June 4, 2017 is the 75^th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, the turning point in the Pacific Theater in World War II and one of the most dramatic engagements in the history of naval warfare.

At 10:15 that morning, Admiral Nagumo Chiuchi might have taken a deep breath for the first time that day.  His fighter aircraft had just seen off the last of eight different U.S. squadrons that had launched attacks that morning against the Kido Butai, the fleet of four fleet aircraft carriers and attendant support vessels that was the core of the attacking force of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN).  Some 95 U.S. aircraft had taken aim at the Kido Butai.  Not a single U.S. bomb had scored a hit.

Admiral Nagumo’s morning had begun at 4:30[1] when he launched an air attack on Midway Island, some 200 miles to the southeast.  In keeping with IJN doctrine, he had sent half of his bombers to the target, keeping the other half in reserve.

Both navies employed three types of aircraft on their carriers: torpedo bombers, which delivered their bombs from low, level flight; dive bombers, which delivered their ordnance out of a dive from high altitude; and fighter aircraft, which could be used to protect friendly bombers or to fight off those of the enemy.

Nagumo had sent half of each type of bomber together with fighter cover against Midway.  His reserve torpedo bombers were armed in case any U.S. ships appeared.  His reserve dive bombers were left unarmed for the time being so that they could be armed for use against ships or land targets as the need arose.

As the first wave of Japanese planes approached Midway, they spotted U.S. planes headed the other way, toward the fleet.  Somehow, the Americans knew that the Kido Butai was in the vicinity!

The U.S. Navy had broken the Japanese naval code.  The code was changed from time to time and had been replaced with a new one on May 25, which the U.S. codebreakers were still working on.  The information the U.S. Navy (USN) needed to plan the upcoming battle was extracted from coded messages sent prior to the change in codes.

Breaking a code is not an all or nothing proposition.  U.S. codebreakers could not read every word, but they knew that Japan planned an operation against a target designated as AF.  They were nearly certain that AF was Midway, but they were not absolutely sure.  The command at Pearl Harbor used a secure underwater cable to direct Midway to send an uncoded message that Midway’s water purification system had stopped working[2].  Soon, the codebreakers were looking at intercepted IJN messages stating that AF was running out of water.  Midway was confirmed as the IJN’s objective.  IJN intelligence never questioned why Midway sent such an important message uncoded.  The deception was complete. The IJN invasion force carried barrels full of potable water.

What were four IJN fleet aircraft carriers and the massive armada supporting them doing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on that June morning?  By the end of March 1942, the Japanese Empire faced a problem that few conquest states have had to worry about.  They had achieved all of their war aims.  Starting on December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy had experienced a run of success rare in the history of warfare.  Everything had gone their way.  During those four months, they had moved against Australia, Britain, Holland, and the United States and were now in possession of the vast island empire they had dreamed of controlling, along with impressive possessions on the mainland of Asia.

Now the need was to consolidate.  The idea was to set an enormous defensive perimeter that would start at Port Moresby in New Guinea, run through Midway, and end far to the north in the Aleutians.  (An action against the Aleutians was underway simultaneously with the Midway attack.)  The Port Moresby connection had been checked in early May 1942 at the Battle of the Coral Sea.  Admiral Yamamoto intended to renew his string of successes at Midway.

The Kido Butai was one of three IJN fleets operating in the area.  Midway was the tangible objective of the operation, but the IJN command hoped to tempt the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a decisive naval engagement that would give Japan free run of the Pacific for the foreseeable future.  The plan was for the four aircraft carriers to bomb Midway to soften up any resistance.  To the south of the Kido Butai was an invasion force that would occupy Midway after the bombers had done their work. Some 200 miles behind the Kido Butai was the IJN’s First Fleet with Admiral Yamamoto himself in command.  This force, including no fewer than ten battleships, was ready to demolish any U.S. vessels that sortied in response to the attack on Midway.

Yamamoto kept the First Fleet back as part of the lure he was holding in front of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.  The U.S. would not know its enemy’s strength until it was too late.

Throughout the morning, Admiral Nagumo had to make a series of decisions based on information that rolled in one piece at a time.  Although the outcome was disastrous for his command, it is difficult to find fault with any single decision he took that morning.  The first message came to him from the aircraft that had been sent off at 4:30 to bomb Midway.  They reported that U.S. aircraft were headed his way.  He prepared his defenses.

At 7:00 he received the report from the first wave of bombers that a second attack would be necessary to prepare the island for the invasion.  He ordered the remaining bombers to be made ready for a second attack against Midway.  That meant arming his dive bombers and removing the torpedoes from his torpedo bombers and replacing them with general purpose bombs for use against Midway.

Before those aircraft could be prepared for take-off, sometime around 8:00 a.m.[3], he received a report from a scout plane that U.S. ships had been located to the north.  He did not know right away that these ships included an aircraft carrier, but he knew that he had to take out whatever was sitting on his flank.  In fact, there were three U.S. fleet carriers north of him.  These were Yorktown commanded by Admiral Jack Fletcher and Enterprise and Hornet commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance.

Nagumo ordered the torpedo bombers to be re-fitted with torpedoes.  His crews went to work making yet another change.  The decks of his aircraft carriers were becoming disorganized.  Bombs were on the deck waiting to be put back in their racks.  Fuel lines stretched across the deck as the planes were being fueled.

In the middle of all this, five different squadrons of U.S. aircraft based on Midway attacked the Kido Butai.  Two squadrons arrived at 7:10.  Three more kept coming until nearly 8:30.  Nagumo had to launch fighter aircraft to protect the fleet.  While he was dealing with those attacks, the bombers from the first wave were making their way back to their ships.  Did he have time to launch the reserve aircraft against the U.S. fleet to the north before the arrival of the aircraft returning from the attack on Midway?

A subordinate urged him to get as many aircraft launched as possible and on their way to the U.S. ships before the return of the first wave.  Nagumo declined.  IJN doctrine called for organized attacks by full squadrons.  Piecemeal operations were frowned upon.  He decided to collect the returning aircraft.  When they were recovered, he would attack the U.S. fleet.

Then further complications were presented as three different squadrons of USN torpedo planes arrived from three different directions.  Each squadron had come from one of the three U.S. carriers.  The torpedo planes were slow, cumbersome aircraft that flew low to the water.  They were designed to drop torpedoes that would then skim below the surface and do monstrous damage to their targets when they hit.

The U.S. torpedo bombers had terrible luck that morning.  Some of them lost their torpedoes shortly after takeoff due to a design flaw in their arming switches.  The flaws in the design of the torpedoes themselves became a scandal later on.  On June 4, it was all the torpedo bomber crews had.

The torpedo bombers were easy targets for IJN fighters.  37 of the 41 planes were shot down.  Not a single torpedo did any damage.  The crews of those planes must have known that their chances of scoring a hit on an enemy carrier and getting out alive were low, but they went in anyway.

At this point in the historical novel War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk does a very fine thing.  He breaks off the narrative and lists the names of the members of each squadron, separating the names of those who gave their lives from the much shorter list of survivors.  His gesture is a solemn way to acknowledge the sacrifice that led to the stunning U.S. success that followed.

The last of the torpedo planes was dispatched by 10:15.  Eight different squadrons of U.S. aircraft had attacked the Kido Butai.  Not a single hit had been scored.  The paint on each aircraft carrier was as clean as it had been when the ships left port.  It was at that moment that Admiral Nagumo might have allowed himself to relax for the first time in hours.  With a little reorganization, he could resume the attack.  The decks of his four aircraft carriers were a mess.  Bombs were lying on the deck.  Armed bombers full of fuel were waiting for the chance to take off.  Fuel lines were snaking in every direction.

Overhead, there was no air cover.  The fighter aircraft had descended almost to sea level to take out the torpedo bombers.  Many of the fighters were low on fuel.  They would have to be recovered, the decks organized, and the bombers launched against the U.S. fleet.  After that, the attack on Midway itself could resume.

At 10:20, two squadrons of dive bombers from Enterprise arrived overhead.  Due to a miscommunication, they both began to attack the same carrier, Kaga.  They sorted the situation in the middle of their dive.  One squadron changed course and attacked Akagi, Nagumo’s flagship.  Only one bomb hit that ship, but it struck right at the elevator.  Numerous bombs struck Kaga.  Both carriers were immediately in flames.  At 10:22, a squadron of dive bombers arrived from Yorktown and took out Soryu.  In seconds, all three carriers were out of action and in flames.

The fourth IJN carrier, Hiryu, survived these attacks because the dive bombers from Hornet had taken the wrong course and never found Kido Butai.  That was the only piece of luck the Kido Butai had that morning.  While the other three IJN carriers burned, Hiryu launched a counter-attack.  Its planes followed departing U.S. dive bombers back to Yorktown and did enormous damage when they found the ship.  They thought they had sunk her.

Somehow, Yorktown survived an attack that should have destroyed the ship.  In the meantime, Enterprise launched a second attack that found Hiryu and sank her, although not before another IJN sortie found the damaged Yorktown and crippled her.  IJN forces had reported Yorktown sunk three times – once at Coral Sea, and twice at Midway.  The ship remained afloat, although it was disabled.  It was being towed back to port for another lease on life when an enemy submarine found Yorktown on June 6 and sank her.

None of the IJN carriers could be saved.  Of the six fleet carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor, the only two that survived Midway were the two that stayed in port.  One of those, Shokaku, was so badly damaged at Coral Sea that she could not participate in the Midway operation.  The other one, Zuikaku, could have participated.  The ship was in satisfactory condition, but her air crews had been depleted at Coral Sea.  IJN doctrine held that the ship and its air crews were a unit.  Because new crews had to be organized and trained to operate with Zuikaku’s on-board personnel, the ship was not deemed to be ready for the Midway operation.  U.S. doctrine held that air crews were interchangeable.  Had the situation been reversed, the USN would have put the ship to sea with an unfamiliar air crew.

The additional aircraft might have made a significant difference on June 4.  The additional force might have allowed Nagumo to launch against the U.S. carriers earlier than he did.  The Kido Butai would probably have suffered massive damage in any event.  Spruance’s carriers had launched before Nagumo knew they were in the area, while Fletcher launched before any IJN planes could have found him.  But the counterstrike might have been more effective with those additional planes.

The face of the Pacific war changed in the course of ten minutes.  One of the most formidable naval forces the world had ever seen was in full operation at 10:20 on June 4, in flames by 10:30.  Kaga and Soryu sank on June 4.  Akagi and Hiryu had to be scuttled the next day.  Japan never recovered.

The loss was not limited to the carriers.  The pilots, deck crews, and all of the know-how that had accumulated through decades of training were lost in ten minutes and proved to be irreplaceable.

After Midway, the two navies were of comparable size and power.  But the initiative had passed to the U.S.  After that, the industrial prowess of the United States was an overwhelming advantage. Japan launched only one new fleet aircraft carrier after Midway, and that not until 1944.  Between Midway and Japan’s surrender in 1945, the U.S. launched 24 fleet carriers.

One of the great ironies of Midway is that the recipe for the U.S. victory was presented to the IJN command a month before the battle began.  Twenty admirals and their attendant staff officers had gathered on the flagship Yamato for four days of war games from May 1 through 4 to put the plans for the Midway invasion to the test.  Unfortunately for the Japanese forces, the exercise appears in hindsight to have been aimed at hiding the flaws in the Midway plan.  Whenever a problem appeared, it was explained away.  Whenever U.S forces achieved a hit against IJN targets, the level of damage was reduced by the referee.

Most intriguingly, the Japanese “Red Team” commander assigned to simulate the U.S. side of the engagement proposed placing three aircraft carriers some 300 miles north of Midway Island, on the flank of Kido Butai.

The IJN command disallowed the Red Team plan on three grounds.  First, it was doubtful that the U.S. had three fleet carriers in the Pacific.  The Battle of the Coral Sea ended on the last day of the conference.  Lexington was believed sunk in that battle and Yorktown was either sunk or too badly damaged to be ready for action at Midway.  Second, whatever number of carriers were available to the USN, if they tried to leave Pearl Harbor they would run into the submarine picket that would be in place to stop them.  Finally, U.S. forces were thought to lack the fighting spirit necessary for the attack proposed by the Red Team commander.

The spot 1400 miles north of Oahu and 325 miles north of Midway where the Red Team commander wanted to place three aircraft carriers was designated by the U.S. command as “Point Luck”.  Three U.S. fleet carriers were there by June 3, waiting for the Kido Butai.

Yorktown hobbled into Pearl Harbor on May 27.  The initial estimate was that it would take 90 days to make her battle ready.  Admiral Nimitz (Commander of US Pacific Fleet) told the engineers he needed the ship in three days.  When Yorktown put out to sea on June 1, repairs crews were still on board, welding sections of deck into place.

The carriers steamed right past the point where the IJN submarines were supposed to be located.  A typographical error in their orders had sent the submarines to the wrong place.  The error was corrected too late.

The third reason for rejecting the Red Team plan masks a contradiction in the IJN command’s attitude toward the Midway operation.  Admiral Yamamoto had brought the massive firepower of his First Fleet halfway across the Pacific so that he could destroy the U.S. Pacific fleet in a decisive battle once the Midway attack had lured U.S. forces out into open water.  But if the U.S. Navy had sufficient fighting spirit to respond to an attack on Midway, might not that same fighting spirit send them out to seek the enemy before the Midway invasion started?  Failure to deal with this point cost the IJN dearly on June 4.

U.S. attitudes about the battle have changed over time.  I was surprised to learn that some early evaluations of the battle were critical of Admiral Spruance because he did not follow the destruction of the Kido Butai with further attacks on IJN ships in the vicinity.  I understand that this criticism was repeated in print as late as 1949.

The criticism appears unfair.  Spruance and Fletcher had been ordered by Nimitz to be guided by the principle of “calculated risk”.  They had accepted considerable risk in attacking the Kido Butai.  All three U.S. carriers sent every bomber they had in a successful effort to strike a devastating blow.  Once they achieved the destruction of four of Japan’s six fleet carriers, it would have been reckless to throw themselves against Yamamoto’s First Fleet.  Spruance’s escorts were getting low on fuel.  All of his torpedo bombers were lost.  Further operations against Yamamoto’s First Fleet would have exposed the USN to the loss of its last two fleet carriers in the Pacific.

In the decades that followed, the theme developed that the U.S. had been the beneficiary of an almost providential slice of good luck.  Gordon Prange’s “Miracle at Midway” and Walter Lord’s “Incredible Victory” express this point of view in their titles.  Herman Wouk provides a more romantic version of the same tale.  On this view, the odds of U.S. success were so low that the outcome depended on every single incident favoring the American side.  There is no question that nearly all the luck on June 4, 1942 ran in favor of the United States Navy, but whether it amounts to a miracle is another story.

Another view of the battle is offered by Craig L. Symonds in “The Battle of Midway”.  Symonds notes that the minute that U.S. commanders got the first report of IJN bombers approaching Midway, they began calculating how much time they had before those bombers returned to their carriers.  On Symonds’ view, the careful calculation of risk, not a miracle, is the reason that the U.S. caught the Kido Butai at the moment of its greatest vulnerability.  The U.S. Navy was in luck that day, but “luck is the residue of design”.

John Toland in “Rising Sun” takes a similar view, while also debiting the planning and command decisions on the Japanese side.  He says “Yamamoto conceived the Midway operation too recklessly and his commander fought it too carefully.  On the other hand, Spruance[4] was bold at the right time – by launching his strike early and with all available planes – and prudent when he should be . . .”.

It’s a fair summation in two sentences of the most important factor on each side that led to the result.  That, and some luck.  Admirals Spruance and Fletcher might have added: ”The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

June 4, 2017.

[1] All times local to Midway.  IJN vessels kept their clocks on Tokyo time.

[2] John Toland in “Rising Sun” seems to suggest that the order to send the uncoded message came from Admiral Nimitz when he was on Midway on May 20.  He does not refer to the underwater cable.

[3] Historians can pin down the time when each of several messages about the U.S. fleet arrived at Nagumo’s ship, the Akagi, but there is some doubt about when the information got to the admiral.

[4] Fletcher should not have been left out of this sentence in my opinion.