quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:


Second, the American dive bombers happened to find the Jap carriers just as the torpedo planes were beginning their attack. If our dive bombers found the Japs before or much later than our torpedo bombers, we would have lost many more planes and would have been much less successful.

quote:

Originally posted by ccmdfd:

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
Second, the American dive bombers happened to find the Jap carriers just as the torpedo planes were beginning their attack. If our dive bombers found the Japs before or much later than our torpedo bombers, we would have lost many more planes and would have been much less successful.

Didn't they also happen upon the Japanese fleet as their decks were full of ordinance due to their commanders ordering to change from torpedoes to bombs? (or some such). Thus the ordinance helped with the destruction

cc

quote:

Originally posted by Citadel:
....the First Team by Lundstrom.

https://www.usni.org/store/boo...le-midway/first-team

... The Second is by John Lundstrom and covers the period from 7 DEC up to and including the Midway battle.

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Originally posted by ElToro:
Breaking their code by broadcasting the fake Midway has no water helped out a lot. We then knew pretty much when and where they were coming from. Better to be lucky than good sometimes.

quote:

Originally posted by ccmdfd:

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:


Second, the American dive bombers happened to find the Jap carriers just as the torpedo planes were beginning their attack. If our dive bombers found the Japs before or much later than our torpedo bombers, we would have lost many more planes and would have been much less successful.

Didn't they also happen upon the Japanese fleet as their decks were full of ordnance due to their commanders ordering to change from torpedoes to bombs? (or some such). Thus the ordinance helped with the destruction

cc

quote:

The Battle of Midway in June of 1942 was one of the most important naval battles in world history and a turning point in the Second World War. Between June 4 and 7, aircraft from aircraft carriers Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet of the U.S. Navy’s Task Forces 16 and 17 ambushed and sank the Imperial Japanese Navy’s carrier force that only six months before had attacked Pearl Harbor and terrorized the Pacific. The Battle of Midway is important to memorialize and remember for many reasons. Among these reasons is that it is an inexhaustible source of still-relevant lessons on how to successfully apply intelligence at all levels of war.

Intelligence Collection and Analysis

At the root of the American victory at Midway was U.S. Navy intelligence successfully breaking Japanese codes and discovering the Japanese Navy’s plans to attack Midway Atoll.

Station Hypo was the team of U.S. signals intelligence (SIGINT) analysts led by then-Commander Joseph “Joe” Rochefort. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Station Hypo began attempting to decode messages transmitted using the JN-25 code. By late April, Rochefort’s team assessed that the Japanese were planning major operations against the central Pacific and Aleutians. In a famous trick, Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz approved a ruse proposed by Rochefort that saw the American garrison at Midway send a fake message “in the clear” (on open channels) regarding broken water evaporator units on the island. Almost immediately afterward, American listening posts intercepted Japanese transmissions mentioning the water shortage and the need to bring along extra water to support the operation. The identity of the Japanese objective was conclusively determined as Midway.

In his memoirs , Pacific Fleet Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Commander Edwin “Eddie” Layton recounted presenting the fruits of Hypo’s work on May 27th at the Pacific Fleet staff conference where the U.S. plans to ambush the Japanese force near Midway were approved, giving Nimitz a stunningly predictive assessment:

Summarizing all my data, I told Nimitz that the carriers would probably attack on the morning of 4 June, from the northwest on a nearing of 325 degrees. They could be sighted at about 175 miles from Midway at around 0700 local time.

On the morning of the battle, as the initial American reports sighting the Japanese force began to trickle in, Nimitz remarked to Layton with a smile, “well, you were only five minutes, five degrees, and five miles out.” Layton’s assessment allowed Nimitz to take a “calculated risk” by devoting three of his precious aircraft carriers (still scarce at that stage of the war) to the battle. The foreknowledge provided by this intelligence justified the presence off Midway of USS Yorktown (CV-5), damaged at the Battle of Coral Sea, but rushed back into action after a few days of frantic repairs at Pearl Harbor. This allowed the two U.S. task forces to roughly match the 229 planes onboard the Japanese carriers.

...