Quote:
Originally Posted by Frequitude
Great timing. I just hit the Battle of Midway today in Hardcore History’s Supernova in the East series.
It seems most of the focus on Japan’s failure involves not having enough planes for the mission and their indecision around Nagumo’s dilemma, but I think the US deserves way more credit for their pesky continuous barrage tactic. It kept the Japanese completely occupied with indecision and kept them from being able to launch the massive attack they were seeking and believed to be doctrine.
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Personally I think the Japanese had more then enough planes to pull this off. There were other issues, holes or just plain bad planning that doomed the Japanese Carrier Forces
1) The Japanese were prepared and had literally planned to face a combination of Bull Halsey and Frank Fletcher, but instead fought a combination of Fletcher and Raymond Spruance. This made a massive difference because of the Bull like risk taking nature of Halsey. Spruance by his nature was fairly cautious in how he maneuvered and placed his assets, he was somewhat Risk Adverse. Remember the Japanese objective wasn't to really take Midway, that was a secondary objective, if they could draw in the US Carrier's and destroy them, while at the same time crippling operations on Midway to prevent it from being used as a refueling point for US ships and subs it was a success. Instead Spruance didn't charge in like Halsey would, and he used the whole operation area to spoof Japanese patrol efforts. Also at the end of the day Spruance packed it in after bagging the Japanese carriers, he realized that the Japanese were better night fighters and he didn't want to risk losing his carriers. Halsey in a later life interview stated that he would have tried to kill the rest of the Japanese fleet that night.
2) Plan M was a questionable plan. Breaking his assets into three fleets doomed Yamamoto. Placing the clean up fleet several hundred miles back to use as a clean up fleet stripped the carrier of valuable anti-aircraft resources.
3) Japanese intelligence was extremely poor. Pearl Harbor worked because of the Japanese sky network in the States that stretched from Seattle to Hawaii. They probably knew more then most US Naval Commanders, and the Navy planned accordingly. It was circumstance that the American carriers weren't at Pearl when the attack happened.
4) The Japanese scouting and search for the US Carriers were poorly executed and they were short on scouting assets. Because of this each of the 16 float planes that were assigned to scout had to cover a fairly large chunk of the ocean. Meanwhile the US Navy had scouting assets on Midway and with Task Force 16 and 17. In the race to locate the enemy fleet, the Americans found the Japanese far quicker and were able to launch their strkes first. Also in the bad luck category the Japanese scout that did find the US Carriers suffered a radio failure which meant that his report back to Nogumo just stated that US ships were found so the Japanese didn't believe that it was the main carrier group which is was. It took 20 minutes for that information to be broadcast and Nogumo refused to make a decision without it.
5) Nagumo might have been the wrong Admiral for the job. He had a good war to that point, but it could have been that he had the advantage of numbers and technology to make him look better. There's also a theory that Nagumo was emotionally compromised after a near miss by a Midway Bomber on a suicide run at his ships bridge. There's no question that his 20 minute pause and indecision about weather or not to continue his attack on Midway or rearm his planes and go after the US fleet based on poor information lead to his downfall.
6) Japanese doctrine and ship design was exceedingly poor - Its no secret now that the Japanese carriers were fairly fragile, and had poor fire fighting capabilities. Because of poor hanger ventilation, the hangers were filled with fuel fumes during refueling and there was poor placement of refueling equipment. American carriers were just more sturdy, and American Sailors were exceptional at damage control and firefighting. Japanese sailor were not all that well trained in fighting to save the ship.
Japanese doctrine was pretty foolish. For the most part doctrine stated that planes had to be taken below for refueling and rearming. Also that unlike the American's, Japanese Admirals were encouraged not to launch piecemeal but assemble their strike on the deck before launching to avoid traffic congestion. Therefore when the American strike arrived, the Japanese were stuck with a lot of planes on the deck and a thinned air defense group. As well the Japanese pilots were over aggressive and over chased TB-8 which pulled high air cover to low altitude allowing the Dive Bombers to attack.
7) Luck - The three American attack groups almost arrived over the Japanese carriers before the Japanese were even in a position to launch their strike on the American Carriers, this was again due to poor scouting and a broken radio. At the same time McClusky's group VB-6 and VS-6 got lost on the way and even though they were extremely low on fuel, pressed on their search and were extremely fortunate to find the Japanese carriers before they would have had to head home to refuel. Because of this lucky stroke all three attack groups arrived over the Japanese fleet at the same time. Because the Japanese air group had been pulled low by the Torpedo bombers, the plan very well could have failed if the American Fighters had arrived in waves as the plan called for.
8) For lack of water - The Japanese were counting on the American's not knowing about the attack on Midway until after it happened. That way they could have dealt with the Midway Planes and defenses before the American's could move their carriers and then sit and wait for the US Carriers to arrive so they could have fought against one enemy or front and not two. But the work of American code breakers combined with the brilliant "Midway's fresh water plant is broken send water", which resulted in a Japanese message "Bring extra water with the attack fleet" lead to the American's knowing that the Japanese were coming and they were able to set up a bush wack which forced the Japanese to divide their attention.
9) Fatal Misjudgements - The Japanese had become fairly arrogant and were fully captured by Victory or buck fever, at the same time the Japanese and Yamamoto severely misjudged American Navy Moral believing that it was on the verge of breaking due to a string of losses against the Japanese Navy. But the American moral was still fairly high.
At the same time the exceptional work to get the Yorktown out to sea with 48 hours worth of repairs was a miracle in itself and the Japanese were betting on facing two carriers and not three. In fact that error was doubled during the battle when the Yorkton was hit by four bombs and reported destroyed. Then later after the American's had doused the fire and restarted the boilers it took another bomb strike and the Japanese believed that they had sunk two carriers.
Anyways, Midway was a combination of a lot of things, but sometimes victory is a pretty simple formula
Planning + Intelligence + opportunity can overcome a numerical advantage, and it did at Midway.
