Battle of Midway (1942): The Turning Point in the Pacific War

The Battle of Midway was a naval and air battle fought between 4 and 7 June 1942 near Midway Atoll in the central Pacific. Forewarned by codebreakers, three US aircraft carriers ambushed a powerful Japanese fleet and sank four of its fleet carriers in a single day, for the loss of one American carrier. Coming just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it ended Japan’s run of victories and is widely seen as the turning point of the Pacific War.

Background

After Pearl Harbor, Japan conquered Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and Burma with astonishing speed. Yet the American aircraft carriers had been absent from Pearl Harbor and survived. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet, believed Japan had to destroy them in a decisive battle before American industrial power could replace its losses.

His plan, Operation MI, was to capture Midway, a small atoll about 1,300 miles (2,100 km) north-west of Hawaii with an airfield and seaplane base. He expected the US Pacific Fleet to come out to defend it and be destroyed. A simultaneous operation would seize islands in the Aleutians. The Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942 helped win approval for the plan inside the Japanese high command.

The Japanese plan was elaborate. The carrier striking force under Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo was to neutralise Midway’s air defences; an invasion force with transports carrying about 5,000 troops would follow; and Yamamoto himself, aboard the giant battleship Yamato, would trail several hundred miles behind with the main battleship force, ready to finish off the Americans. Two light carriers went north with the Aleutians operation. The result was that Japan’s great numerical advantage was spread across the ocean rather than concentrated where the battle was fought.

Japan entered the battle at a disadvantage it did not fully recognise. At the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, the fleet carrier Shōkaku was damaged and Zuikaku lost much of her air group, so neither could take part. On the American side, the carrier USS Yorktown, also damaged at Coral Sea, was repaired at Pearl Harbor in about three days of round-the-clock work.

Codebreaking and the opposing forces

The US Navy’s codebreaking unit at Pearl Harbor, Station HYPO under Commander Joseph Rochefort, could read parts of the main Japanese naval code, known to the Americans as JN-25. Japanese messages referred to the next target as “AF”. To confirm that AF meant Midway, the base was told to send an uncoded message reporting that its water distillation plant had broken down. Japanese signals soon reported that AF was short of water.

With this intelligence, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, knew roughly where and when the Japanese would strike. He sent Task Force 16, with the carriers Enterprise and Hornet under Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, and Task Force 17, with Yorktown under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, to wait north-east of Midway. Fletcher held overall tactical command.

Forces

What happened

On the morning of 4 June 1942 the Japanese carrier striking force under Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo launched 108 aircraft against Midway. They damaged the island’s installations and shot down many of its defending fighters, but the strike leader signalled that a second attack was needed. Meanwhile, aircraft from Midway attacked Nagumo’s carriers without scoring a single hit.

Nagumo ordered aircraft held in reserve to be rearmed with bombs for a second strike on Midway. Then a delayed scout plane from the cruiser Tone reported American ships to the north-east, later confirmed to include a carrier. Nagumo had to recover his returning Midway strike and change weapons again, keeping his flight decks and hangars busy for hours.

American carrier squadrons attacked piecemeal from about 09:20. Three torpedo squadrons flying slow Devastator aircraft attacked first and were almost wiped out; Torpedo Squadron 8 from Hornet lost all 15 aircraft, and Ensign George Gay was its only survivor. Their sacrifice drew Japanese fighters down to low altitude and kept the carriers manoeuvring.

At about 10:20–10:25, Dauntless dive bombers from Enterprise, led by Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky, and from Yorktown, led by Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Leslie, arrived almost simultaneously over the Japanese force. Within about six minutes Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū were hit and set ablaze, as bombs ignited fuel and ammunition on their decks and in their hangars. All three were lost.

The surviving carrier, Hiryū, struck back. Two waves of her aircraft found Yorktown, hitting her with three bombs around midday and two torpedoes in the afternoon, and she was abandoned. Late that afternoon, dive bombers from Enterprise, including aircraft from Yorktown, found Hiryū and set her on fire; she was scuttled on the morning of 5 June. Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi chose to remain aboard.

Yamamoto, with his battleships hundreds of miles behind, briefly hoped for a night surface action, but Spruance withdrew east to avoid it. Early on 5 June Yamamoto cancelled the operation. On 6 June American aircraft sank the heavy cruiser Mikuma. That same day the submarine I-168 torpedoed the crippled Yorktown and the destroyer Hammann alongside her; Hammann sank at once and Yorktown rolled over and sank early on 7 June.

Key people

Chester W. Nimitz took the bold decision to commit his only carriers on the strength of intelligence. Raymond A. Spruance, a cruiser admiral standing in for the ill William Halsey, launched his strike early and at long range, and showed caution afterwards that preserved his force. Frank Jack Fletcher, the senior commander, handed tactical control to Spruance after Yorktown was hit.

On the Japanese side, Isoroku Yamamoto designed a complex plan that dispersed his strength across the Pacific. Chūichi Nagumo faced difficult choices in the hours before the dive bombers arrived, and his decisions about rearming have been debated ever since.

Behind the scenes, Joseph Rochefort and his team at Station HYPO, together with Nimitz’s intelligence officer Edwin Layton, provided the forecasts on which the whole American plan rested. Layton predicted that the Japanese carriers would be sighted on the morning of 4 June at a bearing and distance close to where they actually appeared. Rochefort’s contribution was not formally recognised during his lifetime; he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously in 1986.

Losses

Myths and facts

For decades many accounts followed the Japanese officer Mitsuo Fuchida, who wrote that the Japanese carriers were just five minutes from launching a full counter-strike when the dive bombers struck. Research by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, published in 2005, showed from Japanese records that no strike was ready to launch at that moment. Their work has been widely accepted.

Another myth holds that Midway destroyed Japan’s corps of veteran pilots. In fact most Japanese aircrew survived; the heavier losses were the four carriers themselves and hundreds of skilled maintenance personnel. Japan’s experienced aviators were worn down mainly in the later campaigns around Guadalcanal and the Solomons.

Consequences

Japan could not quickly replace four fleet carriers, while American shipyards were about to deliver a large new generation of carriers. The strategic balance in the Pacific shifted. In August 1942 US forces began their first major offensive with the landings in the Battle of Guadalcanal, and Japan was increasingly forced onto the defensive.

The Japanese government concealed the scale of the defeat from its own public and even from much of its armed forces. In the United States, the victory restored confidence after months of defeats, and it vindicated both carrier aviation and naval intelligence.

In the north, the Aleutians operation went ahead. Japanese troops occupied the islands of Kiska and Attu on 6–7 June 1942, the only American territory in North America occupied during the war. US forces retook Attu after hard fighting in May 1943, and the Japanese evacuated Kiska that July, shortly before a joint US–Canadian landing there in August. The capture of a nearly intact Zero fighter in the Aleutians also gave American engineers valuable information about Japan’s best fighter aircraft.

Legacy

Midway Atoll is today a US National Wildlife Refuge and the Battle of Midway National Memorial. The US Navy commemorates the battle each June, and the wrecks of Yorktown, Akagi and Kaga were located in deep water by expeditions in 1998 and 2019. The battle has been retold in many books and films, including Midway (1976) and Midway (2019).

Timeline

• 1942, 18 April: Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.
• 1942, 4–8 May: Battle of the Coral Sea.
• 1942, late May: US codebreakers confirm Midway as the target; Yorktown repaired at Pearl Harbor.
• 1942, 4 June, morning: Japanese strike on Midway; US torpedo attacks fail.
• 1942, 4 June, about 10:20: Dive bombers set Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū ablaze.
• 1942, 4 June, afternoon: Hiryū’s aircraft cripple Yorktown; Hiryū is hit in turn.
• 1942, 5 June: Yamamoto cancels the operation; Hiryū is scuttled.
• 1942, 6 June: Mikuma sunk; submarine I-168 torpedoes Yorktown and Hammann.
• 1942, 7 June: Yorktown sinks.

Why it matters

In a few minutes over the Pacific, the Battle of Midway reversed the momentum of the war against Japan. It showed the decisive power of carrier aviation and of signals intelligence, and it gave the Allies the time and initiative to begin the long advance across the Pacific.