Posted on 12/01/2019 3:22:05 PM PST by Retain Mike
Ping!
Some more things I learned in my research.
There were Japanese planes that had to ditch as they had no carriers to land on after we destroyed them.
Japanese naval journalists were not allowed to report anything about the Midway action. All sailors who knew what happened at Midway were never allowed to return to Japan for the rest of the war. The wounded who were taken back to Japan were restricted to those base hospitals until the end of the war. The Japanese leaders were that scared of the damage to morale any news of the Midway defeat would cause to the general public.
Forgot to add that I saw the new movie and it was worth my time and money.
A passing thought. If you don’t believe in God and the USA explain Midway. Reading history throughout WW2, I cannot figuare out any other way than Devine intervention. The forming of the USA also points directly to our getting help. God, guts, and guns. Our soldiers then and now are the best.
I have read a couple of books by Japanese pilots. One by Saburo Sakai and another by a torpedo bomber pilot. Both tell of extremely tough training and very high washout rate.
After the war heated up they quit it but too late. I think they really were great pilots but also think they understated Japanese brutality. Also read that no one believes Sakai really shot down 60 planes, but he may have really thought he did.
When at UVA in 1962, my roommate dated a lady named Missy Spruance from Sweetbriar, daughter of the famed Admiral, although he was lesser known to the public then.
I thought that the articles was referring to the relatively light damage to the port itself. If the Japanese had lauched a third wave to attack the oil storage and drydocks the fleet would have had to pull back to San Fancisco or San Diego.
I wouldn't call it a race war. Sure, there was plenty of racism on both sides, but since before biblical times, it has been pretty standard to paint your enemy as an evil monster. By WW2, everyone was pretty good at it. Killing your fellow man is hard, and damaging to the soul. Killing a monster, like the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis, was easy, and you felt much less tortured by it. This went on through Korea, Vietnam, and still goes on in today's wars in the middle east, even to the point of teaching Pali children in school that the Jews aren't even human. Killing without hate is much harder than with it. The challenge is to restore the enemy's humanity after you have won the war. That takes generations.
Here are some additional combat photos of the B-17 bomb misses.
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/events/wwii-pac/midway/mid-4d.htm
Oops. I left out that the newspapers were dated Monday December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor.
Sounds like German Uboat tactics. If you have the time and are inclined read “Clear The Bridge”. By O’Kane about USS Tang. An old submariners motto “if it bigger than a shitcan and floats, it’s a target”. :)
I read this book, probably 20 or more years ago. It was a great read and extensively researched, using the surviving deck logs of both US and Japanese ships, as well as interviews with ship's crew members and pilots. Definitely worth the time to read for anyone interested. The same pilot also wrote a similarly researched book on the Doolittle Raid titled "Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor".
The American torpedoes really were a disgrace. Everyone else’s were fine.
The ship my Father’s battalion crossed the English channel on was torpedoed but they were somehow able to set it off before it hit. It still almost turned the LST over and forced it to return to England. May have saved their lives as combat engineers suffered really heavy casualties on D-Day.
They landed several days later when there was almost no fighting going on.
The survivors from the Indianapolis will testify to that.
The Yorktown wasn’t supposed to be available for Midway because of the damage sustained at Coral Sea, but it was made ready in 48hrs instead of the expected 3 weeks.
Their damage control was almost non existent
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