A couple of years ago, I was at the Duck U Bookstore when one of our history professors came in.  At the time, we had a small area set aside on the counter for "Staff Picks", books that those of us who worked at the Bookstore had read and recommended.  My two picks that month were World War Z, which I had just finished reading, and Shattered Sword, the 2005 book that turned a lot of what was known about the Battle of Midway on its collective head.

Knowing that the professor in question taught a class on WWII, I suggested Shattered Sword to him, and thus began a close to 45 minute dialogue on Midway and the Pacific War in general (it was summertime, during a stretch where we might go the entire day and see maybe three customers).  When we were finished and the prof had purchased both of my "Staff Picks", one of my co-workers looked at me with something akin to stunned disbelief.  "He's a history professor, how were you able to to talk to him like that about his specialty?", for indeed, his specialty was the Pacific War and Korea (where he himself served). 

I thought for a second and replied "I read a lot."  Her reaction, again, was stunned disbelief.  "History books?  You read history books for fun?"

Well, yeah.  I do.

I'd like to write a little bit about some of the books on Midway that I've in my collection, if I may indulge myself a bit... and, seeing how it's my blog, I think I can.


Mitsuo Fuchida's book Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan is without a doubt the single most influential book on the topic ever written.  The author was present at Midway, on the bridge of the Akagi after suffering an attack of appendicitis and being unable to fly the attack mission.  It's no surprise that his book, one of the first to be written on the subject, was thought to be the authoritarian voice on the battle.  The book told the story of the underdog getting lucky, with the Dauntlesses plunging down on the Japanese battle fleet and delivering their shattering attacks only five minutes before the Japanese counterstrike was to take off.  What's even more amazing is that this book, which so struck the fancy of American readers (and even steered the development of the movie "Midway"), was, to be less than diplomatic about it, a pack of lies.  To be a bit more diplomatic, Fuchida embellished a number of important details of the battle so as to make the Japanese Navy come out in a better light.  Remember, he wrote the book in 1951, just as US restrictions on such things were being lifted in Japan.  At the time the military as a whole was thought of very poorly in Japan... in some ways, it's not surprising that Fuchida would want to get a "nicer" version of events out into the public eye, one that made it look like it was just sheer bad luck that the Americans showed up when they did.  What might be more surprising is that Japanese historians had discredited the book some 20 years before American historians began to do the same thing.  Having said all that, the book is still well worth reading for the Japanese side of the battle, through Japanese eyes, something that is rare in our scholarship.

The next book in my Midway collection that I'd like to mention bight might not be a history book by the accepted definition of the term.  The Last Flight of Ensign C. Markland Kelly, Junior, USNR by Bowen Weisheit came about at the urging of Ensign Kelly's father, who understandably wanted to know just exactly how his son died at the Battle of Midway.  Ensign Kelly, you see, flew with VF-8 off of the USS Hornet, and was one of the two fighter pilots that wasn't recovered after the Hornet Air Group's "Flight To Nowhere."  Weisheit, who taught aerial navigation in the Navy, found a "short-snorter" $10 bill that had been presented to the crew of the PBY that picked up four of the fighter pilots that had ditched.  Much to his surprise, the latitude/longitude that the crew had written on the bill put the pickup very far away from where the official Hornet report (such as it was) said the squadron had ditched... far enough away that it wasn't just a simple error.  Thus began a long period of research, interviewing all of the surviving pilots from the Hornet's Air Group that he could find.  The first half of this slim book is what makes it questionable from a history standpoint, telling the story of Ensign Kelly's flight to nowhere from his point-of-view.  As Kelly was never found, no matter how well-researched (and make no mistake, the book is ridiculously well researched) the first half must fall into the category of "historical fiction."  The second half, however, recaps Weisheit's research and conclusions, conclusions that are very hard to debate: that the Hornet's after-action report was falsified, showing a completely fraudulent flightpath for the Air Group.  The obvious question really becomes an accusation: why, exactly, did then-Captain Marc Mitscher and Commander Stanhope Ring (Commander, Hornet Air Group) falsify the mission flightpath?  The obvious answer is to cover up their horrid performance, removing 1/3rd of the US Navy's striking power from action, a removal which may very well have ended up sinking the Yorktown.  There are some glaring errors to be found in Last Flight, which may call into question the results found in the book.  Weisheit's reported refusal to correct the caption of a particular photo, even when presented with clear evidence that the photo can't represent what he claims, may indicate a "my conclusion is right, no matter what" mindset.  Even if it isn't 100% correct however, Last Flight is an outstanding piece of scholarship that cleared up a dreadfully dark spot on the historical record of the Battle of Midway. As a result, Last Flight is reportedly to be found in every US Navy library.  Unfortunately, it's very difficult to find anywhere else, as it was privately published.  With the recent death of the author, it's unlikely to ever be reprinted, and once current supplies are exhausted it'll be gone forever. 

Related to Last Flight is Alvin Kernan's The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons.  Kernan was an 18-year old aviation ordinanceman on the USS Enterprise during Midway, but became a history professor at Yale and Princeton after the war.  His book delves deeply into just exactly what happened to the Devastator squadrons, not just during the battle, but beforehand; the blunders that put obsolete torpedo planes, carrying fundamentally flawed torpedoes, into the hands of poorly-trained young men (many of whom had never actually dropped a live torpedo, either in combat or even in training) at a time when they needed every scant advantage.  That they didn't get those advantages resulted in the massacre of the three squadrons flying off the carriers, and the fourth "Midway Squadron" (six Avengers and four B-26 Marauders rigged to carry torps) as Kernan calls it as well.  He leans heavily on Last Flight for his discussion on the Flight to Nowhere; indeed, this book is where I first heard of Weisheit's book.  The Unknown Battle of Midway is an important read for anybody wanting to understand the behind-the-scenes action that led to the tragedy of the VTs at Midway, and the steps that were eventually taken to correct the problems.

I've written on The Pond manyatime about the Battle of Midway Round Table (BOMRT), a unique gathering of veterans of the battle, historians, amateurs, and those interested in the battle in cyberspace.  The mailing list has been going strong for many years, and the current head of the Round Table, Ronald Russell, pulled some of the best anecdotes and threads from the list to compile No Right To Win: A Continuing Dialogue with the Veterans of The Battle of Midway.  Ranging from the humorous (the fresh-baked muffin incident) to the deadly serious (escaping the mortally wounded Yorktown), the stories come directly from the memories of those who were there when it happened, an invaluable resource at a time when the numbers of these veterans are being whittled away by old age.  Also included are many of the discussions between such historians as Jon Parshall (co-author of Shattered Sword) and John Lundstrom (author of The First Team) on such topics as "could the Japanese have successfully invaded Midway?"  A truly valuable work, if not the traditional style of history book, No Right To Win is fascinating, since it's mostly written by people who were there. 

Finally, what happens when a gathering of eminent historians decide that they want to write the definitive history on something?  You get a book like A Glorious Page In Our History.  Written in 1990 by Robert Cressman, Steve Ewing, Barrett Tillman, Mark Horan, Clark Reynolds, and Stan Cohen, this book goes into incredible detail on the Battle of Midway, starting with a chapter on the militarizing of the island in the 1920s and working up through the Battle itself.  While the scholarship involved is impressive enough, its the photographs in the book that are the high point.  Designed as a portable history exhibit of a sort, A Glorious Page In Our History is considered by the BOMRT as the most important reference on the battle available.  "If you can only afford one book on the Battle of Midway, Roundtable members will tell you to get this one," says the review on the BOMRT Library page, and while it is well and truly out of print, there are still copies floating around on Amazon and Ebay.  This was probably the first book to correct such misconceptions as the details of the "AF is short of water" radio ruse for example (the intel folks already knew that AF stood for Midway in the Japanese codes; the message was sent to prove the point to the powers that be in Washington).  It's not written in the most engaging style, to be sure, but it's an excellent read for a historian of the battle. 

There are many other titles I could write on, but I think I'll leave it at that for the time being.  If you're familiar with the Battle of Midway but want to know more, any of these books would be a good place to start... even Fuchida's has a lot of value, despite the embellishments.  They're all worth the money.  And if you're interested in Last Flight, let me know and I'll e-mail you with the contact information you need to get a copy.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:05 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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