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To: Chainmail
That victory was a gift from God and razor-thin.

Yes it was. While D-Day was planned more than a year in advance, Midway's defense was slapped together in less than a month. Yorktown, badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea, did not even arrive at Pearl Harbor for repairs until May 27. That she could be made battle ready in less than a week was nothing sort of a miracle itself.

But contrast, two Japanese carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku who suffered lesser damage in the same battle took almost three MONTHS to repair and were in repair dock for the duration of the Midway battle as a result.

Side note: My father volunteered to join the naval air force the day after Pearl Harbor. They told him to come back a month later because the recruiting office could not process people fast enough. When he did, he was assigned to NAF training but washed out in May. However, he still did well enough that he was reassigned to OCS and spent the duration of the war in training before being assigned as communications officer on an LST, which saw hot action 1944-45. Had he passed, there is a good chance he would have fought at Midway and not survived.

56 posted on 06/03/2019 7:48:11 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (The politicized state destroys all aspects of civil society, human kindness and private charity.)
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To: Vigilanteman

Yorktown, badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea, did not even arrive at Pearl Harbor for repairs until May 27. That she could be made battle ready in less than a week was nothing sort of a miracle itself.


Not a miracle but the result of ‘round the clock work that consumed so much electricity Honolulu had to go into rolling power outages. Workmen where still on board finishing up when the Yorktown sailed out of Pearl.

When Nimitz asked the yardmaster how long it would take to repair the Yorktown, the yardmaster told him three months. Nimitz said, “You’ve got three days.”


77 posted on 06/03/2019 9:49:43 AM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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