At the moment I'm up to my armpits in the mid-Pacific as I begin work on my new 'bore-a-thon' entitled How the Japanese Lost WWII in the First Six Months. Reading about the battle I find myself with a stiff neck from the constant shaking of my head in disbelief. I have studied a fair number of battles in my time but Midway is far and away the most extraordinary. 'Never in the field of human conflict' have so many flukes, chances, coincidences and mistakes occurred in the course of just a few hours. Several massive naval task forces blundered about mostly completely unaware of the others. If there is a God he was at Midway on 4th June 1942.
Perhaps the most famous evidence of divine providence was the fact that one of the Japanese recce 'planes due to be launched before dawn had an engine problem which delayed it by 30 minutes. If it had taken off on time it would have flown right over the American carriers lurking to the north east of the Islands, in which case, Adm. Nagumo, commander of the Japanese carrier fleet, containing four big Japanese carriers, would have disposed of his attack and defence aircraft very differently. If he had, then given the disparity in comabt experience between both sets of aircrews, plus the qualitative superiority of Japanese aircraft, it is almost certain that the three American carriers would have been sunk. In that event, Midway would have been taken and opened up a corridor pointing directly towards Hawaii, or, the Japanese could have moved south east to take the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia and thus cut Australia off from all American aid.
As it was, Nagumo had despatched half of his 'planes to attack Midway prior to the planned invasion. He kept the other half back, loaded with anti-maritime ordnance in case the American carriers were spotted. (He was being ultra-cautious because very poor Japanese intelligence had assured him that they were almost certainly still in Hawaii, or down in the south east following the inconclusive battle of the Coral Sea.) His Midway attack squadrons reported that a second attack was needed to completely finish off the Island's defences and so Nagumo ordered his reserve formation to change from anti-ship to ground attack ordnance. This was about half complete when the first very garbled reports came in from his air recce 'planes indicating that in fact the American carriers were on his flank. To add to his troubles the Midway attack force was streaming in and needing to land. So far his carriers had suffered several attacks from American Midway-based 'planes but had swatted them all away like irritating flies without sustaining any hits.
Nagumo ordered that the reserve air force be re-armed yet again, this time from land attack ordnance to anti-ship ordance so that they could attack the American carriers which by now had been definitely identified. One can imagine the language amongst the carrier ground crews as they struggled with order and counter-order and counter-counter-order! Unfortunately, in their haste they had no time to store the loose armaments safely and simply left them at the sides of the hangers. The Midway attack force had landed and was being re-armed and re-fueled and it was at that moment that the American carrier 'planes attacked. The first in were the torpedo aircraft who, given the nature of their weapon system had to come in at low level and fly straight and true at their target. The Japanese Zeros flying high above as a defensive air patrol came screaming in like hawks hitting a flock of sparrows. Many of the American torpedo 'planes were shot down and those that escaped the Zeros were take out by massive and deadly accurate anti-aircraft fire. In one of the most tremendous examples of human courage under fire, none of the American flinched from their duty. One by one they flew in, slow and steady, and one by one they were destroyed. To add bitter salt to the wound, none of their torpedoes had any effect.
At this point the Japanese were celebrating. They were unharmed and were well on their way to re-arming their 'planes which, within a very short time, would be off to take out the entire American carrier force. And at that point retribution hit them. A final attack force from the American carriers had found them and this time they were dive bombers not torpedo 'planes. Also, the Zeros who should have been cruising on high as a defence patrol, were either down at sea level where they had been chasing the torpedo attackers, or they were on deck being re-armed and re-fueled. Thus, the gallant torpedo 'plane crews, whilst they scored no hits, did actually bring about the circumstances that would allow victory to come. The American dive bombers had a clear run and the phrase 'shooting fish in a barrel' comes to mind. Three of the Japanese carriers were hit by bombs, usually no more than two or three but all the fuel and ordnance lying around was enough to set off huge explosions and conflagrations. The fourth carrier was caught later in the day and it, too, was sunk. The Japanese did manage to send an attack force to hit the American carriers and the Yorktown was eventually sunk but that was all they had by way of consolation.
To use the current argot, this was a 'tipping point', although neither side really appreciated it at the time. By sinking four carriers the Americans had ripped the claws out of the Japanese dragon. Even worse though, was the loss of hundreds of experienced aircrews who the Japanese simply could not be replaced fast enough. Also, from this point on, both sides realised that the other 'tipping point' was that big battleships with big guns were no longer the Queen on the naval chessboard and from now on the aircraft carrier had taken over. Adm. Yamamoto, the prime mover behind the Midway attack, was dimly aware of this before the battle but it must have been a bitter truth to learn in such a hard way as he sailed for home in the Yamato, the biggest battleship in the world!
Absolutely fascinating stuff. Reading it beats working, that's for sure...
A couple of points. The most poignant bit here is the plight of the torpedo plane crews. Winning the battle by losing the battle.
A crucial battle? Well, I will trot out my usual cynical line here. All battles are crucial for those participating, but while the Americans could keep Oppenheimer out of harm's way, and maintain their steel production, the long-term result was always certain. Different amounts of bloodshed, but never any chance of us speaking Japanese.
Interesting bit about the loss of experienced aircrews. I heard that during WW2 the RAF made a conscious decision to take experienced air aces out of operational duty and use them for training. So fewer brilliant pilots, but more serviceable pilots in the front line. The Luftwaffe did the opposite, being hung up on the myth of the Red Baron, etc. Any thoughts on this? A fascinating dilemma, a bit like the "sharpening the saw" analogy that gets trotted out in business courses.
Posted by: Whyaxye | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 12:22
'W', you are absolutely right that when seen from a geo-political viewpoint the Japanese were mad to take on the USA at all because, to use an analogy I have used before, it was the equivalent of poking a sleeping giant in the eye with a sharp stick. In fact I wonder what the USA would have done if the Japs had simply attacked the Dutch and the Brits in their possessions. Whilst FDR was, more or less, up for it, his public were still dragging their feet. And, of course, as you well know, the A-bomb was but a gleam in the eye in 1942.
Your point concerning the RAF bomber crews is true to a point but part of the reason for giving them a break was that casualty rates in Bomber Command were only exceeded by the German submarine crews. In other words, if you made it through your 30 sorties (or whatever it was) then you were a very, very lucky man and you knew it from the number of missing faces around the mess at night!
Actually, just recently I heard a new criticism of Bomber Command, well, new to me, anyway. It was suggested that instead of investing all that money into huge metal bombers with very large crews (7) such that the casualty rates were needlessly enormous, they should have concentrated on the Mosquito which was made of wood and carried a crew of two. It was very fast and very agile and proved several times that it could conduct pin-point bombing with considerable accuracy, as opposed to the 'carpet' bombing of the large, lumbering Lancasters.
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 12:49
Thanks for your response, DD.
I had never actually thought about the Japanese having the sense to attack only us and the flatlanders, but I'm very glad on reflection that they were not smart enough. The spectre of the Yamato nosing into the Suez canal would have put the wind up Monty!
The Mosquito point is interesting. I have a soft spot for them, as my mum made them at the De Havilland works in Hertfordshire. Little government help, just a patriotic businessman. There is some brilliant footage of a squadron of them pitching bombs through some bad people's windows in Amsterdam.
My dad volunteered to be a gunner on Lancasters. It was what you did if you were gung-ho but had no better than elementary education maths. They showed him and his fellow volunteers a film taken inside a bomber coming under attack: tracers coming through the fuselage, equipment smashed to buggery, and you in a perspex dome too small for you and your parachute. Apparently enemy fighters came past too fast to react to, let alone hit. He decided to "un-vokunteer", and drove a truck for the duration...
Posted by: Whyaxye | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 13:11
One of my uncles, a wireless operator in a Lancaster, planned to volunteer to be a rear gunner. My mother, his sister, asked my father to put a stop to it. So he asked uncle why he planned to do it. "For the extra pay". "Right", said my father, "I'll give you the extra money myself; now just you keep your sister happy and give up this mad idea." And lo, it was so.
Posted by: dearieme | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 13:19
P.S. Midway was like a game of soccer. Being a low-scoring game, soccer between two sides that are even approximately well-matched will often be settled by luck.
Posted by: dearieme | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 13:20
We've said it beofore, we'll say it again; the Japanese are bright folk, but getting into a fight with every single neighbour (with the possible exception of Siam and Vichy) was bonkers. If they'd cut their losses in China, they'd have ended up as a very substantial player in the far east and not a recipient for atomic bombs.
Posted by: H | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 13:45
'W' and 'DM', your respective relatives missed the chance to join celebrity company, dear-darling Terence Rattigan was an air-gunner - I don't suppose they minded!
'H', indeed, theirs was an exceedingly eccentric society before the war what with the Emperor also being a God-head. One of the problems was that the army became ever more influential, not so much the senior officers, but the middle-rankers, the majors, colonels and so forth, hot-heads most of them without a political strategic brain in their bodies. Oddly enough, the God-head bit excepted, they do remind me of Wilhemine Germany.
**NOTE** For anyone looking for an excellent book on the subject as seen from the Japanese viewpoint, use 'abebooks' and try and find a copy of "Midway" by Mitsuo Fuchida & Masatake Okumiya. Fuchida was the pilot who lead in the first attack force against Pearl Harbour. It is an extremely honest book in which Japanese errors are faced head on. He sums up, thus: "As a consequence of my studies, I am firmly convinced that the Pacific War was started by men who did not understand the sea, and fought by men who did not understand the air."
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 15 December 2011 at 16:07