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Old 06-05-2020, 04:06 PM   #1
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Default Battle of Midway

June 4-5, 1942

One of the most pivotal naval battles in history. It represented a major roll of the dice by the US Navy as they committed their remaining three fleet carriers against a numerically superior Japanese assault force featuring 4 carriers. The Japanese hoped that they could use the invasion of Midway to lure in the American Carriers and destroy them and make the American's sue for peace.

Instead the Japanese lost all four of their carriers, and 248 of their best pilots to the American losses of 1 carrier and over 150 planes lost.

This battle represented a turning point in the war as Japan's victory fever was broken and they were forced into a protracted fighting retreat to the home islands. At the same time it signaled the ascension of American naval air power over Japan in terms of quality of training, experience and technology

The set up

The Japanese had stormed the Pacific gaining key victories in the Philippines, Malaya, today's Indonesia, and Singapore. This created a Pacific Island Fortress for the Japanese allowing them to create long range air fields to prevent the eventual American invasion of the Home Islands. While the American's had made use of their three remaining fleet carriers in hit and fade attacks they were reluctant to commit their carriers to a major fleet action.

Admiral Yamamoto also knew that the American's needed to be knocked out in the Pacific before America's industrial might came into play. Yamamoto was never confident in a Japanese victory over America, but knew that if he could knock out the American Carriers that the US Navy would be forced to retreat to the coastal defense of the West coast and Japan could impose a peace by re threatening Pearl and the Coast.

The purpose of Midway was to draw the US Carriers in piece meal and destroy them, Yamamoto selected Midway because it was beyond the range of American long range aviation. It was isolated.

While the Japanese didn't consider the taking of Midway to be vital, the American's did as it would represent a key navy and submarine resupply base for attacks on Japan.

Yamamoto created Plan M, which used multiple task forces, that were dispersed so that the American's wouldn't know what the final objection was until too late to commit more then a carrier task force. However Japanese intelligence had told Yamamoto that the Americans had only two carriers with the Yorkton tied up in dry dock due to extensive damage. Instead the US Navy ship yard workers pulled off a major miracle getting the Yorkton sea worthy within 72 hours instead of weeks. This failure of intelligence combined with a poor recon plan by the Japanese would turn the tide of this battle.

The original plan had the Japanese carrier fleet commanded by Admiral Nagumo would lead the way and use its aircraft to soften up the Midway defense and then attack the American carriers when they entered in theatre. Then the Battleship groups under Yamamoto who were trailing by hundreds of miles would come in and clean up any survivors using their guns.

Decisive Factor 1 - Unknown to Yamamoto besides the fact that there were three carriers instead of two was that the US Navy had broken the Japanese naval code and used the infamous broken water desalination plant message to confirm that Midway was the target. Therefore the American Carrier force arrived early and gained position for a ultimate bushwack.

Decisive Factor 2 - the US forces should have been commanded by Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. Halsey, a hell bent for leather Naval Commander was extremely aggressive and a risk taker, and Yamamoto built his plans around a aggressive Halsey. Instead Bull was sidelines due to shingles and he was replaced by Admiral Raymond Spruance, a cerebral Commander who had cut his teeth in the destroyer navy. He was somewhat risk averse and wouldn't gamble his carriers aggressively.

Dispositions

Japanese Navy - 4 Fleet Carriers 2 Battleships, 6 Heavy Cruisers, 1 light cruiser, 14 destroyers, 248 carrier based strike planes

American Navy - 3 carriers, 7 Heavy Cruisers, 1 Light Cruiser, 15 Destroyers, 233 Carrier based strike planes, 127 land based planes, 16 Subs.

The Battle

Though the battle started on June 3rd with a attack by B-17's on the Japanese fleet the attack was ineffective as none of the bombs hit even though the American's reported 4 ships damaged.

On June 4th Nagumo launched his first air attack on Midway, while at the same time launching his recon aircraft to search for the US Carriers. The problem was that they had a bad recon plan with too few aircraft. At the same time, patrol craft from Midway were launched and found two of the Japanese Carriers.

Midway reacted aggressively launching a force of un-escorted bombers to attack the Japanese Carriers, while Midway's fighters stayed behind to defend the Island. While the Japanese air attack on Midway was somewhat successful, it didn't do enough damage to the American refueling depot, nor to America's dug in defenses and it was decided that a second strike would be needed.

Meanwhile the Midway's attack on the Japanese fleet was a brutal failure with most of Midways's strike aircraft lost.

The Japanese strike on Midway returned to their carriers and Nagumo ordered them armed for another ground attack, thus creating one of the greatest moments of indecision in naval history. While the rearming happened, one of the Japanese patrol planes reported a large American floatilla but failed to disclose its disposition.

After 40 minutes of indecision while he waited for a further report on the disposition of the American fleet, Nagumo ordered his planes re-armed on deck for a antiship attack. The other failure was in Japanese doctrine, and Nagumo had several defensive fighters on deck but Doctrine did not allow him to simply launch those defensive fighters but to wait for the rearmed strike aircraft. These minutes added up as the American's launched their own strike against the Japanese fleet and the planes were well on the way.

By the time the Japanese were ready to launch their strike 117 American planes were over their deck. However one unfortunate circumstance made the American's first strike a rousing success as Torpedo Squadron 8 which was unescorted came in low and were wiped out except of George Gay Jr, this attack though drew the Japanese defending aircraft in low and opened up a clean lane for the American dive bombers Bomber Squadrons 3 and 6 lead by Wade McClusky dove on the Carriers Kaga and Akagi. Because of the fully fueled and loaded Japanese planes on deck and in the hanger, combined with poor damage control doomed the two carriers. While the Akagi only sustained one hit it was fatal as it created a mass fire in the hanger deck that reached the fuel lines and destroyed the carrier.

Meanwhile VB-3 dove on the Soryu, a failure of the electronic torpedo arming system dropped some bombs early, but they still managed several hits lighting the carrier on fire.

At that point, Nagumo struck his flag on the Akagi and transferred to the cruiser Nagara.

Hiryu was the soled surviving Japanese Carrier and it launched a hastily assembled counterstrike consisting of 18 bombers and 6 escorts which were meant to follow the American Carriers who were withdrawing to recover their planes safely. But the Japanese strike force found the carriers and hit the Yorkton with three bombs killing 3 of her 4 boilers. However superior damage control and repair training took effect and the Yorkton managed to path her flight deck and relight her boilers. But it was a short lived victory as a second strike launched from the Hiryu consisting of 10 torpedo bombers and escorts put 2 torpedo's into the battered carrier. However the Japanese believed that they had hit a second American Carrier instead of the Yorkton a second time because American damage control was so good.

Later on the 4th American scouts spotted the last surviving Japanese carrier the Hiryu, and guided in a American force of 24 bombers, they hit the carrier with 4 bombs and lit it ablaze and unfixable.

As night fell, the American's decided to abandon the Yorkton. At this point Spruance decided that America had won a huge victory trading one carrier for four and realizing that the Japanese were superior night fighters decided to call it a day and withdraw to the East. Yamamto decided that it was a risk to attack Midway with no carrier support or air cover and withdrew to the West but dispatched cruisers and destroyers to bombard Midway. However realizing that he had lost the initative he ordered the Cruiser and her destroyer consorts to withdraw as well.

The Battle of Midway was over.

Despite heroic efforts the next day the Yorkton succumbed to her her damage when she was torpedo by a Japanese sub, and eventually keeled over and sank.

Final casualties

The Japanese losses were devastating on a physical and psychological basis. They lose 4 carriers, 4 destroyers, all 248 of their aircraft and 3050 dead. While the destruction of the Carriers didn't doom Japanese military aspirations over the Pacific, the loss of their most experience carrier pilots and the best and brightest of their fleet was devastating and would lead to the Japanese being routed later on. On top of that the American's who had lost 1 carrier and 1 destroyer and 150 aircraft and lost 307 men, they had gained a great victory over the unbeatable Japan and most importantly had won precious time for American Industry to began grinding out planes and ships at an incredible rate.

While the Japanese still continued to capture territory and win battles, the loss of the pilots and ships meant that it became increasingly impossible for Japan to follow up on their plans for Fiji and Australia, and eventually the Japanese Navy was swamped under by the Americans, with Guadalcanal representing the end of Japanese Naval effectiveness.

The victory also allowed the Americans to bring the Essex heavy carriers on line, while it also showed the importance of cryptoanalysis, reconnaissance and radio communications and up to date information.
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Old 06-05-2020, 05:01 PM   #2
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I watched the Roland Emmerich movie Midway about all this... I thought it was okay but I don't think it captured the reality of the event.

Thanks for the post.
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Old 06-05-2020, 05:11 PM   #3
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There's only one midway movie, and that's the 1976 movie, which was exceptional had a great cast, used actual footage from the battle and had a stellar cast.


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Old 06-05-2020, 05:14 PM   #4
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Midway 1976 and Tora Tora Tora are a big part of my video collection.
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Old 06-05-2020, 05:28 PM   #5
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Wonder what kind of world we'd be living in if Japan won Midway and Germany won Stalingrad.
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Old 06-05-2020, 05:38 PM   #6
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Yeah, the cast in that original was something else.
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Old 06-05-2020, 05:42 PM   #7
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They forgot Tom Sellect and Eric Estrada though.


If you blink you'd miss a pre mustache Tom crashing into the flight deck, and Eric glaring heroically at the sun.
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Old 06-05-2020, 06:12 PM   #8
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Wonder what kind of world we'd be living in if Japan won Midway and Germany won Stalingrad.
Those probably wouldn't be enough to change the end result, even with a loss at Stalingrad the USSR's military strength was growing faster than Germany and would have taken it back quickly.

And even if the IJN sunk all three American carriers for no loss, US shipbuilding superiority means the USN will still be too strong by 1944. The battles for the key islands around Saipan and Guam may be more even but eventually the Japanese lose all their big carriers and can't make up their losses.
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Old 06-05-2020, 06:54 PM   #9
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Old 06-05-2020, 06:55 PM   #10
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It's important to note that Japan never intended to fully defeat the United States. They knew that on a long enough timeline, US industrial output and manpower would surpass their ability to keep up. Their strategy was to land one decisive knock-out blow to temporarily destroy the US Pacific Fleet (it was originally meant to be Pearl Harbor, but because the carriers were at sea on Dec 7, Midway became Plan B), consolidate their territorial gains in the Pacific, then sign a peace treaty with the United States.

There's a really, really well-made video series on YouTube that shows the Battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective which only gives you, the viewer, the same information that was available to the IJN admirals at the time. I highly recommend it if you're interested in WWII history.



Edit: Ha! Beaten by Cliche!
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Old 06-05-2020, 08:39 PM   #11
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Yorkton
Yorktown
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Old 06-05-2020, 09:17 PM   #12
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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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Old 06-05-2020, 11:06 PM   #13
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Anyone looking for a book on the battle I highly recommend this one. Its excellent.

https://www.amazon.ca/Shattered-Swor...1419914&sr=8-1
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Old 06-05-2020, 11:16 PM   #14
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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.

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.
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Old 06-05-2020, 11:25 PM   #15
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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.

The repair work on the Yorktown to get her to sea in 48 hours was amazing. She was a ship that almost refused to die, taking major damage at Coral Sea, and then being hammered and set ablaze at Midway, repairing her damage between strikes and then relighting her boilers. But she took two torpedo hits from a sub, which lead to a greater list and the ship was abandened. The actual story of the capsizing sounds like the Yorkton kept struggling not to tip over, it was nearly the ship that wouldn't die.
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Old 06-06-2020, 01:28 AM   #16
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Midway 1976 and Tora Tora Tora are a big part of my video collection.
Have you seen last years Midway? good cast, is it worth the watch?

BTW, outstanding write-up
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Old 06-06-2020, 02:25 AM   #17
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That's a tough question, because I did watch the movie and there were parts of it that were actually pretty good and the cast was decent. But it felt like Midway lite to me and at times it felt like the focus went to the wrong place.


One of the crucial aspects was really the breaking of the Japanese Naval Code and the 1976 movie did an outstanding job of making it a pivotal moment in the film and dedicating some time to it, and better yet explaining that when a code is broken your lucky if your reading 1 out of 4 words of the message.


The actual action scenes in the 2019 film was good. I felt that the Japanese side of the equation was light. If you go back and watch the 76 film it did a great job of making the Japanese characters real and whole and resisted the temptation to make them an over the top enemy.


Also while the cast itself was really good, I felt like there was a disconnect in the casting. Dennis Quaid wouldn't be who I picked to play Bull Halsey. The effects were a bit subpar in my mind as well.


If your going to watch a midway movie, you'd do yourself a favor by finding the 76 version. It usually shows up once in a while on like the rewind channel etc. I think you can still rent it on Shaw as well.
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Old 06-06-2020, 11:16 AM   #18
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Comparison of F4F Wildcat and A6M Zero employed at the battle.


One interesting note is that the dive bombers had more success than the torpedo trucks. This is due to largely ineffective torpedo design.



This sort of design failure would be repeated again with the early deployment of M-16 (from XM16E1 to m-16a1), the development of the M3 Bradley (Pentagon Wars is an amusing comedy movie of US weapons procurement), the M247 SPAA, to the current teething problems of the f-35 and f-22.
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Old 06-06-2020, 11:29 AM   #19
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The Mark 14 was a disaster. It lead to the loss of the USS Tulibee, when a torpedo that she fired circled around and squired the Tulibee and sank her killing all but one of her crew.
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Old 06-06-2020, 12:38 PM   #20
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CaptainCrunch, this so awesome. You really need to write a blog, kind of a this day in history. I'm sure people here on CP would comment there. We could get it going
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