I saw it a few weeks ago.
It’s a great movie and historically accurate.
10/10.
We saw it few weeks ago. Great movie, very informative. Highly recommend you go see it.
I actually learned something from the movie. I thought they had made a mistake, but it was I who was mistaken. The Arashi was where it was for a different reason than I thought.
The first sentence of the second paragraph is about thee “public perception” of what happened on 12/7/41 was wrong. What public perception? The American people knew that Pearl Harbor and Hawaii were attacked by the Japanese and that the U.S.S. Arizona was lost. They did not know that 4 battleships were sunk and more than 2,000 Americans were killed. Why would the Navy share that information with the enemy?
I’ve always wondered what the orders were to the Japanese pilots flying Combat Air Patrol?
Were they all supposed to go after the first targets?
Clearer orders to them (“Half go after the Torpedo planes the other half go after dive bombers.”) might have made a big difference.
The training for the Japanese Navy Pilots was superb.
They had not built up a reserve of trained pilots because their selection methods were so strict and their training program so long.
Just like the President now, Admiral Nimitz, his commanders, his sailors & airmen were the right men at the right place at the right time.
They were utterly astounded at the Torpedo Bomber squadron that sacrificed themselves so they could try to sink the carriers (with that crappy torpedo!). We also showed them that we actually had more bravery, courage, and honor than the Japanese themselves....they were willing to sacrifice their whole country because they didn't reckon on America being willing to die for their country.
I watched a You Tube video by a guy who I think was German. It lasted something like 48 minutes. A lot of reasons we won but I think the main one was the Japanese greatly underestimated the American’s aggressiveness.
Thank you for this reminder of great men who served and preserved our nation
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.
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.
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 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.
Excellent write up!
I need to get out and see the new movie. My dad was a torpedo man on the Yorktown, his job was to arm and mount the torpedo to the plane. He spent the rest of the war on a highly decorated Destroyer which was sent to Guadalcanal several months after Midway.