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Midway was one of the most important US naval battles of all time. The two most important game changers were not what the author of the article perceives.

The loss of experienced veteran Japanese naval aviators at Midway changed the air war and carrier war in the South Pacific onward. The most experienced carrier pilots in the world were lost, and because of a lack of effective training programs before and after, the experience was never recovered.

The loss at Midway by the Japanese gave the United States time. That was time to turn it’s industrial might into military equipment. By 1945, the US produced more military equipment than the rest of the world....COMBINED. The Japanese could never win a protracted war against such industry, they knew it, even if we had not realized it at the time. Midway deprived them of them of the initiative by allowing the US to gear up, and the Japanese not having the air superiority that they had enjoyed early in the war.

Good points. I would also add that it gave the US confidence. The only hope Japan ever really had was that the US would lose a few battles early on (as we did: we lost all of them) and that the US politicians and public would decide, “Hey, we can’t win this thing”.

After Midway, everyone in America was thinking, “We can win this.”

Japan’s only hope was gone.

Your point about the loss of experienced aviators is an often overlooked point. In the subsequent carrier engagements in both the Battle of the Eastern Solomons and The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the degradation in both the tenacious persistence and technical bombing ability (accuracy) of the Japanese attackers (when compared to Midway and before) was evident to the Americans being attacked. The Americans being attacked could see the difference.

Also often overlooked are the flaws in fundamental damage control design of the IJN vessels, the substandard training and implementation of damage control on those vessels, and the inability of Japanese shipyards to turn around repairs on damaged vessels.

A great book (Though hard to find) is “Shattered Sword” which discusses at length the poor Japanese approach to damage control design, training and implementation.

There is no doubt that the Japanese sailors had plenty of guts and determination when attempting to counter battle damage and fires, but the horrible design of damage control systems in terms of communication and firefighting aboard IJN ships worked against them. One well placed bomb could take out half the firefighting capability on a Japanese fleet carrier! (which as I recall, happened to at least one of the IJN carriers (Akagi?) at Midway...)

The design of the ships also impeded the ability of damage control teams to move about the ships. One of the carriers was designed with main passageways that were only four feet from deck to overhead, so that people laden with equipment had to crouch the entire way. I just cannot imagine that.

We were lucky at the Battle of Midway. But we had to be, we had a lot of things stacked against us. Even WITH some knowledge of IJN movements, that alone wouldn’t have been enough.

So absolutely, we were lucky. We made the most of our luck.