December 1943 was 18 months later, and while I’m sure the war would have ended by now, the ending would have been delayed by a year or more had we lost at Midway. The real Japanese land war was in China, and had been going on for years before Pearl Harbor. They’d driven out the British, and relied on the ocean itself (and those dug-in fight to the death Japanese soldiers on the needed islands) to keep the US from invading the home islands.
Had they prepared for a longer time, they would ultimately have still seen a couple of their cities get vaporized by nukes — assuming the US had the means to deliver them. Without the victory at Midway, that would have been impossible in 1945; a defeat at Midway would have had an impact on the outcome of the European war as well.
The Japanese fought the Pacific war as if it were a land war, which is weird because as an nation of islands they have a long maritime tradition. Sending those two carrier groups to the Aleutians as a diversion was just nutty, and they couldn’t make up the losses they suffered at Midway, probably as a consequence of the diversion.
I think the immediate result of a US loss at Midway would have been the collapse of the defensive perimeter in the South Seas. The USA would have redirected resources from the nascent Solomons campaign to Hawaii laving Australia to hold the islands and New Guinea alone. The pivotal 18-month bloodletting at Guadalcanal would have been avoided and Yamamoto would have had a free hand to strike either toward Hawaii, Australia or French Polynesia. In any case, a new front would be opened and Yamamoto would have bought the time he needed. By the time that US carrer strength rebuilt the situation in the Pacific would have been very, very difficult, perhaps bad enogh to force the USA into negotiations. Which was the whole reason for the Midway operation in the first place.
The United States only allocated only 15-20% of it’s resources to the war in the Pacific. If we had been defeated badly at Midway, we would allocate 35-40% of our resources to the Pacific. By the end of 1946 we were producing 3 atomic bombs a month. Japan could never win a long term war with the USA.
Yamamoto said it himself.
“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”
“The Japanese fought the Pacific war as if it were a land war, which is weird because as an nation of islands they have a long maritime tradition. Sending those two carrier groups to the Aleutians as a diversion was just nutty, and they couldn’t make up the losses they suffered at Midway, probably as a consequence of the diversion.”
The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy considered each other enemies almost as strongly as they regarded the Allies. There was no concept of a “Joint Chiefs of Staff” in Japan; an Army general could holler orders all day at a Navy seaman to no avail. (General Yamashita was hanged in spite of this—for atrocities committed in Manila, primarily by Navy personnel—after the war.)
The Japanese Army had long planned for a land war against Russia on the plains of North China, Manchuria and Siberia, and their tactics and supply systems—dropped almost unchanged into the Southwest Pacific islands—reflected this. The Navy had long expected war against the US and Britain, and had spent years preparing for it (on a somewhat strict and unimaginative Mahanian basis of “decisive battle”), but had always gotten hind teat versus the Army when it came to funding and supplies.