Battle of Midway

• 1. Introduction

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  On the morning of the 4th of June 1942, the Japanese carrier force known as the Kido Butai launched 108 aircraft toward a tiny atoll 1,300 miles northwest of Oahu. The pilots who climbed into their cockpits that day had no idea that American code breakers already knew they were coming. What followed over the next three days would sink four Japanese fleet carriers and change the course of the Pacific War. How did the most powerful naval strike force in the world fly into an ambush it never saw coming? And why did a battle won in roughly six minutes of dive bombing reshape everything that came after?

• 2. The Code That Broke the Plan

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  Commander Joseph Rochefort and his team at Station HYPO had been reading fragments of the Japanese Navy's JN-25b code since early 1942, and they had identified a target the Japanese called "AF." The challenge was proving that AF meant Midway. Captain Wilfred Holmes devised a solution: Midway was quietly instructed, via secure undersea cable, to broadcast an uncoded radio message reporting that its water purification system had broken down. Within 24 hours, Japanese radio traffic confirmed that "AF was short on water." The ruse worked because the Japanese did not suspect that a major naval installation would advertise a critical weakness in the clear.

  HYPO was then able to fix the attack date as the 4th or the 5th of June and deliver to Admiral Chester Nimitz a complete Japanese order of battle. A new Japanese codebook came into use on the 24th of May, but the critical breaks had already been made by then. Nimitz learned something else from the intercepts that Yamamoto had not intended to reveal: the Japanese fleet was split into four widely separated task groups, each unable to support the others. That dispersal, intended to conceal the full extent of Japanese strength, instead handed the Americans a structural advantage before the first plane left the deck.

  Japan's own intelligence picture was nearly blind by comparison. A plan to fly four-engine flying boats over Pearl Harbor to check whether American carriers were present, known as Operation K, collapsed when the intended refueling point near French Frigate Shoals was found occupied by American warships. A picket line of Japanese submarines arrived too late to detect the American carriers moving to their assembly point northeast of Midway, which the Americans had nicknamed "Point Luck." Japanese radio intercepts did register a rise in American submarine traffic and message volume, and Yamamoto had this information before the battle. He concluded the Americans were not preparing a successful ambush, and no plans were changed.

• 3. A Fleet Pulled in Every Direction

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  Isoroku Yamamoto's plan for Operation MI was, by the standard of Japanese naval planning in World War II, exceptionally complex. It required precise coordination across hundreds of miles of open ocean, and it was built on an intelligence error: Yamamoto believed only the carriers Enterprise and Hornet were available to the Pacific Fleet. At the Battle of the Coral Sea one month earlier, the carrier Lexington had been sunk and Yorktown had been so badly damaged that the Japanese assumed she was lost too. Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard workers worked around the clock and had Yorktown ready for operations in 72 hours, when estimates had suggested several months of repairs at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard would be needed.

  Yamamoto's design scattered his forces across a vast stretch of the Pacific. His battleships and cruisers trailed Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's carrier strike force by several hundred miles, intended to sweep in and destroy any American ships that survived the carrier battle. But the slower ships, including three battleships and two light carriers under Yamamoto and Vice Admiral Kondo, could not keep pace with the Kido Butai and played no part in the fighting. The anti-aircraft guns, scout planes, and cruisers that traveled with Yamamoto and Kondo were precisely the resources Nagumo would desperately need.

  The Aleutian operation added another drain. To secure IJA support for the Midway plan, the Imperial Navy agreed to support landings on the American islands of Attu and Kiska in the Alaska Territory. Operation AL was intended to launch simultaneously with the Midway attack, but a one-day delay in Nagumo's sailing meant the Aleutians assault began first, on the 3rd of June, which may have allowed Japanese admirals to mistake American defensive activity around Midway as a response to that northern operation rather than evidence of foreknowledge of the Midway attack specifically.

  The Kido Butai itself arrived at battle with significant hidden weaknesses. Carrier Division 5, containing the two most advanced carriers in the fleet, was unavailable because its air groups had been decimated and there were no replacement aircraft or pilots ready. IJN pilot training could not keep pace with losses in action. In desperation, instructors from the Yokosuka Air Corps were pulled from their teaching duties to fill gaps in front-line squadrons. Nagumo sailed with only two-thirds of the carriers that had struck Pearl Harbor, and the four he did have carried fewer aircraft than their normal complement, with little in reserve.

• 4. The Fatal Hour on the Flight Deck

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  At 07:15 on the 4th of June, Nagumo made the decision that would define the battle. His reserve aircraft, kept armed with torpedoes for use against enemy warships, were ordered to be re-armed with general-purpose contact-fused bombs for a second strike on Midway. The attacks from Midway had been intense, and the morning strike commander had reported that land defenses would need hitting again before troops could go ashore by the 7th of June.

  Re-arming had been underway for roughly 30 minutes when, at 07:40, a delayed scout plane from the cruiser Tone signaled that it had sighted a sizable American naval force to the east. Later evidence suggests Nagumo did not receive this report until 08:00. He reversed his re-arming order and demanded the scout plane clarify the composition of the force. Another 20-40 minutes passed before the scout reported a single carrier. Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi, commanding Carrier Division 2 aboard Hiryu and Soryu, urged Nagumo to strike immediately with what he had available: 16 dive bombers on Soryu and 18 on Hiryu.

  Nagumo faced compounding pressures. His first strike against Midway was returning and needed to land or would have to ditch. Placing reserve aircraft on the flight deck for a launch would take at least 30 minutes. He had just watched unescorted American bombers from Midway get cut down without inflicting damage, and Japanese doctrine strongly preferred fully constituted strikes over piecemeal attacks. He decided to recover the Midway strike force first, then launch a coordinated attack with aircraft properly armed with torpedoes.

  As Nagumo weighed his options, bombs and torpedoes that had been swapped on and off the reserve aircraft were stacked in the hangar decks rather than safely stowed in the magazines. Fuel lines snaked across the decks as refueling operations ran in parallel with the ordnance changes. One witness to the condition of the flight decks described the situation as carriers that "could throw a punch but couldn't take one." The carriers' interiors were largely wood flooring, timber support beams, and cotton pipe insulation. Their firefighting systems ran on water mains vulnerable to bomb damage, and they carried no fire-suppressing foam at all. Meanwhile, Fletcher's carriers had begun launching their dive bombers and torpedo planes at 07:00. Whatever Nagumo decided in the next hour, the aircraft that would strike him were already airborne.

• 5. Six Minutes Over the Carriers

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  The American torpedo attacks that preceded the dive bombing were costly failures that nonetheless shaped what followed. Torpedo Squadron 8 from Hornet, led by Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, broke from the air group's incorrect heading and found the Japanese fleet on its own. All 15 TBD Devastators of VT-8 were shot down without scoring a hit. Ensign George H. Gay, Jr. was the only survivor of the 30 aircrew. VT-6 from Enterprise lost 9 of its 14 aircraft, and 10 of 12 Devastators from Yorktown's VT-3 were shot down as well. The Mark 13 torpedo they carried performed abysmally, running too deep, exploding prematurely, or failing to explode at all. Senior Navy and Bureau of Ordnance officers never questioned why torpedoes released close enough to strafe Japanese carriers produced no results.

  The failed torpedo runs achieved three unintended effects. They kept the Japanese carriers occupied and unable to prepare a counter-strike. They drew the Japanese combat air patrol out of position. And they ran many of the defending Zero fighters low on fuel and ammunition. When Lieutenant Commander Lance Edward Massey's VT-3 from Yorktown appeared from the southeast at 10:00, it pulled the majority of the Japanese CAP toward that quadrant.

  Air Group Commander C. Wade McClusky, Jr., running low on fuel after an extended search, spotted the wake of the Japanese destroyer Arashi, which had been chasing the American submarine Nautilus and was now racing to rejoin the fleet. McClusky followed the wake. In Admiral Nimitz's view, that decision "decided the fate of our carrier task force and our forces at Midway."

  Beginning at 10:22, Enterprise's two dive-bomber squadrons split to attack Kaga and Akagi. A miscommunication sent both toward Kaga. Lieutenant Richard Halsey Best recognized the error, pulled out of his dive, and led his two wingmen north to Akagi. Kaga sustained three to five direct hits, killing Captain Jisaku Okada and most of the senior officers on the bridge. Akagi was struck by a single bomb dropped almost certainly by Lieutenant Best. The bomb hit the edge of the midship deck elevator and exploded among armed and fueled aircraft. Mitsuo Fuchida, who had led the Pearl Harbor attack and was aboard Akagi when it was hit, described the moment: a lookout screamed "Hell-Divers," three planes plummeted toward the ship, and then black objects floated from their wings. The fires that followed could not be controlled.

  Yorktown's VB-3, commanded by Lieutenant Max Leslie, hit Soryu with at least three bombs in the same few minutes, igniting the stacked ordnance below decks. Within six minutes of the attack commencing, Soryu and Kaga were burning from stem to stern. Akagi, struck by only one bomb, burned more slowly but was eventually abandoned as well. All three sank before morning.

• 6. Hiryu Strikes Back

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  Hiryu, hemmed in by the three burning carriers, was the sole survivor of the Japanese carrier force, and Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi wasted no time. His first strike wave, 18 dive bombers and 6 Zeros, followed retreating American aircraft back to the source and attacked the first carrier they found: Yorktown. Three bomb hits blew a hole in the flight deck, knocked out all but one boiler, and destroyed an anti-aircraft mount. Fletcher moved his command staff to a heavy cruiser. Damage control parties on Yorktown were so effective, patching the flight deck and restoring power to several boilers within an hour, that when Hiryu's second wave of ten torpedo bombers arrived, the Japanese pilots assumed they must be attacking a different, undamaged carrier.

  The second attack landed two torpedoes on Yorktown, knocking out all power and leaving her with a 23-degree list to port. Reports reaching Hiryu, incorrectly claiming each of the two attacks had sunk an American carrier, lifted Japanese morale briefly. The Japanese believed they might have one more strike in them.

  Late in the afternoon, a Yorktown scout aircraft located Hiryu. Enterprise launched 24 dive bombers, a mix of aircraft from Enterprise and survivors of Yorktown's air group. Despite more than a dozen Zeros defending Hiryu, four bombs, possibly five, struck her and left her ablaze and unable to operate aircraft. A bomb from the dive bomber flown by Dusty Kleiss struck the bow. Hiryu's crew was evacuated; the ship continued to float through the night and into the following morning before sinking. Yamaguchi, along with the ship's captain, chose to go down with the ship. Japan had lost, in Yamaguchi, possibly its best carrier officer.

• 7. What the Battle Left Behind

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  By the time the fighting ended, 3,057 Japanese had died. Casualties on the four carriers alone totaled 2,181: 267 aboard Akagi, 811 aboard Kaga, 392 aboard Hiryu including Yamaguchi, and 711 aboard Soryu including Captain Yanagimoto, who also chose to remain with his ship. The heavy cruiser Mikuma, sunk during follow-on strikes, accounted for another 700 deaths. The U.S. lost 307 Americans, the carrier Yorktown, and the destroyer Hammann, which broke in two and sank with the loss of 80 lives after her own depth charges exploded when a Japanese submarine's torpedo struck her alongside the stricken Yorktown.

  The Japanese public heard none of this. Navy news announced a great victory. Only Emperor Hirohito and the highest command staff were accurately informed of the losses. Wounded sailors returned to Hashirajima on the 14th of June were classified as "secret patients," placed in isolation wards, and quarantined from other patients and their own families. Surviving officers and men were dispersed quickly to units in the South Pacific, where most died in battle. Nagumo, who had reported to his superiors that two American carriers had been sunk when none actually sank, was not relieved of command and was later placed in charge of the rebuilt carrier force.

  Parshall and Tully calculated that 110 veteran aircrew, just under 25% of those embarked on the four carriers, died at Midway. But the loss of over 40% of the carriers' highly trained aircraft mechanics, technicians, flight-deck crews, and armorers, and the organizational knowledge they carried, struck harder at Japan's ability to regenerate. Japanese replacement pilots were pushed through abbreviated training to meet short-term needs, while American pilots were rotated to training billets where veterans could pass their combat lessons to new crews. In the time it took Japan to build three carriers, the U.S. Navy commissioned more than two dozen fleet and light fleet carriers and numerous escort carriers, backed by a shipbuilding program already three years in motion under the 1938 Second Vinson Act.

  Historian John Keegan called the battle "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." By the time of the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, Japan had nearly rebuilt its carrier forces in numbers, but the planes were largely obsolete and most of the pilots who flew them had never had the training their predecessors received. Three American prisoners taken during the battle, Ensign Wesley Osmus, Ensign Frank O'Flaherty, and Aviation Machinist's Mate Bruno Peter Gaido, were murdered by their Japanese captors; Nagumo's battle report described Osmus as having "died on the 6th of June and was buried at sea" and made no mention of O'Flaherty and Gaido at all.