Posted on 06/03/2017 8:09:12 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Seventy-five years ago this Sunday, some 150 Japanese warships, 250 warplanes and 25 admirals were steaming toward a small atoll 1,300 miles northwest of Oahu. Imminent was the most crucial naval battle of World War II—Midway.
But in a windowless basement near the fleet’s Pearl Harbor headquarters, codebreakers under Cmdr. Joe Rochefort pored over intercepted Japanese radio traffic. Independent, impolitic, single-minded, Rochefort “left the basement only to bathe, change clothes, or get an occasional meal to supplement a steady diet of coffee and sandwiches,” one officer recalled. “For weeks the only sleep he got was on a field cot pushed into a crowded corner.”
The USS Yorktown had been damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea and had recently returned to Pearl Harbor trailing a 10-mile oil slick. Repair estimates ranged up to three months.
Three days, ordered Nimitz. Fourteen hundred welders and shipfitters swarmed aboard. Three days later, the Yorktown sailed for Midway....
Searching for a fourth, Navy pilot Sam Adams sighted the Hiryu and her escorts. “One carrier, two battleships, three heavy cruisers, four destroyers,” he dictated to his radio man and gunner, Joseph Karrol, to transmit in dots and dashes to the American fleet. “Course north, speed 20 knots.”
“Mr. Adams,” Karrol interrupted, “would you mind waiting a minute? There’s a Zero on our tail.” After shaking the enemy, Karrol finished keying the report. Soon the Hiryu, too, was ablaze and sinking...
Japan’s overconfident admirals had judged, disastrously. Nimitz, acting boldly while his bosses hedged, gave his outgunned Navy the first shot. His sailors and pilots made it count....
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“Sit down, you!” the coxswain barked—before noticing, with horror, his faux pas. He stumbled out apologies.
Nimitz sat down. “Stick to your guns, sailor,” he said. “You were quite right.”
My career Navy father survived the sinking of the Yorktown, and more.
If America lost, they'd be helpless without carriers and a Pacific base and they would be forced into an Armistice with Japan. Possibly even losing the Hawaiian islands. There probably would have been no war in Europe too.
If Japan lost, their offensive would be crippled and as it happened they gradually lost piece by piece their pacific empire.
The Japanese were worried too much and it got the better of them. Admiral Nagumo instead of finishing off the Midway Airbase constantly delayed by bringing back his planes into the hangar to rearm with torpedoes. It gave the Americans time to catch them off guard and sink them.
We were bold and determined. The Japanese grieved and worried. They had the advantage and they lost it.
Useless link. One has to subscribe to read it. But thanks for the except, which is quite a bit more than readable on the WSJ link.
> Repair estimates ranged up to three months ... Three days later, the Yorktown sailed for Midway <
That’s one thing that made America great. And one thing that couldn’t happen today.
Sir Winston Churchill probably said it best:
“The annals of war at sea
present no more intense, heart-shaking shock than this
battle, in which the qualities of the United States Navy
and Air Force and the American race shone forth in
splendour. The bravery and self-devotion of the American
airmen and sailors and the nerve and skill of their
leaders was the foundation of all.”
Good movie.Very accurate.
I am not a subscriber to WSJ. Here is an account that we all can read-
http://mccluskymidwayhero.blogspot.com/
Salute to your hero father
The Americans in those torpedo planes sent a message to the Japanese military that shook them to the core.
And there were rolling blackouts in Honolulu because so much electrical power was needed to run those welders.
I heard somewhere that after Midway, over the remaining course of the war, the Japanese were able to build seven more carriers.
In the same period, we built 70.
If America lost at Midway the inevitable destruction of Japan would have been delayed slightly. Japan had no capacity to force America into anything.
Did the WSJ conclude how racist it was to defeat the Japanese fleet?
They were dive bombers.
In my very HUMBLE opinion, it was Adm. Nagumo who lost the war for Japan and he did it on 12/7/1941.
He overruled the Japanese fliers and never ordered the launch of the THIRD wave of attacks on Pearl Harbor, and sailed back to Japan.
Behind he left INTACT shore facilities, dry docks, OIL storage facilities, machine shops, and supply depots. Thus he left the American Navy able to raise the PARTIALLY sunken battleships and fully restore them to combat condition. The undamaged dry dock is what enabled the repair crews to put the Yorktown baack to sea in only 3 days.
If Nagumo had, indeed, ordered the third strike, the remaining American, at sea, carriers would have been forced to sail back to the states for re-supply and fueling. Then, of course, there would have been NO Midway.
ALSO, the Japanese never came close to reproducing sufficient naval air crews. They built a some more carriers but never staffed them all adequately with full air wings. The loss of so many experienced pilots and crews was devastating.
There is a book titled “The Shattered Sword” about the Japanese side of the battle. It’s a must read for WW2 buffs, very very good.
Thanks for posting that link!
No, I, too, believe it was the failed attacks of the torpedo planes that shook up the Japanese. They, as well as Hitler, in Europe did not believe that the weak, spoiled AMERICANS had the courage and guts to fight with the tenacity and courage shown by the torpedo bomber pilots of Torpedo 8.
Two entire squadrons were lost, with but a single surviror, who watched the battle from his life raft and was later rescued. At the time, American torpedoes were totally worthless. It was, though, the DIVE bombers that sunk the 4 Japanese carriers.
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