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Dated May 25 and delivered by plane while the Yorktown was about a hundred miles from Oahu, the report that Nimitz read was sobering...One day ahead of schedule, on May 27, the Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor. The next morning, after Nimitz had cut orders voiding the safety rule of spending a day purging her tanks of stored aviation fuel, the Yorktown eased into Drydock Number One. The caissons closed behind her, and pumps began draining out the water. With at least a foot of water still remaining in the drydock, men in waders gathered to inspect the hull. One...

This week Seth, Bill, and frequent and always welcome Wingman Jon Parshall take a look at the recently released underwater archaeological video footage of the wreck sites of AKAGI, YORKTOWN (CV-5), and KAGA. The trio breaks down what we see in the footage, how the damage shown relates to the battle, what happened in these historic locations, and much more. Tune in and see what the team has to say about the incredible video footage and (we think) pretty cool commentary.

A Great Talk on the Battle; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9rkKtK1b44&t=193s

Battle of Midway, (June 3–6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft. The Midway Islands were claimed for the United States on July 5, 1859, by Capt. N.C. Brooks. The coral atoll—consisting of Eastern Island and the larger Sand Island to the west—has a total land area of just 2.4 square miles (6.2 square km). Midway was formally annexed by the U.S. in 1867. A coal depot was established for transpacific steamers, but it was never used. It was World War II which conclusively demonstrated the strategic importance of Midway. In 1940 the U.S. Navy began...

In late December 1941, Navy Secretary Frank Knox and FDR met and selected Chester Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet, which at that time the public perceived as residing at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt said, “Tell Nimitz to get the hell out to Pearl and stay there until the war is won”. Knox informed Nimitz by saying, “You’re going to take command of the Pacific Fleet, and I think you will be gone a long time”.On Christmas Day 1941 Admiral Chester Nimitz arrived by Catalina flying boat to take command. He did not bring any staff with him....

Like most Freepers, I don’t particularly care for youtube postings. But in watching this documentary, the rare Freeper with an attention span will take away a deeper appreciation of the events faced by Vice Admiral Nagumo and Rear Admiral Yamaguchi on June 4th. I suggest scheduling an hour or so when you can view it without interruptions. You’ll want to hit the pause and occasionally rewind to absorb the fateful decisions and fog of war at sea before the widespread use of a new technology called radar. The Battle of Midway was a closer run thing than the outcome, the...

In late December 1941, Navy Secretary Frank Knox and FDR met and selected Chester Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet, which at that time the public perceived as residing at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt said, “Tell Nimitz to get the hell out to Pearl and stay there until the war is won”. Knox informed Nimitz by saying, “You’re going to take command of the Pacific Fleet, and I think you will be gone a long time”.On Christmas Day 1941 Admiral Chester Nimitz arrived by Catalina flying boat to take command. He did not bring any staff with him....

This is part one of a three part video series covering Operation MI. As you can see I spent a considerable amount of time covering Nagumo’s Dilemma. To me it's one of most striking examples of how tough it can be for a commander to make a decision based on the information at hand. I found that to be the most interesting aspect of the battle.

THEY WERE THE Navy’s last chance. It was 10:20 a.m. on Thursday, June 4, 1942. Forty-seven U. S. Navy dive bombers had found what they were looking for. Far below, four Japanese aircraft carriers were launching the first planes of a massive strike that could decide the Battle of Midway. So far, two days of American air and submarine attacks had failed to damage a single ship of the peerless Japanese Aircraft Carrier Striking Force. The priceless intelligence advantage the U.S. had gained through years of backbreaking effort by Navy codebreakers was about to be squandered. The heroic sacrifice...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway

On Christmas Day 1941 Admiral Chester Nimitz arrived by Catalina flying boat to take command. He did not bring any staff with him. When the door opened, he was assailed by a poisonous atmosphere from black oil, charred wood, burned paint, and rotting flesh. The boat ride to shore engulfed the party in the panorama of sunken hulls and floating wreckage, punctuated by the bodies of dead sailors still surfacing from the blasted ships. He spent the first days learning everything he could about his new assignment and confirmed the general perception was wrong. The dry-docks, repair shops, and fuel...

On Christmas Day 1941 Admiral Chester Nimitz arrived by Catalina flying boat to take command. He did not bring any staff with him. When the door opened, he was assailed by a poisonous atmosphere from black oil, charred wood, burned paint, and rotting flesh. The boat ride to shore engulfed the party in the panorama of sunken hulls and floating wreckage, punctuated by the bodies of dead sailors still surfacing from the blasted ships. He spent the first days learning everything he could about his new assignment and confirmed the publicÂ’s perception was wrong. The dry-docks, repair shops, and fuel...

The newly-released movie Midway has generated some interest and a 150-post Freeper thread yesterday: http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3793171/postsIn the video below a professor at the US Navy War College hits key info helping an viewer who choses to see this great movie. A key one that I'd read long ago but had not fully embraced: US damage control was considerably better than that of Japan. When Japanese pilots hit the USS Yorktown, they returned to their carriers joyous, "We have sunk a US carrier..!" Yet inside of an hour or so US damage control had bent Heaven & Earth to save her; the...

MIDWAY ATOLL, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (AP) — A crew of deep-sea explorers and historians looking for lost World War II warships have found a second Japanese aircraft carrier that went down in the historic Battle of Midway. Vulcan Inc.'s director of undersea operations Rob Kraft and Naval History and Heritage Command historian Frank Thompson reviewed high frequency sonar images of the warship Sunday and say that its dimensions and location mean it has to be the carrier Akagi. The Akagi was found in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument resting in nearly 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) of water more than 1,300...

Deep-sea explorers and historians on Sunday announced they apparently found a second World War II-era Japanese aircraft carrier that sank during the Battle of Midway. A review of sonar data captured Sunday showed either the Japanese carrier Akagi or the Soryu resting in nearly 18,000 feet of water in the Pacific Ocean more than 1,300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Vulcan Inc. director of undersea operations Rob Kraft said. The researchers used an autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, equipped with sonar to find the ship. The vehicle had been out overnight collecting data, and the image of a warship...

Deep-sea explorers scouring the world's oceans for sunken World War II ships are investigating what they believe could be the third ship of seven lost to the Pacific during the Battle of Midway. Hundreds of miles off Midway Atoll, nearly halfway between the United States and Japan, a research vessel is launching underwater robots miles into the abyss to look for warships from the famed Battle of Midway. Weeks of grid searches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have already led the crew of the Petrel to one sunken warship, the Japanese ship the Kaga. This week, the crew is deploying...

Nice video of Japanese perspective on how 15 minutes changed the world.

Why was Midway such a critical victory? First, the fact that the U.S. Navy lost just one carrier at Midway meant that four carriers (Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, and Wasp) were available when the U.S. Navy went on the offensive during the Guadalcanal campaign that began the first week of August 1942. Second, the march of the Imperial Japanese Navy across the Pacific was halted at Midway and never restarted. After Midway, the Japanese would react to the Americans, and not the other way around. In the language of the Naval War College, the “operational initiative” had passed from the Japanese...

You can't visit Midway anymore, or Iwo Jima or wake. Those are the only three major battle sites from the Pacific War I've not managed to visit. You can watch the movie account on Amazon. Midway w/Charleton Heston, Henry Fonda et al.

That famous battle in June 1942 turned the tide of World War II in the Pacific. Mills was there, as chief steward aboard the doomed carrier Yorktown, playing a small but memorable role that spoke of character and determination — so much so that decades later a barracks at North Island Naval Air Station was named after him. Mr. Mills, a longtime San Diego resident, died last Friday at Mission Hills Health Care. He was 103. -snip In interviews, Mr. Mills said he and other blacks understood that they were under a microscope, watched by white people expecting them to fail. If...