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Originally Posted by FireGilbert
Good one Cap. I definitely enjoy some WWII pacific theatre discussion and it reminds me I need to visit the MacArthur museum in Brisbane ASAP.
You could also add in the Battle of the Coral Sea to the set up of Midway. Despite being a Japanese tactical victory it was a strategic failure that stopped their momentum and really led to the decisive battle to come. At Coral Sea the Japanese had two carriers damaged that could not fight in Midway while the Americans, despite losing a carrier, were able to surprisingly repair the Yorktown in 48 hours. Instead of a 6-2 carrier advantage it was 4-3 and with the American planes based in Midway the Japanese no longer had air superiority.
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I've often asked myself if the additional carriers would have been an victory advantage for the Japanese.
To this day I'm not even sure if it would have made much of a difference, except for the possibility of a larger retailiation strike against the American Carriers.
The combination of a really poor reconnaissance plan, combined with Nagumo's indecision, plus some real luck had the American strike groups over the Japanese carriers before they could react properly. When you combine that with Japanese doctrine that they wouldn't launch planes piecemeal and had to wait for a assembled strike of defense package was kind of crazy.
As well Yamamoto's plan to split fleets denied the Carrier fleet in terms of a lot of air defense capability, and left the re-enforcements far out of position and basically useless when Nagumo got into trouble.
The Japanese Carrier fleet stumbled into a 2 front bush wack with the planes from Midway on one side causing a distraction, and three fleet carriers on the other side.
There's a great book called Carriers at war that dedicated a chapter to damage control strategies in WW2. The most effective tool that the American's had were 2x4's and metal plates. The Japanese carriers didn't have the same damage control philosophy and if I remember had poorly designed ventilation on the hanger deck which meant that the Japanese carriers were literally enormous fuel air bombs during fueling operations.
Poor intelligence, poor tactics and poor doctrine eventually caught up to the Japanese Navy and they couldn't over come it with their superb planes and pilots because the technology gap was rapidly closing and Japan literally threw away their best veteran pilots at Midway.