Quote:
Originally Posted by worth
Losing 4 carriers in one day is not the way to win a war.
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Midway was Japan's big dice role, they had victory fever because they had been kicking a$$ across the Pacific. Yamamoto knew that he wasn't going to win the war if it dragged on, he was hoping to deal a fatal blow to the American Navy and force them to negotiate a treaty.
They were also expecting to face Halsey and not Nimitz, and Nimitz approach was far more deliberate then Halsey who was a hard charger.
The arrogance on the Japanese Navy was shown early and often. They did very light scouting, they had poor intelligence as they expected the American Carriers to still be in Pearl Harbour. Because of this they left their carriers relatively exposed and bunched up.
The over aggressiveness of the Japanese Pilots where they all dropped low to go after the slow planes of Torpedo Squadron 8 left the formation wide open for dive bomber attacks.
The American's scouted better, had better luck, and knew the Japanese were coming due to the Water Purifier trick. There was no way that the Japanese were going to win the battle. When things started going wrong they should have retired from the Battlefield instead of trying to pursue another strike against American Carriers which left them very vunerable as they kept changing the loadouts on their planes.