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 ...
Thanks for the book recommendation. I was at Pearl last week and am immersing myself, again, in all things WWII.
And it was also the torpedo bombers' attack that pulled down the high CAP, which helped clear the way for the dive bombers.
Wsj recently changed their pay wall.
There are apps to get in.
Looking around with a key phrase, may find the article from another source, like the one above.
Look quick, because they may be in flux.
They had to be standing atop one another! While welding.
Today, we quietly say, 'get 'er done'; F OSHA...
Silent Cal, was more eloquent.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ― Calvin Coolidge
I had been researching the dive bombers’ contribution to the outcome at Midway and thought that that was a pretty good account. The real heroes are at the bottom of the Pacific, the ones that ran out of gas and were not rescued. And apparently, no one even knows their names.
Thanks!
The WSJ praising American Grit and Guts. Must be the Trump effect?
Thank you.
For the old man and his buddies the heroes were always some other guy, they would point out.
Something I always thought was fun.
He was home on shore leave 7 Dec 1941.
No phones at the family farm, put on his uniform and hitchhiked to Cincinnati, reported to a jammed recruiting station.
After some telegrams.
They ordered him to the East coast and the Yorktown.
The Japs lost at Midway because, like at most of their other naval battles, they fled before finishing the job. I’m not sure cowardice is the right word to describe the senior Japanese naval commanders, the problem appeared to have been institutional in nature.
But from Pearl Harbor until Kurita fled from Sprague at Samar, the Japanese fled from inferior forces instead of pressing forward to victory.
The author of “Never Call Me a Hero” about Mr. Jack “Dusty” Kleiss was on CSP3. The book is new.
As a forty year subscriber, sometimes they get it right.
Was on ready... before the subscription ran out the WSJ took a turn for the right and Bret Stephens was gone.
So I remained.
Of course their names are known. They were on an air tasking order.
Right after Coral Sea, a chief named Oscar Meyer (yes) on the Yorktiwn came up with a remarkable CO2 pumping system to suppress fires. He took it to the captain, who not only approved it but who ordered it installed immediately during repairs and that system, in part, helped save the Yorktown from the damage at Midway (if course, hit by a torpedo right after.
If America lost at Midway the inevitable destruction of Japan would have been delayed slightly. Japan had no capacity to force America into anything.
You’re absolutely right.
“There probably would have been no war in Europe too”.
There was already a war in Europe.
Hitler declared war on the US right after Pearl No war?
“And there were rolling blackouts in Honolulu because so much electrical power was needed to run those welders. “
what an amazing factoid!
Japan has always been a tiny island nation with limited natural resources and manpower....
The victory was never in doubt, just the timing and the cost.
The Japanese were also horrible at basic tasks like damage control. The USN leaned from the loss of the Lexington & the heavy damage incurred by the Yorktown that once you fly-off your strike aircraft, you drain your fuel lines, fill them with inert gas, to minimize any secondary explosions. Contrast that with the Japanese at Midway... ordnance strewn around the decks, fuel lines strung out...
The Yorktown, as damaged as she was, absorbed an enormous amount of damage at Midway. Indeed had a IJN sub not snuck in while she was under tow, she might have survived and made it back to Pearl.
WEBSITE
www.combinedfleet.com
Gives information about all Japanese ship used during WWII,
their movements and fates
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