Battle of Midway
by Staff EditorWith the heart of the Battle of Midway Atoll lasting barely five minutes, it still managed to be significant enough to be considered the turning point of the war in the Pacific during WWII.
In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. naval forces were still reeling while Japan was firmly on course to take over the Pacific. Its advance on Midway was part of a larger plan to lure American carrier fleet into a trap and avenge the bombing of Japanese islands by U.S. forces two months prior during the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and secure the eastern Pacific perimeter (the U.S. hold on Midway was the only link missing in order for Japan to have the entire Pacific Rim in its possession), to do in the U.S. Pacific Fleet and try to take Hawaii for good measure.
Pre-battle:
Midway was almost an afterthought for Japan; it was more intent on invading New Caledonia, Fiji and the Samoa Islands in an effort to get to Australia. Midway simply happened to be the closest U.S.-defended point to Japan.
U.S. intelligence managed to piece together the planned Japanese attack on Midway through bits of information received in spurts. It was not until the last minute that enough pieces had been put together to figure out what was going on and to plan a counterattack on the Japanese.
The Attack:
Japan set off the attack dawn on June 4, 1942, sending its carrier aircraft to bomb and heavily damage the U.S. base at Midway. American bombers on the island tried to retaliate with little success, as their equipment was far inferior to Japan's. They nonetheless did their best to stand up to the Japanese.
In fact, the U.S. put up such a fierce resistance that Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo ordered that another strike be issued to neutralize the American defenses before Japanese ground troops could move in to begin their advance.
In preparation for the new strike, Nagumo made the decision that would have repercussions intense enough to shift the battle tides. He ordered his on-deck planes (that had been armed with torpedoes, in case enemy ships were spotted) to be re-armed with general-purpose bombs instead. These were better able to bomb an island base, which the Japanese fully intended to reach at Midway. As the planes' bombs were being switched, a Japanese cruiser scout plane noticed an American advance.
The Japanese were now caught between a rock and a hard place. With half its fleet now armed with ineffective general-purpose bombs (they did little in the face of armored ships) and the other half on the way back from the first strike, it had to act fast. Instead of attacking with the forces available, Nagumo decided to wait for the rest of his fleet to return and to re-arm both fleets properly before launching a strike.
As Japanese forces obeyed the order to wait, the U.S. (who had managed to crack Japanese naval code) discovered Japan's presence on the high seas as well as its plans to wait before attacking.
Armed with this knowledge, U.S. carrier forces launched a pre-emptive strike. In a battle that lasted barely five full minutes, U.S. forces managed to level three Japanese carriers and kill or otherwise lay up many of the Japanese pilots.
The Japanese rallied back to sink two U.S. destroyers but victory was still in the hands of the Americans. It had sunk a total of four Japanese carriers and stopped the Japanese Navy in its tracks, halting its advance in the Pacific. The loss of the carriers and the well-trained fighters aboard them was a wound that would never heal for Japan and fulfilled its prediction that the U.S. would rise up to defeat it within a year of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
