Battle of Midway
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| Battle of Midway | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Image:Midway dauntless.jpg U.S. Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber at Midway | |||
| Conflict: World War II, Pacific War | |||
| Date: June 4 – June 7 1942 | |||
| Place: Vicinity of Midway Island | |||
| Outcome: U.S. tactical and strategic victory | |||
| Combatants | |||
| United States | Japan | ||
| Commanders | |||
| Frank J. Fletcher Raymond A. Spruance | Chuichi Nagumo Isoroku Yamamoto | ||
| Strength | |||
| Three carriers, about 50 support ships | Four carriers, about 150 support ships | ||
| Casualties | |||
| 1 carrier, 1 destroyer sunk; 307 killed | 4 carriers, 1 cruiser sunk; 2,500 killed | ||
| |||
The Battle of Midway took place on June 5, 1942 (June 4 – June 7 in U.S. time zones). Only one month after the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the Pacific War (1937–1945).
The Japanese attack on Midway, which also included a feint to Alaska by a smaller fleet, was a ploy by the Japanese to lure the American carrier fleet into a trap. The Japanese hoped to avenge the bombing of the Japanese home islands two months earlier during the Doolittle Raid (an air raid on Tokyo), plug the hole in their Eastern defensive perimeter formed by U.S. control of Midway, finish off the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and perhaps even take Hawaii. Had the Japanese achieved their objective at Midway, the northeastern Pacific Rim would have been essentially defenseless against the Japanese Navy, since the remaining U.S. naval ships were fully deployed halfway around the world in the North Atlantic. However, the Midway attack, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, was not part of a campaign for the conquest of the United States mainland, but for the elimination of the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, in order to gain for Japan a free hand in establishing regional hegemony, its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.
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Before the battle
Midway itself was not especially important in the larger scheme of Japan's intentions: they were keen on concentrating on invading New Caledonia, the Samoa Islands, and Fiji, in order to isolate Australia, so as to help expand and consolidate their newly-acquired SE Pacific territory. However, the Midway Islands were the closest remaining U.S. base to Japan, and would therefore be strongly defended by the U.S.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's battle plan was typically bold and ingenious. Like most Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) strategic doctrine, it was designed, in part, to lure major parts of the U.S. Fleet into a fatally compromising situation. Yamamoto's main force of battleships and cruisers trailed his carriers, and was intended to take out whatever part of the U.S. Fleet might come to Midway's support. The plan was complicated, probably in part because it was put together very rapidly in the wake of the "Doolittle Raid" on Tokyo by U.S. Army B-25's flying from U.S. carriers in the middle of April. The raid had done little significant damage, but was a severe psychological shock, demonstrating that the Japanese military could not prevent attacks against the Japanese home islands, and it boosted the morale in the U.S.
U.S. intelligence
U.S. naval intelligence (in cooperation with the British and Dutch) had been reading parts of the primary Imperial Japanese Navy communications system (JN-25, an enciphered code) for some time, and since the most recent version changed just before the Pearl Harbor attack, had made considerable progress on the new version. The abundance of radio intelligence harvested from the Japanese Navy’s "wild-goose chase" of the Doolittle Raid task force, further compromised JN-25. By May, the Americans knew that the Japanese were preparing to launch a massive offensive in early June, and could hope to ambush them. One code element was unclear, however. Location AF was clearly to be the major point of attack, but it was unclear what AF was. Some, especially in the Pacific, thought it was Midway; others, concentrated it seems at OP-20-G in Washington, believed AF to be in the Aleutian Islands. However, there was no cryptographic way of settling the issue. An ingenious suggestion by a young officer, Jasper Holmes, at Station Hypo, helped discover the Japanese plan. He asked that the base commander at Midway radio Pearl Harbor to say, in an unencrypted report, that drinking water was running low, due to a breakdown of the water plant. A JN-25 message not long thereafter noted that AF had fresh-water problems, and that the attack force should plan accordingly. AF was therefore Midway, and would be attacked in the new operation.
Information from JN-25 decrypts came in slowly, and it wasn't 'till the very last minute that CINCPAC Admiral Chester Nimitz had enough information to put together an ambush for the Midway attack force. He had Vice Admiral William Halsey's two-carrier task force—but Halsey himself was stricken with skin disease, and had to be replaced with Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance.
Nimitz called back Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's task force from the South West Pacific Area. Yorktown (CV-5) had been severely damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea, but Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard worked around the clock to patch up the carrier. In 72 hours Yorktown was transformed from a barely-operational wreck, headed for a long stay at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, into a working (if still compromised) aircraft carrier. Her flight deck was patched, whole sections of internal beams were cut out and replaced, and a new air group was put on her, from the naval station's own planes. Admiral Nimitz showed total disregard for established procedure in getting his third and last available carrier ready for battle—repairs continued even as Yorktown sortied. Just three days after pulling into drydock at Pearl Harbor, the ship was again under steam, as its band played "California, Here I Come".
Meanwhile, as a result of their participation in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku was laid up, at Truk in the Caroline Islands, waiting for an air group to be brought to her to replace her decimated planes, while the lightly damaged Shokaku was awaiting repairs. One has to wonder how the battle would have unfolded if the Japanese had not assumed that the United States would be sending only the Enterprise and Hornet, to meet Soryu, Hiryu, Akagi and Kaga. Also, although Yamamoto had a large superiority in surface ships overall, he did not commit all his forces to the battle. As a result, only the Japanese carrier force engaged the U.S., while several other detachments, including key battleships and cruisers, did not see combat.
The battle
Admiral Chuichi Nagumo launched his initial air attacks at dawn on June 4; Japanese carrier aircraft bombed and heavily damaged the U.S. base on Midway. American long-range bombers based on Midway, including B-17s, made several attacks on the Japanese, with little effect, and Midway-based fighter pilots, many flying outmatched obsolete Brewster Buffalos, made a heroic defense of Midway. These efforts by Midway-based aircraft led the Japanese strike leader to signal Nagumo that another strike would be necessary to neutralize the defenses, before the landing task force (proceeding independently from the southwest) could land ground troops and begin its assault.
Receiving this signal, Nagumo directed that his on-deck reserve planes (armed with anti-ship torpedo munitions, in case American ships were sighted) be taken below, to be re-armed with general purpose contact bombs, better for bombing an island base. But, partially-through this process, one of his cruiser scout planes, which had been delayed 30 minutes due to catapult problems, signalled the discovery of a sizable American naval force to the east.
This news caught Nagumo in quite a bind. He had half his reserve force now armed with general purpose bombs (rather ineffective against armored ships), and the initial strike winging back for its return. Nagumo made the fateful decision to wait for his strike to return, and properly remount his forces for an overwhelming strike on the newly-sighted enemy force, even though Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, leading Carrier Division 2 (Hiryu and Soryu) and considered the heir to Admiral Yamamoto, signalled to Nagumo that he recommended striking immediately with the forces at hand.
With torpedoes and bombs stacked, and fuel hoses snaking across their hangar decks, the Japanese carriers made vulnerable, and highly-flammable targets. As the ships turned into the wind to launch their attack, disaster befell them from the cloudy sky.
With Fletcher in overall command from Yorktown, but led by Spruance, who had better knowledge of the present operational situation, U.S. carrier forces had the advantage of knowing, through decryption of Japanese Navy communications, the enemy plans and intentions. Spruance had launched a pre-emptive attack from his carriers Enterprise and Hornet against the Japanese carriers. Anti-aircraft fire and fighters shot down 35 out of 41 TBD Devastator torpedo bombers, including every plane of Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8 (see also George Gay). These slow and vulnerable torpedo-bombers had gotten separated from the other American carrier planes, including their protective fighter screen, and were thus attacking unescorted, and barely above sea level. This, and other action, however, brought the defending Zeros fighter planes down so low that American SBD Dauntless dive-bombers from the Enterprise under Wade McClusky, were able to attack from high altitude, almost without opposition. In five minutes of action, after the SBD's began their dives, three Japanese carriers—Akagi, Kaga and Soryu—were ablaze from stem to stern, with multiple dive-bomb hits, and soon to be abandoned. Most of the elite Japanese pilots, painstakingly well-trained in the pre-war years, and responsible for much of the Japanese success of the first six months of the war in the Pacific, were killed or incapacitated, while still on the decks of their carriers.
During the events of the morning, Hiryu had become separated from the three other now-sinking carriers. Undamaged, this carrier was able to launch a small strike on Yorktown, which was severely damaged. The Yorktown was able to survive both this and a second attack, only to be sunk during salvage efforts by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine on June 7. The same torpedo salvo sank the destroyer Hammann, which had been assigned to remain with Yorktown. With Yorktown damaged and abandoned, full command of the battle—and ultimate credit for its victory—passed from Admiral Fletcher, into the hands of Admiral Spruance. Aircraft from Enterprise in turn attacked Hiryu and set her ablaze, and damaged the destroyer Isokaze.
As darkness fell, both sides took stock, and made tentative action plans. Yamamoto initially decided to continue the effort, and sent a cruiser raiding force to bombard the island that night. Having lost four carriers, which were both the heart of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the air cover for his surface forces, however; he changed his mind and recalled the force.
Spruance, in tactical command, decided to maintain his position off Midway, close enough to intercept any Japanese moves toward the island, but maintaining enough distance so as to not run into a night action with the more powerful Japanese gunnery forces still in the area.
While beating its retreat in close column at night, the Japanese cruiser Mogami failed to adjust its course correctly for a column turn, and rammed the port quarter of the cruiser Mikuma. The following morning, Spruance's scout planes discovered the two crippled cruisers, and Spruance launched a strike. Mikuma was sent to the bottom, while Mogami managed to successfully fend off the bombers, and live to fight another day.
Aftermath
Having scored a decisive victory, American forces retired. The loss of four fleet carriers—leaving only Zuikaku and Shokaku—stopped the expansion of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific, and put Japan on the defensive. What made it a turning point for the Japanese Navy was that they lost their dominating force of large numbers of carriers with well-trained pilots, and from this, the Japanese would never recover. It had been six months to the day since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto had predicted to his superiors that Japan would prevail for only six months to a year against the United States, after which American resources would begin to overwhelm the Japanese Navy. He had been exactly correct. Image:Hiryu f075712.jpg
Impact on war
Midway is called the turning point of the Pacific War. Although this is clear in hindsight, it may not have been obvious at the time. The IJN was still stronger than the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and won the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands later that year.
What Midway meant became clearer as the war progressed. First there was the loss of four fleet carriers, and their highly-experienced crews. From this loss, the IJN never really recovered. On the other hand, the crew of Yorktown mostly managed to escape. This weakness would be most glaringly obvious in the latter half of 1942, when the U.S. Navy was reduced to a patched- up Enterprise as its only carrier in the Pacific, and the Japanese were unable to exploit their advantage, precisely because of the loss of the four carriers at Midway.
The battle was another demonstration (after the Battle of Taranto and the attack on Force Z) of the superiority of naval air power over direct ship-to-ship combat.
Discovery
On May 19, 1998, Robert Ballard and a team of scientists and Midway veterans (including Japanese participants) succeeded in locating and photographing Yorktown. The ship is remarkably intact for a vessel that sank in 1942; much of the original equipment, and even the original paint scheme are still visible on the ship.
Movies
The Battle of Midway has been covered by several motion pictures. The best-known of these is Midway (USA, 1976), directed by Jack Smight, which generally portrays the events fairly accurately.
See also
Further reading
- Lord, Walter. Incredible Victory. Burford: New Jersey. ISBN 1580800599.
- Prange, Gordon William. Miracle at Midway. Penguin: New York. ISBN 0140068147.
- Ballard, Robert D. and Archbold, Rick. Return to Midway: The quest to find Yorktown and the other lost ships from the pivotal battle of the Pacific War. Madison Press Books: Toronto ISBN 0792275004
- Hanson, Victor D. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. Doubleday: New York ISBN 0385500521
- Kahn, David The Codebreakers, The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet. Scribner: NY ISBN 0684831309 (Significant section on Midway).
- Cook, Theodore F jr (2000). Our Midway disaster. In Robert Cowley (Ed.), What if?. Macmillan: London ISBN 0333751833.
- Fuchida, Mitsuo and Masatake Okumiya. "Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story". NIP. Annapolis. 1955. ISBN 0870213725
External links
Categories: Naval battles of World War II | World War II operations and battles of the Pacific Campaign | Historical events in cryptography | Battle of Midway
