[InABunkerUnderSF]

Johnson's role was was known and the incident is included in either Walter Lord or Gordon Prang's history of the battle. I don't remember which one. There is nothing in the article that was not previously published. The interesting part will be when the book based the grand jury testimony.

BTW, I believe the best history of Midway was Jonathan Parshall's "Shattered Sword". It seems that Fuchida's account, which everybody used for the Japanese side of the battle was debunked decades ago by Japanese historians but kept being repeated by American authors. Contrary to Fuchida, the planes our pilots saw taking off from the flight decks of the of the Japanese carriers were not going to attack the US task force. They were just augmenting the combat air patrol which was running low on ammo after slaughtering torpedo planes for the better part of an hour. The attack force was still below decks being re-armed.

[Retain Mike]

Shattered Sword is a great addition to my books on Midway. One thing I did not expect was a discussion of the trade offs that had to be made in building carriers.

[Chad N. Freud]

“Johnson’s role was known and the incident is included in either Walter Lord or Gordon Prang’s history of the battle.”

Two further examples:

In Gerhard Weinberg’s 1994 book “A World At Arms — a Global History of World War 11” (Cambridge University Press), p. 260 — there is this treason:

“The leakage by an air force officer of the American program for building up and deploying forces if the country were drawn into the war to the ‘Chicago Tribune’ in early December caused a flurry in Washington but extraordinarily little reaction in either Germany or Japan*.”

*In his footnote, Weinberg adds: “I have not been able to locate any reference to Japanese reactions to this most dramatic leak from the U.S. government in World War II.”

And then on page 339:

“Yamamoto became generally more cautious hereafter [i.e., after the defeat at Midway].

“Fortunately for the Americans, this caution did not extend to the codes used by the Japanese. Neither a careful analysis of the Midway battle itself, which could have raised suspicions about code security, nor a significant hint from the Germans, nor a ‘Chicago Tribune’ story about the use at Midway of the breaking of Japanese codes by the American navy*, registered in Tokyo.”

His footnote here reads: “The chapter on this in Lewin, “American Magic,” is entitled: “The Stab in the Back.”