Midway Campaign - Myths of Midway

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The Battle of Midway, the second carrier battle of 1942, was the most decisive of the war. But not for the reasons the Japanese thought it would be, even if they had captured the place. In fact, the Battle of Midway would have turned into the "Siege of Midway" if the Americans had not known what the enemy were up to or did not have forces available with which to ambush their opponents. The Japanese decided to seize Midway island in order to force the US fleet to come out and do battle, so that it could then be decisively defeated. A base on Midway would provide an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the rest of the Japanese fleet to maneuver around while the smaller US fleet was chopped to pieces. Midway was a massive operation, involving eight Japanese carriers plus numerous destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and submarines The operation also involved landing Japanese troops on several undefended islands off Alaska as a diversion. The Japanese plan was to seize Midway Island quickly and then advance down the chain of islands the thousand or so miles to Hawaii sinking any US naval forces rushing out to the defense of Midway. But that was the Japanese way of thinking. The U.S. Navy had other ideas. If the Japanese had seized Midway, the US would have put it under siege with long range aircraft and submarines Midway was over two thousand miles from the Japanese home islands and quite isolated. It would have to be supplied by sea and the Japanese never fully grasped the problems of logistics in the Pacific war. A Japanese held Midway island would have turned into another of many Japanese logistics disasters. While the Japanese played down logistics, they played up the importance of "military honor." They felt the Americans would come out to defend Midway no matter what. The Americans felt otherwise. Because the US had broken many Japanese codes, the US knew most of the Japanese plan and had all of its three available carriers in the Pacific stationed off Midway to ambush the Japanese. The US force was lucky, the Japanese force was sloppy and four Japanese carriers were sunk to the loss of only one US carrier. The Japanese Navy never recovered from this because the US could (and did) build new carriers much faster than Japan. American admirals knew they would have to deal with the Japanese carriers eventually, especially the six heavy carriers. By June, 1942, the US had only three heavy carriers available for operations in the Pacific and would not receive the first of the two dozen new Essex class heavy carriers until after the new year. They had already resigned themselves to fighting a defensive battle until then, emphasizing submarines and land based aircraft. Midway was an opportunity the Americans could not pass up, but only because they had the drop on the Japanese. Without the advantage of reading the coded Japanese messages, the US would not have risked their three carriers against the Japanese. Midway would have fallen to the Japanese, but the effect of this success on the course of the war may actually have been relatively minimal.

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