Posted on 06/04/2002 1:16:43 AM PDT by Snow Bunny
For three days, American dive bombers and fighter pilots fended off the Japanese naval fleet's attempt to gain Midway as an outpost.
After Midway, the crippled Japanese fleet withdrew, never again to gain the offensive.
The battle of Midway was the most important in the fight for the pacific in the WW2, finishing the Japanese rule over on the last six months since the Pearl Harbour attack the 7th. of December of 1941.
Having achieved its initial military goals by early 1942, the Japanese decided to take more Pacific outposts--including Midway Island in the central Pacific and islands off Alaska--in order to establish an outer defense line. The Japanese fleet, under Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku, also hoped to draw the remaining U. S. aircraft carriers into battle.
Yamamoto erred in dividing his force of more than 160 vessels. The U.S. commander, Adm. Chester Nimitz, with 76 ships available, including the carriers Hornet, Enterprise, and Yorktown, was stronger than the Japanese thought. Searches by U.S. aircraft established the position of the Japanese fleet.
Early on June 4, Vice Admiral Nagumo, in command of the Japanese carriers, launched 108 planes for an attack on Midway, 240 miles (386 km) to the southeast. American fighters sent to intercept them were outmaneuvered by Japanese fighters. Bombs damaged Midway, but the runways were not put out of action.
But the maneuvers of the Japanese carriers had kept their bombers from taking off, and their fighter planes were out of position because of their fight with the attackers. At 10:26, 37 U.S. bombers struck with devastating effect. The Agaki took direct hits, was abandoned, and sank, and the Kaga and Soryu were also destroyed. The Hiryu escaped, launched bombers that damaged the Yorktown, but was itself destroyed from the air at 5 pm The Yorktown was later destroyed by a Japanese submarine. The Americans lost 150 planes and 307 lives; the Japanese, 253 planes and 3,500 lives.
After Midway the Japanese fleet withdrew, never again to regain the offensive.
The strike force, closed on Midway, and appeared shortly before 0600 on the radar at t Midway. Midway's base commander launched all available planes, including the twenty-seven fighters led by Marine Major Floyd B. "Red" Parks, which would jump the enemy bombers on their run in. Six Avenger torpedo-bombers, four Army Marauder medium bombers, eleven Marine Vindicator dive-bombers and sixteen Douglas Dauntlesses, and a total of nineteen B-17 bombers, augmented the rest of the 32 total Catalinas.
Even before the Japanese planes attacked Midway, Nagumo's carrier lost their most important defense when Lt. Howard Ady, piloting a PBY Catalina spotted them. Ady immediately broadcast the sighting report, which was received at 0553 by USS Enterprise, Yorktown, and Intelligence back at Pearl Harbor.
US flattops waited on. But Nagumo's carriers would see their very first action. On Midway Lt. Langdon K. Fieberling led six VT-8 Avengers, re-routed to Midway when they had been unable to catch up with their mother ship, the Hornet, Midway's planes took off with orders to attack the enemy carriers along with four B-26 Marauder bombers They flew into the fray of AA and Japanese Fighters as the first US attack group. And above them, old Vindicator dive-bombers, SDB Dauntlesses, and B-17 level bombers approached for their attacks.
Fieberling's planes attacked first at 0700, but there was no way around the Zero fighters, much less away through them. Four Avengers fell even before they were able to release their torpedoes. The other planes continued, but three more fell to AA, and the rest, an Avenger and two Marauders, scoring no hits, retired damaged to Midway.
Unknown to Nagumo, his fate was being sealed. Admiral Spruance, his flagship Enterprise having intercepted the report from Ady, had been steaming toward the enemy to reduce the range. When the Japanese planes left the air space over Midway at around 7 o'clock, quick calculations made it clear that if the US carriers launched immediately, they would probably hit the Japanese carriers with planes loaded on the deck, a most vulnerable condition. Accordingly, both carriers launched their planes between 0700 and 0755, full deckloads of bombers with a fighter escort. Twenty minutes past seven, Spruance ordered the new Rear-Admiral Mitscher to take Hornet and an escort and maneuver independently.
Nagumo's ships underwent more attacks in rapid succession, first Major Loften Henderson's Marine Dauntlesses, then B-17s from the Army, and finally the Vindicators. None scored a single hit, but the more planes attacked, the more convinced was Nagumo that a second strike was needed against Midway. Already at 0715, Nagumo had ordered to arm his ready planes with bombs instead of torpedoes. But by 0730, Tone's No. 4 scout had radioed Nagumo that there were "ten enemy surface ships" in the vicinity. Though worried about the unplanned presence of this force, Nagumo regarded the Midway forces as the main threat and continued the re-arming.
Nagumo was greatly hampered by the incapable crew of Tone No.4, which took an hour to find out what it had really sighted, the Yorktown group. Only by 0820 did the plane inform Nagumo that the force included "what appears to be a carrier". Nagumo now had to worry but didn't for too long, and soon ordered armament changed back to torpedoes. Only half of the Japanese planes were affected, for only half of them had been loaded with bombs after the first of Nagumo's rearm orders had been given. Due to the time pressure, however, bombs were not being properly stored. The Japanese carriers slowly became floating, unprotected arsenals.
It was VT-8 from Hornet, under the command of Lt.Cmdr. John C. Waldron. His planes were old, slow, and sluggish TBD Devastators, once the finest plane in the fleet ,but after seven years it had become a deathtrap., Waldron had trained his pilots to the last - and, before the battle, suggested to them that they should write a letter to their families. This brave but hopelessly outnumbered force approached Admiral Nagumo's carriers. Zeros were soon between them, and no single plane survived the massacre, as the Devastators approached in the "low and slow" manner necessary for them to conduct a successful attack, an approach forced upon the men by their torpedo load, the Mk13. Only one of the pilots, Ensign George Gay, survived, and was picked up alive by a PBY the next day.
The salvage party was making excellent progress when the protective screen was penetrated by a Japanese submarine after noon on 6 June. Four torpedoes were loosed two missed, one passed under Hammann and hit Yorktown, and the fourth hit the destroyer amidships, breaking her back.
I'm about to call, but as of 12:00 pm, Kaitlyn(finally got the spelling right)was still with us.
Confused?
Follow this link...You'll either laugh or be content that Sci Fi is pointless...Sokay, either way!...If you're in the Canteen You're a Patriotic Freeper...Love Ya!!! click here for my opus on joining the New FReepia Mars Colony and how to become a BRICK
Best Regards,
The Sleavester/ President Pro Tem In Absentia NFR.
PS...If Snow Bunny Wants to be? We Make Her a VERY Beautiful Brick! But she runs the Canteen and I don't want to overburden her...SB...BIG BAD BEAR HUG!!!! Back to MARS
I thank you for all the tremendous work you do to fight Media bias.
Will this be ok to be a brick. heh heh
Snow Bunny
I just read your post about being a man. I knew that, hahhaa...I can tell things like that. Yipeee you are taller then me.I am 5'11".giggle
Sadly, I must announce the passing of my Monitor. Monitor lived to the ripe old age of 2 before giving his last in an effort to display a Conservative view. It must have been a .jpg of x42 that finally caused his spark to go out.
[sigh]
I'm leaving now, so I'll see you later. :-)
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Achelous Class Landing Craft Repair Ship: Laid down as LST-281 at Chicago Bridge and Iron Works, Seneca Ill. Launched, 19 October 1943; Placed in partial commission as USS LST-281 for transit to her conversion yard; Decommisioned, 14 December 1943; Recommissioned as USS Atlas (ARL-7), 8 February 1944; Out-of-Commision-in-Reserve, 13 September 1946 at Astoria OR.; Laid up in the Pacific Reserve Fleet, Columbia River Group, Astoria; Recommissioned at Astoria, 1 June 1951; Out-of-Commission-in-Reserve, 5 April 1956 at Astoria; Laid up in the Pacific Reserve Fleet, Columbia River Group, Astoria OR.; Struck from the Naval Register, 1 June 1972; Final Dispostion sold for scrapping.
Specifications: Displacement 2,220 (lt) 4,100 (fl) t.; Length 328'; Beam 50'; Speed 11.6 Kts; Complement 255; Armament, one 3"/50, two 40mm, two 20mm; Propulsion, two General Motors 12-567 Diesel engines, two shafts, twin rudders.
(( hug ))
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