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In late December 1941, Navy Secretary Frank Knox and FDR met and selected Chester Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet now mostly 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. When the door opened he was assailed by a poisonous atmosphere from black oil,...

In late December 1941, Navy Secretary Frank Knox and FDR met and selected Chester Nimitz to command the Pacific Fleet now mostly 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. When the door opened he was assailed by a poisonous atmosphere from black oil,...

Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown are sunk with their 231 aircraft. The Japs take Midway. All 4 Jap CVs are undamaged. Can the Japanese launch an invasion of Hawaii before the American carriers roll off the line in 1943? 4 Essex class CVs and 5 Independence class CVLs will be in commission by 1 July 1943. 7 Essex class CVs, 9 Independence class CVLs and 19 Casablanca class CVEs in commission by 1 January 1944.

Six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan sent aircraft carriers to the Pacific atoll of Midway. Despite those odds, the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers the first day of the three-day battle and put Japan on the defensive. And though intelligence was a key reason behind a U.S. victory, other factors came into play, such as brave heroics by Navy dive bomber pilots.

On June 4, 1942, a battle off Midway Island marked the dawn of the United States Navy as the most powerful sea force in the world. Seventy years later, a civilian “battle” may doom its reach and power for good. Then the enemy was imperial Japan. Today, it’s the administration and Congress, who seem unable or unwilling to stop defense cuts that will leave America vulnerable and the world more dangerous. We’re fast approaching the point where the US Navy can no longer guarantee the safety of the world’s sea lanes, on which our economic future depends.

Six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan sent four aircraft carriers to the tiny Pacific atoll of Midway to draw out and destroy what remained of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. But this time the U.S. knew about Japan's plans. U.S. cryptologists had cracked Japanese communications codes, giving Fleet Commander Adm. Chester Nimitz notice of where Japan would strike, the day and time of the attack, and what ships the enemy would bring to the fight. The U.S. was badly outnumbered and its pilots less experienced than Japan's. Even so, it sank four Japanese aircraft carriers the...

Spanning hundreds of leagues and four days, June 4-7, 1942, the Battle of Midway pitted an overmatched American fleet against a Japanese armada in a desperate struggle for command of the Pacific. What unfolded more than 1,000 miles northwest of Hawaii was, British historian John Keegan maintains, “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.” Saturday in San Diego, the U.S. Navy celebrated this triumph’s 70th anniversary. Aboard the retired aircraft carrier named for the battle, 1,000 guests were to hear videotaped comments from a handful of survivors. They included aviators, Marines and one plucky steward....

Joe Rochefort's War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway by Elliot Carlson http://www.wabcradio.com/sectional.asp?id=33447 Saturday 1/712 10 PM

By a peculiar twist of fate, the Japanese admiral who masterminded the attack had persistently warned his government not to fight the United States. Had his countrymen listened, the history of the 20th century might have turned out much differently. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto foresaw that the struggle would become a prolonged war of attrition that Japan could not hope to win. For a year or so, he said, Japan might overrun locally weak Allied forces — but after that, its war economy would stagger and its densely built wood-and-paper cities would suffer ruinous air raids. Against such odds, Yamamoto could...

Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan prepared to deal one more decisive blow to the U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific. The aim was to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers and occupy the strategically important Midway Atoll, a tiny island nearly halfway between Asia and North America that was home to a U.S. Naval air station. American codebreakers deciphered the Japanese plans, allowing the U.S. Navy to plan an ambush. On June 3, 1942, the Battle of Midway commenced.

  ABOARD USS YORKTOWN — There has been much said and written of late regarding "high-risk decision-making" and "courageous leadership" in Washington. The so-called mainstream media, politicians and pundits are all atwitter — literally — about a congressman's underwear, the damage done by WikiLeaks and how the death of Osama bin Laden and the "Arab Spring" are changing the course of history. For those having difficulty discerning what qualifies as "decisiveness under duress" or a "gutsy call," the first week of June offers some excellent examples from living history that put current events into a more reasonable perspective.Much of...

Columbia, MO --(Ammoland.com)- MidwayUSA, a catalog and Internet retailer offering Just About Everything for Shooting, Reloading, Gunsmithing and Hunting, is pleased to announce Project 12*12*12, a new program to allow Customers to financially support the NRA’s National Endowment for the Protection of the Second Amendment. Additionally, the Potterfield Family will match all contributions, dollar for dollar, up to $100 per invoice. To support the new program, MidwayUSA has created a new product number, 121212, that will allow Customers to donate $5 each time this product number is used, up to twenty times per invoice. Project 12*12*12 will raise money for...

No one was injured Tuesday afternoon after an airplane went off the runway at Midway Airport. Southwest Flight 1919 was in Chicago from Denver when it slid off the runway and got stuck in the mud.

Many readers of American Thinker will recognize Midway as the scene of our first and in many ways our greatest naval victory of World War II. It is not remembered now, but for the first six months of 1942, we were losing World War II. After sinking most of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese occupied Wake Island and Guam in December 1941. In April 1942, they defeated our army in the Philippines and put it on the Death March. After Jimmy Doolittle bombed Tokyo in April 1942, the Japanese decided to eliminate the U.S. Navy in a...

Jim Muri thought he was getting together with his buddies for lunch Friday at Gusick’s — something the friends hadn’t done for a while. At 92, Muri, a decorated World War II combat pilot, had been ill but was feeling better and missed his pals. Walking slowly with a cane and with a friend, Yellowstone County Commissioner John Ostlund, at his side, Muri entered the Billings restaurant where friends and fellow pilots had gathered to surprise and honor the decorated veteran. Friday marked the 68th anniversary of Muri’s death-defying flight over a Japanese aircraft carrier on June 4, 1942, during...

Hope you have a nice Fourth of July. Maybe you'll watch the fireworks, grill a few hot dogs, give a little thanks to those keeping watch — now and then. Dave Cohea knows where he was on the Fourth of July in 1944: on board the USS Boston, which was shelling the island of Iwo Jima, softening it up for invasion the following spring. The Boston was Cohea's second ship, the first having been blasted out of the water 18 months earlier at Guadalcanal. "We were torpedoed. The ammo blew up, and fuel was all over me," says Cohea, 85,...

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2009 – The Navy’s top officer yesterday marked the 67th anniversary of World War II’s Battle of Midway at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Navy Memorial here. The Battle of Midway, fought June 4-7, 1942, pitted U.S and Japanese naval and air forces in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Midway is part of the Hawaiian island chain; the battle was fought about 1,300 miles northwest of Oahu. The United States lost the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown and a destroyer at Midway, but the Japanese navy incurred more extensive losses, including the destruction of four aircraft carriers and...

June 4, 1942 The Battle of Midway begins On this day in 1942, Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, launches a raid on Midway Island with almost the entirety of the Japanese navy. As part of a strategy to widen its sphere of influence and conquest, the Japanese set their sights on an island group in the central Pacific, Midway, as well as the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska. They were also hoping to draw the badly wounded U.S. navy into a battle, determined to finish it off. The American naval forces were...

A successful American intelligence operation uncovered their plans and the U.S. Pacific Fleet surprised the Japanese forces in early June of 1942, sinking four Japanese carriers while losing only one of their own. Japan's defeat at Midway turned turn the tide of the war in the Pacific and put America squarely on the offensive. But the victory came at a high price, particularly for the men of Torpedo Squadron 8.

"They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so they changed the course of a war ...even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit -- a magic blend of skill, faith and valor -- that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory." Dedication Stone Inscription by Walter LordNational WWII Memorial, Washington, DCBattle of MidwayJune 4-7, 1942 National Geographic produced a DVD, "Battle for Midway," which includes actual combat footage of the historic WWII naval battle and Dr. Robert Ballard's search and discovery of the aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown,...