Posted on 06/10/2013 3:28:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
The final World War II veteran to serve in the United States Senate died on the eve of the 71st anniversary of the Battle of Midway. Frank Lautenberg’s passing is significant, and every American should understand why.
Fifty-two years ago, fellow World War II vet John F. Kennedy told America that “the torch has been passed to a new generation.” That torch is now burning out; an era has ended, and many wonder if America will ever see another like it.
To try and understand, go back seven decades to the empty sea west of Hawaii in June 1942. Only a half-year before, Japanese planes had nearly wiped out the American fleet at anchor at Pearl Harbor in a brilliant surprise raid. By some miracle – the first of several – our precious carriers had been at sea and were not annihilated at their berths.
In a single morning America transformed from a nation at peace, trying to shake off the lingering Depression, into a nation at war. And no matter who won, the looming fight at Midway would be the decisive battle of the Pacific theater.
The Japanese were at their high water mark as they sent a mammoth task force of carriers and battleships to seize lonely Midway Island from the Marines who guarded it. With it in their hands, they would have ruled the Pacific. Their equipment was better, with their dreaded Zero fighters far superior to the defenders’ slap-dash collection of outdated aircraft. They outnumbered the Americans as well, and they were on a winning streak. Not long before, in the Battle of the Coral Sea, they had sunk the carrier Lexington and gravely damaged the Yorktown.
There was no way anyone other than Americans would have stood a chance. But, as Admiral Yamamoto had foretold, it was Japanese’s grim fate to have chosen to make Americans their enemy.
The Americans knew the Imperial Navy was coming, despite the fleet’s radio silence. American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval ciphers. The codebreakers were independent and eccentric, dismissive of military discipline and arbitrary rules. They were entrepreneurial, quintessential Americans, brimming with vision and ideas in the days when cryptography was an art rather than a brute force exercise in supercomputing. They were cut from the same cloth as the men who would later spark the computer revolution in their California garages.
The codes did not reveal the exact Imperial Navy disposition, but the Navy was able to sortie three carriers to meet the enemy, Enterprise, Hornet and the repaired Yorktown. Yorktown had been savagely attacked less than a month before and was towed home to Hawaii. The moment it went into port the crews descended in it, working night and day to get the critical carrier ready to fight again. There was little central planning in that effort – the crews saw damage and went right to work without waiting for orders from on high. Four weeks later, because of that uniquely American initiative and hard work, Yorktown was able to sail off to its last battle.
No other people on earth could have done that.
Midway was a battle of aircraft, planes without radar or GPS or landmarks to navigate with across the vast blue ocean. American pilots flew outclassed Dauntless dive bombers and rickety Devastator torpedo planes, intermittently guarded by obsolete fighters. Alone over the water, their fuels gauges heading toward the red, again and again the pilots used their initiative to find the Japanese, knowing that they might run out of gas before they are able to return to their ships.
It was the Devastators who won the battle, but not with their torpedoes. The few torpedoes they launched failed to work, but not many even got that far. The Devastators’ air speed was heartbreakingly slow. They had to come straight in through a wall of flak from the enemy ships even as the Zeros pounced.
They were annihilated. About 90% of the torpedo planes that took part in the battle were lost. Of the 30 men and 15 aircraft of the Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8), only Ensign George Gay lived through the strike. He was rescued in the water 30 hours later.
But these men drew the enemy fighters away, and those Zeroes that returned to refuel and rearm on the crowded decks of the four Japanese carriers were still doing so as the Dauntless dive bombers arrived overhead. Heedless of the anti-aircraft fire, the bombers struck. Four Japanese carriers sank, sending to the bottom their irreplaceable crews and pilots and the Emperor’s dream of victory. They took the Yorktown with them, but not before it helped win the decisive battle of the Pacific War.
It was a long, harsh fight up to when the Missouri sailed into Tokyo Bay to accept Japan’s surrender in 1945, but after Midway there was never any doubt about how the war would end. To stave off defeat, Japan employed the kamikazes, pilots who would fly their planes into U.S. ships, choosing to die in order to inflict damage. Americans chose not death, but to fight on even at the risk of death. There is a huge difference.
(For a terrific lay history of the Battle of Midway, read Gordon Prange’s Miracle at Midway. The great Victor Davis Hanson also has a long chapter on the battle which he examines through the lens of the clashing American and Japanese cultures in his outstanding Carnage and Culture.)
Today, with the last of the World War II generation that dominated our politics for a half-century gone, it is fair to wonder whether America itself peaked somewhere in the skies over Midway. Can Americans in the future ever match the dedication, the competence, and the courage of those who broke the yoke of fascism locked on half of the world seven decades ago?
Let me report to you the answer: Yes.
I’ve served with the young Americans of today, both here at home and overseas in combat zones. I’ve led them. I’ve seen their bravery, their toughness, their humor, and their compassion.
Make no mistake: Our young warriors today are every bit the heroes their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were.
There’s no question.
Sure, in World War II, 12 million were in uniform out of a population half of today’s America, while today only about two million serve to protect over 300 million. But that’s a tribute to their success. They are proud that their sacrifice makes the service of most of their fellow citizens unnecessary.
And in Arkansas, Rep. Tom Cotton is likely to win Senator Mark Pryor’s seat in 2014. A U.S. Army paratrooper who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Cotton will bring something special with him when he takes his place in the Senate in January 2015.
He’ll bring a torch.
In computer simulations of the battle of midway, the Japs win every time. Midway was a miracle....
The photo of a RAF typhoon is a little out of place in a thread about midway....
I was thinking the same thing.
The capability of the industrial complex to rapidly build things during that time period remains unbelievable by today’s standards. My late father-in-law was a plank holder on the USS Stafford which was Destroyer Escort (DE) 411. Stafford was laid down on 29 November 1943 at Houston, Texas, by Brown Shipbuilding; launched on 11 January 1944, and commissioned on 19 April 1944. That is truly amazing.
Roger That!!! Most likely an editor mistake? And for a really good take on Midway see the book Shattered Sword!
There are several historical problems with the article, Yorktown was fixed in 4 days not weeks as one example, but the point is taken
Regards
alfa6 ;>{
That Frank Lautenberg, of all people, will be remembered as the last World War II veteran to serve in Congress is a complete joke. The guy left whatever patriotism and sense of American pride he may have had back in his Army uniform. He was basically a Marxist during his entire tenure in the U.S. Senate, and the best thing to be said about him was that he sure didn't have much influence in Washington. Even after three decades in the U.S. Senate, his biographical information in the wake of his passing focused on silly, inconsequential sh!t like sponsoring bills to raise the drinking age and ban smoking on flights.
It seems like most of the abject mediocrities from the "Greatest Generation" ended up in Congress.
Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully wrote a book on the battle from the Japanese side, Shattered Sword. While taking absolutely nothing away from the courage and skill of the American pilots they also make the case that in command structure, tactics, training, and organization the Japanese went a long way towards setting themselves up for their own defeat. The U.S. won against significant odds but they made their own miracle.
Midway was a Japanese command failure. They failed to adjust their attack plan to the presence of the American carriers in time to save their carriers. IMO it was a case of command hubris which hindered their decision to redirect their entire attack plan against the US carriers. Plus that CXAM-1 radar-thingy and CAP of the American carriers.
You have to wonder if, thanks to Obama, the United States will be re-created as if it had lost the war.
I would maintain that Fascism was the real victor in WWII. It’s taken a long time to really see the details, but the 20th century was a long slide into Fascism and now with Obama we see it all clearly. I think the men who fought and died to stop Hitler and Tojo would be appalled.
There's a lot of that sort of thing going on around the world. For all our blood and treasure spent to defend Britain and ultimately push the Nazis back across the Rhine, it seems we only bought them about 75 years of freedom, tops.
Good question. In consideration of their actions I think they had a rather prudent naval campaign strategy albeit doomed. They atacked Pearl harbor to deprive the US of a Pacific operating base thereby protecting their western Pacific expansion, particularly their access to Dutch East Indie oil.
Midway was aimed at depriving US submarines their re-fueling depot without which they could not reach the sea of Japan. Without Midway eastern Japan would be at the extreme limit of US sub range.
It most part it was the US subs which destroyed the IJN’s ability to operate in the Pacific, making island hopping feasible.
At least it was an ally. Unlike the RAT Convention where the navy ships were Russian!
I think you’re definitely onto something.
Actully it was not. In fact it was inferior carriers and carrier operations that made the difference.
If you want to know about Midway, not the regurgitated writings of the Japaneese officer, read Shattered Sword by Parshal and Tulley. It is a minute by minute recounting of the battle.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_15?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=shattered%20sword%20the%20untold%20story%20of%20the%20battle%20of%20midway&sprefix=shattered+sword%2Caps%2C138
Hence why we need to stop relying on computers for anything outside information gathering. Artificial intelligence does not compare to human ingenuity and will.
We are on a slippery slope making all these systems to think for us.
Exactly, we had better technology and the ability to turn out better planes once we identified weaknesses. Also, never underestimate the will of the American people, well the people of that era who were proud to be Americans and not self-absorbed and apologetic for our successes.
Yamamoto didn't.
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