It is a fantastic piece of historical writing
A Freeper recommended it to me and I pass it forward
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.
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.
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.
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.
Encyclopedia Britannica isn't what it used to be.
This satire was cribbed from FreeRepublic: https://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/military_jokes_200510220.asp
It is amazing that the US military has such capacity to collect every form of electronic communications on the planet. Too bad that the communists have taken over the USA and are now using it against us.
Not enough credit was given to the USS Yorktown damage control group.
They were able to get an already damaged Yorktown from the Battle of the Coral Sea back into action within an hour of the three bomb hits. If the Yorktown wasn’t underway and still burning the Hiryu torpedo planes go after the Enterprise and Hornet instead and sink or badly damage at least one of them.
The battle then becomes Hiryu against an American aircraft carrier with a large battle surface fleet a day away to sink any aircraft carrier not underway.
Turned the IJN back after a long winning streak. In the next three years we would build over thirty new carriers. The Japanese, none.
For those of you interested, I wrote a counterfactual novel, “Halsey’s Bluff,” where the U.S. fleet, then under “Bull” Halsey (not Spruance) was defeated at Midway by a daring Yamamoto plan in which he brought all his carriers.
Most of the novel is how Halsey can escape the trap, if he can, and how to turn the tables. It has been reviewed and approved by the vets at the Battle of Midway Roundtable.
First contact....a PBY Catalina sights the Japanese Midway invasion fleet.
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https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/08/31/cat-tales-the-story-of-world-war-iis-pby-flying-boat/
PBYs acted as advance patrols and picked up downed pilots and seamen. Excerpt:
"Particularly in the Pacific theater, air-sea rescue PBYs (called “Dumbos”) retrieved thousands of ditched pilots and shipwrecked seamen, often under fire and usually in seas that would have trashed a lesser boat.
One Dumbo landed three times to pick up downed bomber crews and eventually took off with 25 extra men aboard; for that mission, Navy Lt. Nathan Gordon became the only PBY pilot to be awarded a Medal of Honor.
Another Cat needed a three-mile takeoff run to lift a total of 63, including its own crew, and the pounding probably popped half the rivets in the hull. But the record goes to the Australian Catalina that carried 87 Dutch sailors — standing room only, thank you — after Japanese bombers mauled their freighter. With 15,000 pounds of passengers alone, to say nothing of the airplane’s fuel and crew weight, that put the RAAF PBY well over gross, but the Cat’s basic weight-and-balance rule was that if the payload hadn’t yet sunk the boat, it would somehow take off."
My father enlisted and served on a Navy PBY and happily (for me!), avoided by 2 weeks his squadron's redeployment from S.F. to a forward base in Okinawa. They were demobilized following the Japanese surrendered. I think he regretted having missed redeployment to S.Pacific, in having some part in the large events of history and the adventure of being in the Navy and flying around over the ocean in a far away place. (Not so much the loitering over the water in a slow moving under armored plane and being shot at part.)
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