The Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway took place from the 4th through the 7th of June in 1942. This was just six months after Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had planned another attack on the United States, but this time around, their operation got derailed. Their strategy was to trick the U.S. Navy. They wanted to destroy the aircraft carriers that had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had underestimated the Americans, though, and in the end, wound up losing their devised attack.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they did a lot of damage, but they did not cause all of the destruction that they had intended. There were major U.S. aircraft carriers that were not on the harbor the day of that attack. These remaining aircraft carriers were feared by the Japanese force.

The Americans fought back at Japan, unexpectedly, on April 18, 1942, striking Tokyo with B-52 bombers. They were sure they were in trouble after the raid took place. "The Japanese were convinced: they were in danger," claimed White. "They needed to bring the American carriers into battle and destroy them once and for all."

The radar technology and intelligence that the U.S. used helped them to win the battle. Symonds noted, "if the Japanese had an edge on the Americans in torpedo technology, the Americans had a huge advantage in that they had radar and the Japanese did not." With this radar machinery, the Americans were able to see the Japanese coming. Their radar could recognize incoming aircraft and surface ships.

Messages that the Japanese were sending got intercepted, another piece that the Americans used to their advantage. According to Parshall and Tully, one of "the more prominent reasons on the American side for their having won the battle [was] code-breaking…[it] stands at the top of the list." The Japanese were completely unaware of this.

Another reason was written about in Japanese Admiral Matome Ugaki's diary. He reasoned that the Japanese had become conceited because of past success, Parshall and Tully revealed. Ugaki also wrote that the Japanese had underestimated the U.S. because of that fact.

As part of the planning process, the Japanese played war games. They used tokens, which represented ships, to play out what possible scenarios they might have faced during the battle. They did not consider failure as an outcome, though. Instead, they mostly focused on a game plan that always worked out in their favor. "Toward the end of the games, Yamamoto himself interjected a question that implied that he, at least, was willing to consider that it was possible not everything would go according to plan." His questioning was dismissed, though, and he just went along with the general attitude toward their implied success. This made their efforts with these exercises a waste of time. They finalized their invasion plans the next day.

U.S. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, led the Americans with another advantage: code-breaking. "On the American side, code-breakers at Pacific Fleet headquarters in Hawaii had deducted the general outline and approximate date of Yamamoto's Midway operation."

Also, "Japan's defeat in the Battle of Midway was blamed on poor radio equipment." Japan's strategic plans were exposed when the U.S. intercepted radio communications and broke their codes. The U.S. was able to gather detailed plans of the Japanese operation, including their order of battle and their planned time table. Because of this, the Americans were ready and waiting for them to come to them.

Japan intended to use its battleship force, which held most of their heavy gun powder. They planned to use their aircraft carriers, as well, to come in from different directions to obtain Midway.

Japanese Fleet commander, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, created the Midway operation aboard the Yamato. He had devised a brilliant plan. Tricking the Americans by using an attack on the Alaskan coast was going to be a distraction. The real plan was to carry out a true attack on Midway Island. While this was going on, he expected the Americans to maintain their position in the north, finding out too late, and not getting back to Midway in time to recoup and gain any advantage over the Japanese forces.

His partner failed as well. "[Vice Admiral Chuichi] Nagumo could not get his attack launched before the fatal American bombing." What did happen, though, was that the U.S. Navy, aware of their plan, was already in position before the Japanese even arrived at their intended destinations.

The Japanese had planned on catching the Americans off guard in this way, but most of their plans went wrong. The Americans wound up conquering the Japanese. "This Allied victory is often described as 'the miracle at Midway'," Symonds explained. "[It was] a success that depended on the lucky timing of the dive-bomber attack that screamed down from the sky at precisely the moment when Japanese fighter planes…were preoccupied with shooting down the hapless American torpedo planes." Those torpedo planes served as a distraction to the fighter planes instead. Cautious planning also played a big part in American's success.

Bibliography

Isom, Dallas Woodbury. Midway inquest why the Japanese lost the Battle of Midway. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007.

MacLeod, Roy M.. Science and the Pacific War: science and survival in the Pacific, 1939-1945. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000.

Parshall, Jonathan B., and Anthony P. Tully. Shattered sword: the untold story of the Battle of Midway. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005.

Symonds, Craig L. The Battle of Midway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

White, Steve. The Battle of Midway: the destruction of the Japanese fleet. New York: Rosen Pub., 2007.