Posted on 06/03/2019 2:32:07 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Why was Midway such a critical victory? First, the fact that the U.S. Navy lost just one carrier at Midway meant that four carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, and Wasp) were available when the U.S. Navy went on the offensive during the Guadalcanal campaign that began the first week of August 1942. Second, the march of the Imperial Japanese Navy across the Pacific was halted at Midway and never restarted. After Midway, the Japanese would react to the Americans, and not the other way around. In the language of the Naval War College, the “operational initiative” had passed from the Japanese to the Americans. Third, the victory at Midway aided allied strategy worldwide.
That last point needs some explaining. To understand it, begin by putting yourself in the shoes of President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the beginning of May 1942. The military outlook across the world appears very bad for the Allies. The German army is smashing a Soviet offensive to regain Kharkov, and soon will begin a drive to grab the Soviet Union’s oil supplies in the Caucasus. A German and Italian force in North Africa is threatening the Suez Canal. The Japanese have seriously crippled the Pacific Fleet, driven Britain’s Royal Navy out of the Indian Ocean, and threaten to link up with the Germans in the Middle East.
If the Japanese and the Germans do link up, they will cut the British and American supply line through Iran to the Soviet Union, and they may pull the British and French colonies in the Middle East into the Axis orbit. If that happens, Britain may lose control of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Soviet Union may negotiate an armistice with Germany.
(Excerpt) Read more at warontherocks.com ...
If you are interested in another good book I am currently reading "The Fast Carriers - The Forging of an Air Navy" by Clark Reynolds. It goes into the history of the leaders on the American side. It also details the struggles to change the orientation of the Navy's strategic thought from being dominated by battleship to the carrier. And how the change in thought once fully realized changed the way the war was fought.
Midway clearly showed our military we had the ability to defeat them. Confidence was the real winner for us at Midway.
“You’re right. But...”
No “but”:
“little boy, fat man” = overwhelming force.
“Russian, yadda yadda yadda...” The Russians were totally dependent on the U.S.A. for food and materials, and having so many casualties is not something to be proud of. The Russians were able to move their eastern troops to the west because the U.S.A. was fighting Japan.
The only countries that came close to the U.S.A. in WWII were England and Germany, and they were distant seconds.
All those “Nazi secret weapons” you hear about? The U.S.A. had ten for every one they had. The atomic bombs (we didn’t just have one, we had two entirely different designs), the B29 (a bigger, more expensive project than the atomic bombs), radar, code breaking, logistics, proximity fuses, ...
There is simply no comparison. It was not a contest. It could have gone worse. It could have gone better. But, it was going to go to victory for the U.S.A.
The training of skilled carrier pilots took the Japanese years while the Americans could do it in months.
I’m amazed how the US Navy doesn’t celebrate Midway the way the Royal Navy celebrates Trafalgar.
That change in thought was helped along by the fact that a big chunk of the battleship fleet was sunk at Pearl Harbor, while the carriers weren’t there. Thus the carriers were what we had to fight with at the beginning of the war. That combined with the obvious effectiveness of the Japanese carrier attack made it pretty clear where the emphasis needed to be. Remember the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse happened just a few days after Pearl Harbor, so it was pretty easy to see the writing on the wall. Thinking about it, the Battle of Taranto had occurred a year before, and saw capital ships bested by *Fairey Swordfish*, for crying out loud!
I wonder how much longer the Pacific war would have dragged on if LCDR McCluskey hadn’t pressed on as he did.
I didn’t know what it was either. Awesome display of American ingenuity.
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Thach_Weave
bfl
I’m not sure that thought (that we’d lose so much we’d give up) was ever a reality as much a hope by the Japanese. I truly believe they read America wrong (fat, lazy, self-indulgent) just like Hitler did.
The fact that we believed Japan committed a unfair sneak attack and killed innocents meant we would never just walk away without taking a huge pound of flesh for it.
They lost when they launched the first aircraft on Dec 7th.
If the Japanese declaration of war happened on Dec 6th, things would be different. Of course the idiots in the Japanese Embassy taking all morning to decipher the coded declaration hurt, too.
The dive bomber group launched but after flying a very long time ended up not finding the Japanese carriers where they were supposed to be.
They were low on fuel and a big decision:
Return to their carriers or hunt around more, risking a mass ditch after running out of fuel..?
Nearby, they spotted a small Jap cruiser all alone in the expanse of ocean:
It was kicking up a considerable wake at full speed, knifing along with no zig-zagging or precautions at all. The travel of this lone cruiser seemed to be purposeful —like it might be making haste to rejoin a larger body of ships (this cruiser had been attempting to sink American sub that had been spotted by the Japanese main force much earlier and had remained behind).
The fliers risked it all while low on fuel, changing their flight direction to their guess at where this Japanese cruiser was headed over the horizon.
They hit the jackpot:
The found the carriers, and SCRATCH three carriers, all in 5 minutes.
Aside from the atomic bombings, NO other single decision by any US officer had a bigger impact on the war in the Pacific.
Somebody would call it racist. "White colonials using superior firepower against poor, defenseless Asians" or some such nonsense.
“The Russians were able to move their eastern troops to the west because the U.S.A. was fighting Japan.”
The Soviets moved 18 divisions and 1700 tanks from the Far East to the Moscow front starting in early November 1941.
The Moscow counteroffensive, using these troop, began Dec 5 1941. We were not at war with Japan at the time.
My dad was on the Yorktown during the battle. He abandoned ship when ordered, then went back aboard to help get her underway (he was a machinist mate. Was aboard when she was torpedoed. Back in the water he went. was picked up by a tin can. Spent the rest of the war on the USS West Virginia.
” . . . and the Soviets provided the troops.”
I had an Aussie buddy you used to point that out whenever the topic of WWII came up, and it’s a fair and accurate point - my usual response was that I thought that was probably about right from the standpoint of karma, given the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact that allowed the Nazi’s to get of the block the way they did in the European theater.
How does he Royal Navy celebrate now, take a dozen row boats out into the middle of the Thames and sing “Hearts of oak”?
The Soviets moved 18 divisions and 1700 tanks from the Far East to the Moscow front starting in early November 1941. The Moscow counteroffensive, using these troop, began Dec 5 1941. We were not at war with Japan at the time.
Richard Sorge --maybe the most valuable spy in 200 years-- was a Soviet spy formally working in a job for the Nazis at their Embassy in Tokyo. Of course Japan and Germany were allies, and the Germans were privvy to some of Japan's war plans:
From Tokyo Sorge let Stalin know that he had no reason to fear being attacked by Japan in the East.
For this reason Stalin could release the millions of troops safeguarding his Eastern flank and tranfer them to Stalingrad and other desperately fought for places.
The decision was so great it could have played a critical factor at Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk, probably massively impacting the whole of WW2.
The manufacturing capabilities between Japan and the USA were night and day.
The war started with the Japanese having 15 “carriers” (some were really seaplane tenders). They only built two new carrier during the entire Pacific war, the IJN Taiho and the IJN Shinano. They lost them ALL.
Meanwhile, the USA had 7 major carriers (CVs) by Dec 1941.
We lost 5 major carriers in the war (one to the Germans, a sub attack off the Canaries).
By August 1945, we had over 50(!) carriers.
Again, during the same time period, Japan made two.
The Soviets had a master spy in Japan, Richard Sorge, who was a German journalist working in the German embassy. He informed his masters of the Japanese decision to strike the USA (East Wind, Rain), not Russia, in Spetember, 1941.
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