Midway.

4 Japanese fleet carriers in one day, 3 of those in 4 minutes.

Read Shattered Sword

80th Anniversary discussion with one of the above's co-authors.

Thanks for reminding us.
It was one of those critical events in the nation’s history that was probably underappreciated by most Americans even at the time, and the vast majority today would not even recognize the name, much less understand its importance.

The side of evil was over confident, and the other was determined and brave despite the less than stellar odds of success.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: c1steve,

As the U.S. and China begin to face off in a rivalry for global leadership, the Pacific Ocean is again becoming a focus of global military power. Pacific countries like China, Japan and the U.S. aren’t the only ones filling these waters with well-armed ships: The U.K. sent its aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, to the region for most of the past year, and even the relatively unmilitaristic Germans sent a frigate through the South China Sea in December.

While several recent conflicts have demonstrated the efficacy of various air- and land-power doctrines and technologies, there have been relatively few recent opportunities for naval forces to test their equipment and their mettle. Ukraine has managed to sink several Russian ships, but it isn’t clear if the experience of fighting in the relatively confined Black Sea will translate to the vast Pacific Ocean.

American strategists are still studying battles from World War II, the last major naval conflict, for insights into a future Pacific war. Unless the American armed forces rebuild important war-fighting capabilities, they may suffer the fate of Imperial Japan.

As the sun rose on June 4, 1942, the Japanese Navy ruled the waves. After the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan overpowered the American garrison in the Philippines, occupied Hong Kong, seized Singapore, and effectively swept the European imperial powers out of Southeast Asia—all while continuing a grueling war in China. In one of the most impressive campaigns in military history, the Imperial Navy rampaged from Sri Lanka to the Solomon Islands. Next stop: Midway, the last American bastion protecting Hawaii from further attacks.



Thanks to some nifty intelligence work—American cryptologists were intercepting and deciphering Japanese transmissions—and the fortuitous absence of American aircraft carriers from Pearl Harbor, the Americans had a fighting chance to stop the Japanese offensive at Midway. During the main action on June 4, waves of American aircraft inflicted severe damage on all four of the Japanese carriers engaged in the battle, eventually sinking all of them.

Midway is often seen as a turning point in the Pacific war, much like Stalingrad in Europe. In both cases, a bold Axis offensive ended with the almost complete destruction of the attacking forces. But in many respects, the two battles were very different. After Stalingrad, the Soviets went on the offensive and, excepting some temporary setbacks, marched west until they reached Berlin.

The Japanese mostly stopped advancing eastward after Midway, but had they tried they would have found few obstacles in their path. For long stretches in the year following the battle, the USS Saratoga was the only American aircraft carrier between Tokyo and Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. even had to borrow the HMS Victorious from the U.K. to protect the limited Allied offensives in the South Pacific.

The U.S. didn’t gain a clear advantage in the Pacific until roughly a year after Midway, when America’s newly built ships and aircraft reached Hawaii. By that point, Japan’s relatively small number of highly trained and tactically proficient aviators and sailors was dwindling after years of intense combat. The Imperial Navy simply couldn’t replace its losses, let alone keep pace with the thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships pouring out of American factories.

Eighty years after Midway, the U.S. is on track to face disadvantages against China. Beijing has commanded more ships than Washington since 2015, and the U.S. deficit is growing: The Navy’s budget proposal would retire 24 ships next year while adding only nine replacements. America’s ships may be more capable than China’s, but they have global responsibilities, are outnumbered, and would have few if any reinforcements in a crisis. As the U.S. Navy shrinks from 297 to 280 ships over the next five years, it plans to acquire about 10 new ships a year. It is unlikely that the seven U.S. shipyards that can produce bigger warships will be able to make up for combat losses, especially if they are also repairing ships that have been damaged in combat.

Even in peacetime, the military is struggling to keep up with needed repairs. The USS George Washington should have completed a four-year overhaul in August; the Navy now hopes to be finished by March 2023, nearly two years late. Last year, 2 of 5 private shipyard repairs were behind schedule, an improvement over previous years. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which has been warning about the Navy’s inadequate repair facilities for years, argues that the Navy’s dry-dock modernization program is far too modest to improve this dismal performance.

In 1942 Japan’s naval forces were powerful, yet brittle. Are today’s American forces so different?

LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a...r-11654280572?page=1

Although I don’t want to be around to actually witness what happens in the coming years, it would be interesting to peer into the future and see what happens when we finally get into a hot conflict with China. The Democrats usually get blamed for the emasculation of our armed forces, but the Right contributes to the We-have-no-business-poking-our-head-out-from-under-the-covers isolationism as we’ve seen most recently as, well …, what time is it?

In the past our physical isolation behind the two oceans and our one-time self-sufficiency have given us time to rearm and do what needed to be done, but I’m not sure that will be sufficient in the future.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackmore:
Read Shattered Sword

Definitely. That book really redefines the battle and debunks most if not all of the myths that have cropped up over the years. Most of the false info came from Mitsuo Fuchida's book 'Midway.' We was there on the bridge of the Akagi with Admiral Nagumo (he had appendicitis, so didn't fly), and most historians took his book at face value. Well, he grossly misrepresented the battle to save face. The way he wrote it, the Japanese were 5 minutes away from launching a complete strike that would have wiped out the US carriers. He wrote that 'this 5 minutes changed the entire course of the Pacific war.' In reality, the Japanese were nowhere near doing so. Instead of 'bad luck,' the IJN lost the battle due to a typically grossly-overcomplicated battle plan, lousy (if not non-existent) defensive strategy, and gross negligence (stacking tons and tons of bombs, torpedoes, and fully-fueled planes on the hangar decks).

Midway was an amazing victory for US forces. I believe this is further evidence that God was on our side. Even with our 'element of surprise,' so many things were botched. Hornet's entire air group went in the wrong direction, and nobody can say why (they call it the "Fight to Nowhere"). That represented a full 1/3 of the US carrier force aircraft. The commander of Hornet's torpedo bombers knew they were going the wrong way, and after breaking radio silence to tell the flight leader, he headed off to the IJN fleet. They were the ONLY Hornet aircraft that contributed to the first strike against the IJN fleet. Hornet never filed a battle report, either (I believe, to cover their many errors/incompetence).

Don'r forget Joseph J. Rochefort who led code breaking station HYPO at Pearl Harbor.

It was Rochefort's t-e-a-m who broke Jap naval code JN25 and devised the 'ruse de guerre' that confirmed the identity of 'AF' was indeed Midway Island.

Rochefort finally received a posthumous Distinguished Service Medal forty-three (43) years after this battle.

The men of station HYPO never sailed "in harms way" but they contributed massively to the US victory in the Pacific!

As a former military intelligence guy, I’ve always thought that the contributions of the code breakers in World War II have never been recognized to the degree that was warranted. The breaking of the Japanese diplomatic codes is pretty well known, but the success against their naval codes, and especially against the German Enigma machines not so much. Because Ultra against Germany wasn’t revealed until the 1960s, early histories don’t even mention it, and some still tend to ignore it more than they should.

It’s generally thought that neither the Germans nor the Japanese so much as ever suspected their secret military traffic was being read and because they were too arrogant to imagine it.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackmore:
Read Shattered Sword.

Absolutely the best book on the subject.

I want to thank everyone who recommended Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. I just finished it yesterday and it really is excellent. It’s been some time since I read other books about the battle, but as this one points out, it addresses the many myths and misstatements that have been promoted over the years, especially the outright lies that were in the first popular Japanese account written by one of the participants, Fuchida Mitsuo, and which have long been accepted without question by many American authors. This book focuses on the Japanese perspective and makes me want to revisit a good account of the American side of things.