A miracle helped along by the fact that we could read all their coded messages.
WW II in the Pacific was decided w/in the space of 1/2 hour @ the Battle of Midway.
Good article! Thanks. We owe those guys a LOT.
Have you read “Shattered Sword”? I highly recommend it for insight into the battle from the Japanese angle.
http://www.shatteredswordbook.com/
BTTT
I did not know B-17s were involved at Midway.
As the Zeros swirled madly around the Devastators, it seemed to Tex Gay that he was flying in slow motion. The enemy fighters appeared to have three times his speed, and were darting in and out of their tight formation like backcountry prairie falcons.
Up ahead to his right he saw one of the Devastators drop like a hurtling stone into the sea, its two man crew gone in an instant. It happened so fast that Tex had no idea whose plane it was. A few seconds later another Devastator went down on his left.
"Was that a Zero or one of our planes?" came commander Waldron's voice on the radio.
Tex radioed back that it was a Devastator.
The Zeroes were concentrating on the lead planes in the formation as Torpedo Eight continued boring in towards the nearest Japanese carriers. Tex tried to keep his Devastator steady so that his crewman, Bob Huntington, has a clear and stable field of fire. That also made them easier prey.
He watched as another of the Devastators blew up in a shower of flame and debris. They were past the airborn wreckage a moment later. The dwindling formation was still miles from the carriers when yet another torpedo plane did a slow half roll and crash into the sea on its back, disintegrating when it hit the water.
Bob Huntington came on the intercom -"Lets go back and help, sir" he said.
There was nothing they could do to help. Tex could only press on with the attack, even if they were the last ones left. Those were the Skipper's orders. There would be time for mourning the losses later.
Two Zeroes moved in to attack him, one from behind and the other from the port side. He could feel bullets thudding into the armor plate behind his bucket seat. A second pattern raked his instrument panel and blasted several holes in his windshield.
He heard Huntington cry out on the intercom. Turning his head for a quick look, he saw him slumped down in his seat, motionless. When he turned forward again, the Devastator that had been flying next to him had disappeared.
In the distance, Tex saw that the carriers had swung west, heading away from them to reduce their target profile. Shoving the throttle forward, he watched the air speed indicator slowly begin to climb, Waldron's voice was still coming through his earphones, fast a furious.
"There's two fighters in the water," the Skipper had radioed at one point. "See that splash... I'd give a million to know who'd done that."
In the tail compartment of his Dauntless dive bomber far to the north, Leroy Quillen was listening to Waldron's excited words. He wondered why no one in the group was responding to Waldron's calls.
"My two wingmen are going in," came Waldron's voice one last time.
Then it was his turn.
The Skipper's plane was out in front of the remaining Devastators, all alone except for the attacking Zeroes. As Tex watched, Waldron's plane suddenly burst into flames. Fire quickly enveloped the fuselage, and the plane began gliding down towards the sea, trailing a thick cloud of smoke and fire.
The Skipper suddenly stood up in the blazing cockpit as if he were riding a fiery chariot. In the plane's final moments, he thrust his leg out onto the right wing. Then the plane hit the water and was gone.
Great post!
The turning point in the Pacific theater. Valiant fighting that day, for sure!
the key was a hand full of sailors breaking the jap naval code indicating Midway was next on the list. I joined this group in 1947 right out of boot camp and spent 27 years in a very interesting role.
An interesting note I read on Midway and I’m sorry I don’t have the source. I believe it was the carrier Akagi that was sunk with all the Japanese aircraft attack footage from Pearl Harbor. The footage never made it’s way back to the mainland.
Make no mistake in reading this reply, Midway was a great victory on a shoestring by greatly out-numbered US Forces, but it also well illustrated Japanese Admiral Yamamoto’s well known prediction of 6 to 12 months of great success followed by Japanese failure. This was the absolute nadir of the US Navy while also being the near height of the Imperial Japan Navy yet the US was only starting its engine while Japan was already near maximum effort.
It took only till 1943 before the US alone was outproducing Japan in all war production areas and mid-1944 before it was outproducing EVERY other Axis or Allied composite. By late 1944 the US Navy had cancelled more warships than all other countries had in service and it was said with more than a little truth that you could fly a Piper Cub from San Francisco to Tokyo by landing on the outbound USN Carriers.
It is one of the things that keeps me from drinking myself senseless over our current condition, we have been down so many times in our history yet followed the depths with new heights. We shall (pray God) do this again!
"All your flat tops are belong to us."
MIDWAY DOCUMENTARY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkiXHKeMC9k&index=37&list=PLJ8RjvesnvDMirffrNEsCKnSFlIMwJoei
Battle of Midway Island, June 4-5, 1942, when a perilously small United States Navy task force decisively defeated Admiral Yamamoto’s much larger Japanese fleet whose mission had been the invasion and occupation of Midway. It was the turning point of the war against the Japanese who lost four large carriers and never again seriously threatened American sea power in the central Pacific.
** Most interesting, I LEARNED ABOUT THIS FROM MY DAD, Following details from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Midway_(film)
“The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American DOCUMENTARY FILM SHORT directed by John Ford.When the United States Navy sent director John Ford to Midway Island in 1942, he believed that the military wanted him to make a documentary on life at a small, isolated military base, and filmed casual footage of the sailors and marines there working and having fun. Two days before the battle, he learned that the Japanese planned to attack the base and that it was preparing to defend itself.Ford ‘s handheld, 16mm FOOTAGE OF THE BATTLE WAS CAPTURED TOTALLY IMPROMTU.
He had been in transit on the island, roused from his bunk by the sounds of the battle, and started filming. Ford was wounded by enemy fire while filming the battle. Acclaimed as a hero when he returned home because of the footage and the minor wound, Ford decades later incorrectly claimed to Peter Bogdanovich that he was the only cameraman; however, Jack Mackenzie Jr. and Kenneth Pier assisted Ford in filming.
Ford was worried that military censors would prevent the footage from being shown in public. After returning to Los Angeles, he gave the footage to Robert Parrish, who had worked with him on How Green Was My Valley, to edit in secret. Ford spliced in footage of James Roosevelt, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son and a Marine Corps officer; when the president saw the film in the White House, he told William Leahy: “I want every mother in America to see this film”, thus protecting Ford from censorship.
Parrish wrote an in-depth account of the making of The Battle of Midway in his autobiography, Growing Up in Hollywood (1976). The film runs for 18 minutes, was distributed by 20th Century Fox, and was one of four winners of the inaugural, 1942 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Seeing men he had met and filmed die horrified Ford, who said, “I am really a coward” compared to those who fought. He had spent time with Torpedo Squadron 8, and 29 of 30 men of the unit died or were missing after the battle. Ford assembled the footage he had taken of the squadron into an eight-minute film, adding titles praising the squadron for having “written the most brilliant pages in the glowing history of our Naval Air Forces” and identifying each man as he appeared. He printed the result, Torpedo Squadron 8, to 8mm film suitable for home projectors and sent copies to the men’s families.”