I watched about a 20 minute video on Midway. It truly was the turning point in the war in the Pacific. Although the Japanese lost four carriers and a lot of pilots and air crew, they still had a formidable navy. Still had adequate pilots and carriers.
I think Midway (and to a lesser extent, Coral Sea) was more psychological than anything. The Japanese realized they were not invincible.
The Americans were still a long way from the massive Navy we had in 1945.
Midway bought us near naval parity with the Japanese.
It was or fist big win and did have a huge psychological effect on both sides.
But it was Guadalcanal that broke the Japanese’s back.
All their remaining offensive ground forces, scrapped up from all over the Pacific were fed into that killing ground and destroyed.
The Japanese also lost a lot of aircraft in the contest over the Solomon Islands (which Guadalcanal is one).
And it gave our Navy time to pull its head out and get shed of some peacetime nonsense re: tactics and ship management (like in one night battle around the island, each ship’s captain had his own navigation habit. Some used the north star, some magnetic north, some map north. and the maneuvers were a mess).
It stopped their expansion. The “turning point” was that we knew we could beat them. We knew they would not expand further. We knew we could turn our attention to Europe, and at the same time, we had the time to tap the resources of North America that would eventually push the Japanese back—on our schedule.
It was our turning point—and it had little to do with their military.
My dad was on the DD USS WADSWORTH, they were always on the tip of the spear headed towards Japan, sans 2 months at Mare Island for a refit.
Ships of Steel, Men of Iron
You may be right. The Japanese leadership put a news blackout on what happened at Midway to their public going so far as to isolate returning survivors of the battle to keep them from spreading the news.