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.
Answer: Because the salt on the french fries scares them off.
Do you know what a Coastie fears the most?
Blue water!
Written by a regular Navy "Blue Water" Sailor.
Basically, in 1942, one deck-load strike (all offensive aircraft based on one carrier) could be expected to sink one enemy carrier. Finding the enemy was the critical factor. Allocate too few aircraft to search, and the odds are that the enemy will elude you; allocate too many, and your firepower will be diluted (the Dauntless was a scout-dive bomber).
The Japanese had four carriers; the US had three. Whoever attacked effectively first would win.
More to follow later.
To all the old warriors, Thank you for your sacrifices. We can never fully understand the personal cost of your service. Via con Dios, my brothers.
Keep 'em locked on there, yuh durn Coastie! Semper Fi!
Today's classic warship, USS Yorktown (CV-5)
Yorktown class
Displacement. 19,800
Lenght. 809' 6"
beam. 83' 1"
Draft. 28' 0"
Speed. 32.5 kt.
Complement. 2,919
Armament. 8 5", 22 .50-cal mg.
Aircraft. 81-85
Commissioned on 30 September 1937
Sunk by Japanese sub on 7 June 1942
USS Yorktown, a 19,800 ton aircraft carrier built at Newport News, Virginia, was commissioned on 30 September 1937. Operating in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas until April 1939, she then spent the next two years in the Pacific. In May 1941 Yorktown returned to the Atlantic, patrolling actively during the troubled months preceding the outbreak of war between the United States and the Axis powers.
Two weeks after the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Yorktown transited the Panama Canal to reinforce the badly damaged Pacific Fleet. The carrier's first combat operation was the Marshalls-Gilberts raid in early February 1942. Yorktown then steamed to the South Pacific, where she participated in a series of raids and other operations that climaxed in the Battle of Coral Sea in early May. In this action, in which she was damaged by enemy bombs, her planes attacked two Japanese aircraft carriers, helping to sink Shoho and damaging Shokaku.
Quick repairs at Pearl Harbor put Yorktown into good enough condition to participate in the Battle of Midway on 4-6 June 1942. Yorktown was flagship of Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17, which operated independently from the other two U.S. carriers throughout the battle. At dawn on 4 June, she launched ten scouting aircraft to search for Japanese ships. At about 0840, Yorktown launched a striking force of seventeen SBD-3 scout-bombers and twelve TBD-1 torpedo planes, accompanied by an escort of six F4F-4 fighters. These aircraft later attacked the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu, fatally damaging her. Before noon, Yorktown launched another scouting group, which succeeded in locating the enemy carrier Hiryu about three hours later, making possible the attacks that destroyed the final element of the Japanese carrier striking force. Yorktown also maintained an airborne combat air patrol of other F4Fs throughout the morning and recovered two planes from USS Enterprise that had earlier attacked the Japanese carrier Kaga.
However, successive strikes by dive bombers and torpedo planes from Hiryu seriously damaged Yorktown, causing her abandonment during the afternoon of 4 June. Two days later, while salvage efforts were underway, the Japanese submarine I-168 torpedoed both the damaged carrier and the destroyer Hammann (DD-412), sinking the latter immediately and Yorktown shortly after daybreak on 7 June 1942. USS Yorktown's wreck was discovered and examined in May 1998, in surprisingly good condition after fifty-six years beneath more than three miles of sea water.
Douglas Dauntless Divebombers
butt-jammies?!?...oh...never mind...had this mental image flash thru my head...pay no attention to the man hiding in the corner...
Battle of Midway, the Setting Sun by Ivan Berryman showing US naval torpedo and bomber aircraft, Dauntless and Devastators attacking the Japanese fleet aircraft carrier Akagi during the Battle of Midway. Dauntless and Devastator aircraft played a major role in the Battle of Midway.
Tha last of the rye bread is gone. Kodi had grabbed the last heel, after a fierce srtuggle I managed to retrieve about a quarter of it. Wih the rye bread gone it can't be long before the dark side of the family begins to show.
After predicting a beautiful week for Rose Festival, we woke this morning to overcast and rain, they say there should be 2 days of this. Coincedence? I think not, even Oregon weeps for my family.
My youngest daughter (Jackie)graduates from 8th grade tomorrow. I'm pretty sure that I can get off of work, but when I mentioned that depending on how much work has to be done to recover from yesterdays problems, the MIL launched into her "Family comes first" lecture. I won the bet, major arguement before the end of the forth day.
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