaps increasing the length of the war by years or even preventing the unconditional surrender of Japan.

The battle also demonstrated, along with the attack on Force Z and the Battle of the Coral Sea, the superiority of naval air power over direct ship-to-ship combat and the importance of adequate naval anti-aircraft defences. While aircraft carriers had become the primary striking power of naval fleets, battleships were still notoriously difficult to sink by aircraft, especially as anti-aircraft became substituted for surface weapons on large ships.

Discovery

On May 19, 1998, Robert Ballard and a team of scientists and Midway veterans (including Japanese participants) succeeded in locating and photographing Yorktown. The ship is remarkably intact for a vessel that sank in 1942; much of the original equipment, and even the original paint scheme are still visible on the ship.

Movies

The Battle of Midway has been covered by several motion pictures. The best-known of these is Midway (USA, 1976), directed by Jack Smight, which generally portrays the events fairly accurately (except for a preposterous romance, the presence of F4Us which were not even operational yet, and the promotion of Rochefort to Fleet Intelligence Officer). The first film about the battle was filmed by famous director John Ford who captured color motion picture footage during the actual battle itself, releasing an award winning documentary called Battle of Midway in 1942.

See also

• Midway order of battle

Further reading

• Lord, Walter. Incredible Victory. Burford: New Jersey. ISBN 1580800599.
• Prange, Gordon W. Miracle at Midway. Penguin: New York. ISBN 0140068147. The comprehensive gold standard of Battle of Midway history.
• Ballard, Robert D. and Archbold, Rick. Return to Midway: The quest to find Yorktown and the other lost ships from the pivotal battle of the Pacific War. Madison Press Books: Toronto ISBN 0792275004
• Hanson, Victor D. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. Doubleday: New York ISBN 0385500521
• Kahn, David. The Codebreakers, The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet. Scribner: NY ISBN 0684831309 (Significant section on Midway).
• Cook, Theodore F., Jr. (2000). "Our Midway disaster". In Robert Cowley (Ed.), What if?. Macmillan: London ISBN 0333751833.
• Fuchida, Mitsuo and Masatake Okumiya. Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 1955. ISBN 0870213725
• Wilmott, Chester. The Barrier and the Javelin. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 1983.

External links

• Battle of Midway
• The Japanese report on the battle
• Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway Contemporary revisionist history from the Japanese persective
• WW2DB: The Battle of Midway
• Midway (1976) at IMDb
• Battle of Midway Movie (1942) - Actual combat footage taken by John Ford during WWII.
• Naval Historical Center Midway Page.
• Midway Chronolgy