“In just six minutes, three-quarters of the Japanese carrier force at Midway had been destroyed.”

By Jim Stempel

IT WAS JUST after 10 a.m., June 4, 1942, and Air Group Commander C. Wade McClusky Jr. had a tough decision on his hands. The group of dive-bombers he was leading was searching for a large Japanese carrier group known to be nearby. The formation was low on fuel and they still had no idea where the enemy might be.

Then the clouds over the Pacific momentarily parted, and McClusky spotted the wake of an enemy destroyer racing away at high speed. It was the Arashi. The Air Group Commander presumed the vessel was headed back to the Japanese fleet. Despite his perilous fuel situation, McClusky decided to give chase. It may well have been the most important decision of the entire Pacific War.

Ever since the April 18 Doolittle Raid against Tokyo, the American intelligence station Hypo at Pearl Harbor expected the Japanese to go on the offensive and push the empire’s perimeter farther outwards. As early as May 21, intercepted radio chatter revealed enemy plans for an invasion of the islands of Atta and Kiska in Alaska’s Aleutian chain. Japanese communiques also repeatedly referenced a target in the Pacific identified only by the codename “AF.” U.S. intelligence believed it to be Midway, a small atoll some 1,300 miles west of Hawaii, but no one was sure.

To test the theory, in late May Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet Commander, staged a clever ruse in which the American station at Midway sent a false radio message indicating the water-evaporation units there had broken down. Shortly thereafter, new intercepted Japanese communications reported that the water-evaporation units at AF were broken. Bingo.

Tokyo’s plan all along was to draw the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a decisive battle where it could be ambushed and destroyed. By threatening Midway, a remote, but strategically important U.S. outpost, the American fleet would have to respond. A Japanese carrier group would then pounce, knocking America out of Pacific once and for all. It was an ambitious plan.

With the recently decoded Japanese intelligence in hand, on May 27 Edwin Layton, Pacific Fleet intelligence officer, briefed Nimitz and his staff. Layton had calculated that the enemy would likely approach Midway from a bearing of 325 degrees. He also predicted that at 7 a.m. on June 4, the Japanese would be just 175 miles from the atoll. It was a remarkable assessment, one that now put Nimitz in the driver’s seat. Despite being outnumbered, Nimitz decided to roll the dice and ambush the ambushers.

Early on June 4, the Japanese attack group was almost precisely where Layton had predicted. Commanded by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the infamous Pearl Harbor attack, the First Carrier Strike-Force under command of Vice-Admiral Nagumo, was in the lead. It consisted of four carriers with 248 aircraft, two battleships, two heavy cruisers and 12 destroyers. There was also a significant support force following in its wake, including troop ships for a landing on Midway.

Initially, Nimitz had just two carriers to work with, Enterprise and Hornet, along with a force of warships that was substantially smaller to what the Japanese had put to sea. Weeks earlier, the carrier Lexington had been sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea, while Yorktown, which was severely damaged, was presumed to be out of action for months. Amazingly, frantic, around-the-clock repairs at Pearl Harbor saw Yorktown back out to sea in just 72 hours – gimpy, but game. That gave Nimitz three carriers hosting 233 aircraft, seven heavy cruisers, 15 destroyers and 16 submarines with which to confront the Japanese. Supporting the naval forces were the Marines at Midway. They had 127 land-based aircraft to throw into action, although many of these planes were outdated and their pilots were inexperienced.

Nimitz, like Yamamoto, was banking on surprise. The Japanese approached Midway from the northwest, as the Americans waited in silence to the northeast. At 4:30 a.m. on June 4, Nagumo commenced his initial attack on Midway, launching 36 dive-bombers, 36 torpedo-bombers, and 36 Zero fighter-aircraft.

An hour later, an American patrol plane spotted the Japanese fleet and radioed its position.

The Marines on Midway scrambled 26 fighter-aircraft to protect the base from the raiders; they were no match for the Japanese Zeros. The anti-aircraft batteries on the atoll fared-better, knocking-out 11 enemy planes, and damaging 43 more.

While many of Japanese bombers managed to strike the U.S. base on Midway, the damage they inflicted was light. If the Japanese were to land troops as scheduled on June 7, the American defences would need to be subjected to a much heavier pounding. 

As the Japanese fighters and bombers withdrew to rearm and refuel, American warplanes on Midway retaliated. Between 7 and 8:30 a.m., three flights of bombers and dive-bombers launched from the still smouldering airstrip. The planes located and attacked the Japanese fleet, but were entirely ineffective, driven off by Zeros or downed by heavy anti-aircraft fire.

Even now however, the Japanese had no idea the American battle-fleet was lurking just northeast of Midway.

Despite their tactical advantage, it would take the Americans – still relative amateurs at large-scale carrier operations – hours to launch their first wave. These took-off between 7 and 8 a.m., attacking piecemeal, rather than grouped, to save precious fuel.

The location of the Japanese fleet was then at the extreme limit of the U.S. Navy planes’ ranges. One American bomber group, using an incorrect heading, never located the enemy, and was forced to ditch after running out of fuel. Nevertheless, between 9:30 and 10 a.m., torpedo bombers launched from Enterprise and Hornet located the Japanese carriers – Soryu, Kaga, Hiryu and Akagi – and immediately attacked.

Unfortunately, the slow-flying American planes were no match for the speedy Zeros, and their (mostly defective) torpedoes were equally ineffective. The torpedo-bombers were virtually blown from the sky. And although the American formations inflicted no damage, they did momentarily distract the Japanese high-command.

On the Akagi, Admiral Nagumo now had a problem of his own. When the initial attack on Midway reported minimal damage, he ordered his reserve planes armed with general purpose ordnance for a second run at the atoll. While the bombs were being loaded, Nagumo received a surprising report from a Japanese scout-plane: American warships had been spotted. The details however were maddeningly imprecise. Were these the American carriers in the area? If so, should he remove the bombs from his planes and rearm them with torpedoes? Without specific information, Nagumo could reach no decision. Precious moments ticked away.

Then Nagumo received confirmation that at least one American carrier had been spotted. But by then his first assault wave was returning from Midway and had to land; no other strike could be launched against any target until the first wave had been brought-in safely.

By 10:15, the decks of Kaga and Akagi were full of returning aircraft. The hangars were crammed with additional planes, bombs and torpedoes, while fuel lines lay open and exposed due to hasty refueling. And all of this was taking place as Soryu and Hiryu were preparing to launch another flight. Meanwhile, Nagumo’s fighter cover had just flown-off, chasing down the planes from the recent American attack.

It was precisely at this moment when Air Group Commander C. Wade McClusky Jr., still trailing the destroyer Akagi, appeared overhead and spotted the Japanese carrier group below. 

McClusky immediately ordered his entire group to attack. The dive-bombers screamed out of the clouds, taking the undefended Japanese carriers by complete surprise. The devastation was immediate and appalling. 

Kaga took multiple direct hits from 500- and 100-pound bombs and exploded into flames. 

Akagi sustained a direct hit — the bomb penetrated to the upper hanger-deck exploding among fuelled planes. Massive secondary explosions turned the carrier into a blazing conflagration.

Likewise, Soryu sustained multiple hits. Its flight deck was repeatedly strafed, causing bombs, torpedoes and fuel to burst into a raging inferno. 

Only Hiryu escaped unscathed. 

Now, dangerously low on fuel, the American flyers had to break-off the attack and return to their carriers. In just six minutes, three-quarters of the Japanese carrier force at Midway had been destroyed. Nagumo, speechless and in a state of shock, watched with tears in his eyes as towering flames engulfed the Akagi.

Hiryu, undamaged, turned into the wind and responded, launching an attack that chased the withdrawing American planes back to the Yorktown, where the Japanese struck with a vengeance. While a valiant defence brought down numerous Japanese aircraft, Yorktown finally succumbed to a second assault wave, also launched from Hiryu. Even then, Yorktown would not slip under the waves until June 7 – stubborn to the end.

But now it was the Americans turn to counterpunch. In the late afternoon, Enterprise launched 24 dive-bombers. They soon located Hiryu, fought through a ferocious ring of protective Zeros, and scored multiple direct hits before departing. The Hiryu, now also ablaze, was the fourth carrier to be destroyed in a long day of incredible aerial combat.

That night both sides jostled for position, expecting combat to be renewed the following morning. But Yamamoto could not pinpoint the location of the American fleet and, as the horrible scope of Japanese losses became increasingly apparent, ordered a full withdrawal to the northwest.

As dawn broke on June 5, it was obvious the Americans had won a major, decisive engagement. The Japanese had lost four fleet carriers. One heavy cruiser was also sunk, while another had been severely damaged. The Imperial Navy’s death toll was an astonishing 3,057, while their lost aircraft totalled 248. Moreover, many of the dead, namely the pilots and carrier crews, were elite veterans who would be hard to replace.

The Americans, on the other hand, suffered the loss of one fleet carrier (Yorktown), one destroyer, 307 men killed and 150 aircraft, many of which had been forced to ditch after their planes ran out of fuel.

But even these lopsided statistics in no way captured the true meaning of the battle’s significance. Had the Japanese taken Midway and inflicted a decisive defeat to the American Navy – as they surely expected to do – the door would have been opened for them to attack Australia, Samoa and ultimately Hawaii with virtual impunity. The Imperial Navy would have reigned supreme in the Pacific, likely extending the war for years. But that did not happen. 

As a result of Midway, the Imperial Navy lost the initiative in the Pacific, and would be back-peddling for the remainder of the war.

The importance of the American victory at Midway has hardly been lost on historians. John Keegan, for instance, called it “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.” In six rampaging minutes, the Americans, through skill, heroism, and, yes, a dose of good luck, had destroyed three of the six carriers that had launched the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (a fourth, Hiryu, would be destroyed later that afternoon), the very attack that had enraged the American people, just six months earlier.

And as reckless miscalculation is often the offspring of ignorance, the Pearl Harbor strike, while tactically brilliant, would prove strategically suicidal. As military historian Robert L. O’Connell wrote, “Pyrrhus the Epirot would have understood Pearl Harbor. For he learned while fighting the Romans that to win against such an opponent is to lose.”

Jim Stempel is a speaker and author of nine books and numerous articles on American history, spirituality, and warfare. His newest book regarding the American Revolution – Valley Forge to Monmouth: Six Transformative Months of the American Revolution – is now available on Amazon and at virtually all online booksellers. For a full preview, pricing, and reviews, visit Amazon here or check out his website www.jimstempel.com for all his books, reviews, articles, biography and interviews.