It is a fantastic piece of historical writing
A Freeper recommended it to me and I pass it forward
Posted on 06/04/2023 6:12:16 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Battle of Midway, (June 3–6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft.
The Midway Islands were claimed for the United States on July 5, 1859, by Capt. N.C. Brooks. The coral atoll—consisting of Eastern Island and the larger Sand Island to the west—has a total land area of just 2.4 square miles (6.2 square km). Midway was formally annexed by the U.S. in 1867. A coal depot was established for transpacific steamers, but it was never used.
It was World War II which conclusively demonstrated the strategic importance of Midway. In 1940 the U.S. Navy began work on a major air and submarine base there. By the following year Eastern Island would boast three runways, while on Sand Island a seaplane hangar was built for a squadron of PBY Catalina flying boats.
So prominent was Midway in Japanese war planning that it was included in the opening offensive of the Pacific War on December 7–8, 1941. Roughly 12 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Ushio bombarded the power plant and seaplane hangar on Sand Island.
Despite a strategic setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4–8, 1942), the Japanese had continued with plans to seize the Midway Islands and bases in the Aleutians. Seeking a naval showdown with the numerically inferior U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku sent out the bulk of the Kidō Butai (“Mobile Force”), a massive carrier battle group under the command of Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi. The 4 heavy aircraft carriers Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu were supplemented by 2 light aircraft carriers, 2 seaplane carriers, 7 battleships, 15 cruisers, 42 destroyers, 10 submarines, and various support and escort vessels.
Their orders were to destroy the American fleet and invade Midway.
(Excerpt) Read more at britannica.com ...
Thanks for posting. That’s an excellent opening to the full article and I learned several things already.
A great battle. Many amazing reads on the battle.
It is a fantastic piece of historical writing
A Freeper recommended it to me and I pass it forward
Hollywood made two movies about the battle, which were both pretty good.
The Britannica article says the Japs lost many of their best pilots.
Parshall disagrees. He accessed Jap casualty lists. Amazingly few of their veteran pilots died at Midway.
It was the attritional battles around Guadalcanal, which began a couple months after Midway, that cost the Japs many of their best pilots.
The screenwriters didn’t have access to Parshall’s research.
They were great entertainment but were quite inaccurate in some respects.
Yes....... You have recited precisely what I mean
Most of what people think they know about Midway is not really correct
Damn...... I’m all het up now and have to go read it some more
Not really - they sucked: Hollywood can't make a realistic, accurate movie.
There’s a fascintating story behind the activities of the Hornet’s air groups that day. Excepting Torpedo 8 the entire lot of them missed the Japanese altogether. Torpedo 8 was able to attack only because of vsliant, but mutinous, actions of its commander John Waldron. There is still a mystery as to why Hornet’s skipper <Marc Mitscher basically fabricated his after action report.
Its too bad Hollywood is incapable of making a movie entirely based upon actual events. Truth is stranger & more interesting than fiction.
Yup, we won at Midway Island. If we had lost there and lost our carriers, we would have been in deep dodo.
Parshall’s thesis is the Japanese real loss was in skilled mechanics, a problem America did not have because almost so many American kids had a car or farm equipment which needded maintenance.
Wouldn’t you have loved to have watched Yamamoto’s response when he was told that four main carriers (comprising the core of the Kido Butai) had been ambushed by American carriers and destroyed? More than anyone else in the world, Yamamoto would have realized that in those minutes when the planes from the American carriers got through the defenses of the Japanese carriers to deliver lethal blows that the Japanese war efforts were ultimately doomed.
Agreed. I have read many, and “Shattered Sword” is indeed the best book on the subject, IMO.
It isn’t just that it debunks things like the concept that the Aleutians campaign was a feint by the IJN to lure out the carriers, it presents meaningful, detailed information that helps explain the unlikely outcome.
For example, most people (including me) did not know that there were fundamental differences in carrier operations between the US Navy and the IJN in their carrier operation cycles that contributed to the defeat.
Also, the Japanese had no real radio-directed CAP to direct the fighter protection in the more organized way the US Navy did, even that early on in the war. And even if they did, many of their fighter pilots either removed the radios in their fighters to save weight, refused to use them, didn’t know how to use them, or due to poor design, could not be used easily in active combat. I was particularly surprised to hear they directed their fighter cover by shooting their guns to attract the attention of pilots.
The differences in damage control techniques, ship design, etc. A rich, rich collection of formerly somewhat obscure but relevant, often highly relevant information.
As for movies, I thought the last one was well done, better than the older versions. I didn’t really cotton to the selection of the guy to play Halsey, but...I guess James Cagney has been dead many years now, so they couldn’t use him...:)
Either way, it cut into their pilot supply.
He probably expected it. After all, his “six months of running wild” by that time were up.
US Navy Crypto Group and the battle of Midway.
As in any great endeavor, luck did indeed play a role, but Nimitz’s “Incredible Victory” was no
miracle.
Gordon Prange, the distinguished historian, noted that “Midway was a positive American victory not merely the avoidance of defeat.”
General George Marshall, the U.S. Army
Chief of Staff, in his comments on the victory, perhaps said it best, “ as a result of Cryptanalysis
we were able to concentrate our limited forces to meet their naval advance on Midway when we otherwise would have been 3,000 miles out of place.”
In the end, Yamamoto’s worst fears had become a reality. Due to an impressive mix of
leadership, determination and skill on the part of Admiral Nimitz, the officers and men of Station
Hypo, and the pilots soldiers, sailors and marines who carried the fight to the enemy, Japan
would be on the defensive for the rest of the war.
Movies are, in the end, almost always focused on entertainment, not history, though when they can do both well, that is a good combination.
I never liked the original Midway movie shot a few decades ago, because I have a thing about visuals REALLY not matching, such as using the Texans as Japanese planes, or modern day ships as WWII era ships.
When they don’t outright lie and make things up out of whole cloth.
That said, I just re-watched the movie “Darkest Hour” about one of my heroes, Winston Churchill, and I was ashamed to admit that I absolutely loved a part of the movie they just fabricated out of thin air, the scene of Churchill riding the Underground.
Normally, that kind of thing would make me just turn the thing off, but I found it so fun and charming a fantasy that I actually accepted and enjoyed it. But it isn’t history, no doubt about that.
But if someone didn’t know history, and accepts it as such, well...it is like the time when my wife and I went to a theater to see “Apollo 13”, and as we were walking out, I heard a teenage girl in front of us say to her boyfriend “I was glad the movie ended the way it did...”
I still get a rueful chuckle about that, but it is a problem that people blindly accept movies as historical documents.
I still want to see a sweeping movie made about the Battle of Leyte Gulf. I think that would be a great movie, now that they know how to leverage CGI in a meaningful way. Never happen, but...I can always hope.
Maybe one day someone will write a screenplay based upon the CA-30 USS Houston. Her story is in the highest degree tragic. Which is also the title of a pretty good book related in part the circumstances of her end. Bascially she and her entire brave crew were part of a sacrifice DC made on the alter of geopolitics.
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