Posted on 06/04/2012 9:36:03 PM PDT by Rabin
Six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan sent aircraft carriers to the Pacific atoll of Midway. Despite those odds, the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers the first day of the three-day battle and put Japan on the defensive. And though intelligence was a key reason behind a U.S. victory, other factors came into play, such as brave heroics by Navy dive bomber pilots.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
http://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.179520.1338811914!/image/1537811153.JPG_gen/derivatives/landscape_400/1537811153.JPG
June 1942 file photo, a Mogami class Japanese cruiser
Snip: http://www.midwayisland.com/
r.
The bigger heros were the torpedo plane crews that drew down the Japanese zeros to the surface of the ocean so the dive bombers would have a much easier time. Very few torpedo plane crews survived.
If things had gone the other way at Midway, Japan could have developed a useable atom bomb before we did. That would have been bad.
I had the honor of shaking the hand of Ens. Gay , the lone survivor of Torpedo Sq 8, at a Confederate Airshow back in the 70’s He watched the final attack from under a seat cushion
“Midway that changed the course of the Pacific war, according to The Associated Press.”
“According”????????????
Geez AP, show some respect....there is no “According” about it.
4 flattops destroyed the first day and that isn't a total reversal of momentum?????
Anyway, I'm very thankful, my first Father-in-Law was a officer at Normandy and Inchon. If you had put the proper hat, aviator glasses, uniform, and corn cob pipe on him, he could have been a double for General Douglas MacArthur.
Yamamoto’s estimate was that he would enjoy military success for approximately six months following Pearl Harbor. That was a damned good guess.
Self serving plug: please check out my novel “Halsey’s Bluff” which is a counter factual about the Battle of Midway in which Halsey is in command, the U.S. loses, and THEN the battle really starts. It has been endorsed by the Battle of Midway Roundtable.
I wish someone like Spielburg would do another Midway movie, his special effects in “Redtails” was perfect.
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