Midway

The war before Midway

Japan’s naval aviation had demonstrated how dangerous the aircraft carrier had become. On 18 April 1942, sixteen American B-25 bombers led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle took off from USS Hornet and struck Japan. The physical damage was small. The shock of an attack on the home islands was not.

Midway, about 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu, consisted of two small islands inside a coral atoll. Taking it would extend Japan’s perimeter and threaten Hawaii. More immediately, Yamamoto hoped an attack would lure the surviving American carriers into battle. His forces were spread over a vast area; Yamamoto followed aboard Yamato, while Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo led the striking force of Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu. The four carriers embarked 248 aircraft. All had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Americans read enough

American cryptanalysts could not read every Japanese naval message. Fragments of the JN-25 system, traffic analysis, and painstaking reconstruction nevertheless pointed toward an operation against an objective called AF. Commander Joseph Rochefort’s Station HYPO team and Pacific Fleet intelligence officer Edwin Layton concluded that AF meant Midway.

The famous water ruse confirmed an inference already supported by other evidence. Midway sent an uncoded report of a fresh-water shortage; American intelligence subsequently intercepted a Japanese message reporting that AF lacked water. Nimitz learned approximately where and when the Japanese were coming. Japan did not know that he knew.

The people making the decisions

Yamamoto and Nimitz

Yamamoto understood the scale of American industrial power and sought a decisive naval victory before it fully mobilized. But his complicated operation dispersed carriers, invasion forces, battleships, and a simultaneous Aleutian force. Much of Japan’s overall strength could not influence the decisive carrier fight. Nimitz, with fewer ships but better intelligence, placed his available carriers northeast of Midway rather than trying to defend everywhere.

Nagumo, Fletcher, and Spruance

Nagumo faced incomplete reconnaissance, returning aircraft, a combat air patrol to maintain, repeated attacks, and sudden news of American ships. Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, senior American carrier commander, led Task Force 17 aboard Yorktown. Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance commanded Task Force 16, with Enterprise and Hornet, after Admiral William “Bull” Halsey fell ill and recommended him as a replacement.

Yorktown had been damaged in the Coral Sea and reached Pearl Harbor on 27 May. Work initially estimated in months was reduced to emergency repairs in roughly three days. She sailed on 30 May. Nimitz thus had three carriers near the rendezvous known as Point Luck.

3–4 June: contact

On 3 June a PBY Catalina from Midway sighted elements of the Japanese invasion force. American bombers attacked without much effect; that night a PBY torpedoed the tanker Akebono Maru. The Japanese were approaching. The decisive fight would come the following day.

Before dawn on 4 June, Nagumo launched 108 aircraft against Midway and sent scouts across the surrounding ocean. The strike damaged the island but did not put it out of action. Its commander, Lieutenant Joichi Tomonaga, reported that another attack was necessary. At about 7:15 a.m. Nagumo ordered his reserve prepared for a second island strike. A scout then reported American ships, and later a carrier. The target had changed while his returning aircraft still needed to land.

The popular image of four Japanese flight decks crammed with fully fueled strike aircraft at the instant the dive bombers arrived is too tidy. Ordnance handling and changing missions created serious problems, but Nagumo’s larger dilemma was operational: recover the Midway strike, defend the fleet, absorb repeated attacks, and assemble an anti-ship strike against carriers he had not expected to find so near.

Spruance launches

Spruance could close the range and reduce his pilots’ fuel risk, or launch early in hopes of catching the Japanese carriers while they recovered the Midway strike. He launched shortly after 7 a.m.; Fletcher’s Yorktown followed later. It was an aggressive decision, and the attacks that followed were anything but orderly. Different formations flew different courses. Some failed to find the enemy at all.

The torpedo squadrons

Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron led Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8 into the Japanese defense without fighter protection. All fifteen TBD Devastators were shot down; Ensign George Gay alone survived. Enterprise’s VT-6 and Yorktown’s VT-3 also took devastating losses. None of the three carrier torpedo squadrons scored a confirmed torpedo hit.

Their attacks formed part of a relentless sequence that gave Nagumo’s force little time to recover. Japanese fighters repeatedly met attackers from different directions and altitudes; the carriers maneuvered defensively while trying to recover and prepare aircraft. The combat air patrol remained dangerous, but it was poorly placed to meet what came next. The familiar claim that the torpedo planes simply pulled every Zero down to sea level and cleared the sky overstates a much messier battle.

5–7 June: the battle ends

American attacks on the retreating Japanese sank the heavy cruiser Mikuma and badly damaged Mogami. American crews tried to save Yorktown, but submarine I-168 struck her and the destroyer USS Hammann on 6 June. Hammann sank quickly; Yorktown went down on the morning of 7 June.

Japan lost four fleet carriers, Mikuma, hundreds of aircraft, and more than 3,000 personnel. The United States lost Yorktown, Hammann, about 145 aircraft, and 307 people killed. The old assertion that most of Japan’s elite carrier pilots died at Midway is wrong: more than three quarters of its naval aviators survived. Roughly 110 carrier aircrew died, while the loss of the carriers and hundreds of trained aviation technicians and maintainers was catastrophic. Many surviving aircrew would be lost later in the Solomons campaign.

Why Japan lost

There was no single cause. Intelligence let Nimitz position his smaller force; Japanese reconnaissance did not give Nagumo comparable warning. Yamamoto’s dispersed plan left major forces too far away. American commanders launched aggressively, their pilots kept attacking despite terrible losses, and the Japanese carriers had little respite. Damage control and luck mattered too. McClusky saw Arashi. Separate American dive bomber groups arrived together. One hit doomed Akagi. None of this was inevitable.

Conclusion: time and initiative

Midway did not make Japan’s defeat inevitable, and a Japanese victory would not have made America’s defeat inevitable. What the historical battle changed was time, initiative, and strategic freedom. Japan lost four of its best carriers; two months later U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal. The transition to Allied offense would be long and bloody, but it had begun.

American intelligence gave Nimitz an extraordinary advantage, yet pilots still had to find and hit the carriers. Many missed. Torpedo squadrons were devastated. McClusky found a destroyer and followed it. A single bomb doomed Akagi. Change a handful of events and June 1942 could end with Japan holding the initiative and America facing a longer, costlier war.

Japan would still face the industrial giant behind the American fleet. Yamamoto sailed toward Midway to finish what Pearl Harbor had begun. Instead, the fleet he expected to ambush was waiting for him, and in a few violent minutes the Pacific War began moving in the opposite direction.