The movie, Midway, with Charlton Heston, is a wonderful recreation of the battle as seen from both sides.
The flip side of the Hillary pic is this Trump pic taken from the Battle of Okinawa where the USS Intrepid successfully fought off kamikaze attacks.
My Dad was there at the battle as a gunner's mate aboard an LST. He said to us kids, "If anybody says he wasn't scared, he wasn't there."
That was a great movie.
We had a friend who was a radio gunner in the back seat of a Navy Plane during the battle of Midway.
Coming back, they saw the Yorktown in trouble and landed on another carrier.
He was still amazed at how easy pilots, guys like himself and other Navy guys came from one carrier could come/land on another carrier and step up and do their job on another carrier or ship.
However, he joined the Air Force after WWII and retired as an officer.
He said trying to find your carrier or even a back up after air to air/sea battles was very unnerving. He wanted his runways to be where they left them, not some place else.
Also, he backed up your Dad’s comments about being scared.
However, he said, once the stuff hit the fan, you and your team mates knew what to do and did it until the action was over. He said once he and his pilot took off safely, they were in the moment until they started back to the carrier. He said his worse fears came at night after the battles, when he was trying to sleep. He would get up and go find an outside deck to walk on. Those decks would be crowded with guys wanting to talk and those who didn’t. They were the greatest generation.
My dad was a gunners mate on the dd442 Nicholson. They served in both theaters and he was at midway too.
You have to read my book “Halsey’s Bluff,” a fictional version of Midway where tge Japanese win.
If you have an interest in Midway, read this Freeper highly recommended (not me) book.....
