Today, June 5th, is the 65th anniversary of one of the biggest victories in US Naval history, the Battle of Midway. LGF links to a post on the battle that, while well-written, brings out the usual myths of "The Miracle At Midway".

The story of Midway is well-known by now, thanks to numerous books and one feature film. Most of these books, and the movie, were mostly (if not entirely) based on American sources and a perishingly few translated Japanese "I was there" accounts that were never checked for accuracy.

Now that more researchers are able to read the raw Japanese data, such as the official War history of Japan (the Senshi Sosho), it's clear that much of what we "know" of the battle of Midway needs to be reevaluated.

Let's go over some of those myths, shall we?

1) "The near total destruction of the first wave of U.S. pilots and crew on board the "low and slow” torpedo bombers was not in vain; it alone made possible the exact conditions that allowed 50 U.S. dive bombers to send the Japanese armada to the bottom of the ocean minutes later."

2) "Four sitting duck Japanese carriers, without their protective shield of Zero fighter planes, with scores if not hundreds of Japanese planes sitting on the carrier decks, strewn with ordnance, fuel and crew..."

3) "The combined Japanese Alaskan and Midway forces, including those in support role, involved 200 ships, including 8 carriers, 11 battleships, 22 cruisers, 65 destroyers, 21 submarines and approximately 700 aircraft."

4)"A small Japanese carrier group first launched an attack on Alaska, intended to draw the U.S. Fleet out of Pearl..."

5)"The US Navy - outnumbered in carriers, ships, technology, planes and pilots - had achieved the greatest naval victory in modern history."

I'll discuss all of these below... read on, won't you?

The Devastators of Torpedo 8 (VT-8), off the USS Hornet, began their attack run at 0918, and by 0932 the last of them had been shot down. Torpedo 6 (VT-6), off the USS Enterprise, began their attack at 0938. Due to the miserably slow speed of the outdated Devastator when carrying a torpedo (~100knots), the last of the VT-6 planes didn't drop it's payload until 1000. Five planes from VT-6 survived the attack run, though one never made it back to the US carriers, and all were well shot up.

The attack of the Dauntless dive bombers didn't begin until 1020. Given the performance of the Zero, 20 minutes was plenty of time for the defending planes to get back to a good altitude to defend against any incoming planes.

The sharp reader will note that only two of the three torpedo squadrons flying off of the US carriers has been mentioned. That's because VT-3, off the USS Yorktown, actually made their attack at the same time the dive bombers did.

The conclusion is simple: the 20 minutes of time between VT-6's attack and the combined attack of the dive bombers and VT-3 should have allowed the Japanese CAP (Combat Air Patrol) to have gotten back to altitude. It wasn't that they were drawn too low, it was that they were drawn too far. VT-8's attack came from the Northeast, VT-6 from the South-southwest, VT-3 from the Southeast. Throw in the Wildcats of VF-3, the only fighter cover any of the US attacks had on this day, which sponged up a disproportionally large number of Zeros, and the Dauntlesses had clear runs. The sacrifice of the torpedo bombers surely served a purpose: it kept the Japanese carriers from being able to launch an attack on the US fleet (see #2, below).

Two years later, radar would have provided the Japanese carriers with an effective way of controlling where their CAP was going (as shown by the US carrier forces of 1944-45). Instead, it was up to the individual pilots to decide what they'd attack and when.

2) "Four sitting duck Japanese carriers, without their protective shield of Zero fighter planes, with scores if not hundreds of Japanese planes sitting on the carrier decks, strewn with ordnance, fuel and crew..."

This image makes for great drama; as Mitsuo Fuchida put it in his book "Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan" (the first Japanese account of Midway published in English), the carriers of Kido Butai were "mere minutes away from launching their attack" when the US dive bombers came down. Most every book on the battle reiterates this concept: it was a near thing.

It's also wrong.

Unlike the US carriers, Japanese carriers had enclosed hangar spaces (that is, contained entirely within the hull with little ventilation. US carriers had rolling metal shutters that allowed access to the outside). While the US could fuel, arm and warm up the engines of their planes below decks, thereby allowing the planes to be ready for takeoff the instant they were on the flightdeck, the Japanese could only fuel and arm theirs below. Planes needed to be raised to the flightdeck, rolled aft to their spots, then their radial engines needed to be warmed. The warmup process took around 15 minutes to complete, and if it wasn't done correctly (it couldn't be hurried), the chances of the engine failing were huge. The entire process of preparing a deckload attack required about 45 minutes of downtime for the flightdeck in optimal conditions. In other words, no planes taking off or landing (the British innovation of the angled deck didn't exist yet).

However, after 0730, when the first scouting reports of American carriers came in, the Japanese carriers never had those 45 minutes. From approximately 0705, when six brand new Avenger torpedo bombers from Midway attacked the fleet, to 1020, when the dive bombers pushed over into their runs, the four carriers of the Kido Butai were either A) launching or landing CAP fighters; B) recovering the original Midway strike; C) rearming the planes belowdecks for ship attack; or D) radically manuevering to avoid the stream of squadron-sized attacks that were coming in.

All four of these things conspired to prevent the Kaga, the Akagi, the Soryu and the Hiryu from ever getting their planes up to the flight deck.

A, B, and D were the major reasons. Since carriers of the time could only do one thing at a time (spot, launch or recover), they were limited in their flexibility. With four carriers in a group, theoretically you could have two carriers performing CAP duties while the other two spotted their attack force... but Japanese doctrine didn't allow for that. They were masters of the combined force strike; in Midway's case, half the carriers would provide dive bombers, the other half torpedo planes, and all four would provide Zeros for fighter protection. They also understood that an attack en masse would be able to saturate target defenses and thereby limit losses. Launching a piecemeal attack, while it may have gotten results, simply wasn't something they had effectively trained for.

In any case, D prevented them from being able to do so in any case. Moving a large aircraft around a flight deck by hand as the carrier careened around the ocean avoiding bombs and torpedoes was a very dangerous proposition, to say the least. Planes could (and often were) damaged or lost over the side, and crewmembers maimed or killed, in the most innocuous conditions... doing the same thing on a wildly tilting flightdeck would have been foolhardy.

Which is not to say that there weren't ANY planes up on deck when the Dauntlesses came in; there were... and they were part of the CAP defending the fleet. The attack planes, however, were still belowdecks.

3) "The combined Japanese Alaskan and Midway forces, including those in support role, involved 200 ships, including 8 carriers, 11 battleships, 22 cruisers, 65 destroyers, 21 submarines and approximately 700 aircraft."

This is true, but not a realistic way to look at the way the fleets lined up. There were three seperate fleets involved in the attack on Midway:

1) The Invasion Force, consisting of one light carrier, two battleships, eight cruisers, 22 destroyers, and assorted transports and oilers, for 33 combatants.

2) The Carrier Force, consisting of four large carriers, two battleships, two cruisers, 12 destroyers, and assorted oilers, for 20 combatants.

3) The Main Body, consisting of one light carrier (Hosho, which only carried eight planes), three battleships, two cruisers, nine destroyers, and assorted oilers, for 15 combatants.

By any definition, this was a dominating group of ships... except in the way they were positioned on the ocean. In no way were they three fleets arrayed so as to be mutually supporting. The Invasion Force was well over 300 miles south of the Carrier Force, which was positioned almost 400 miles ahead of the Main Body. Each group was on their own for the coming battle.

A fourth fleet, that of the Aleutians Strike group, was over 1000 miles north of the Midway action, though their ships (two light carriers, five cruisers, 18 destroyers, and assorted auxilaries) are claimed in the totals of the ships involved. While a sizeable force, they were much too far away to be involved.

Because of the way the ships were arrayed, the only true Japanese force on the ocean for the battle of Midway was that of the Carrier Force, with their 20 fighting ships. Everything else was at least 15 hours away.

4)"A small Japanese carrier group first launched an attack on Alaska, intend[ing] to draw the U.S. Fleet out of Pearl..."

It's often claimed that the Aleutians attack was a mere feint, a way to "fake out" the US carrier force. In truth, it was nothing of the sort. It was designed as a stand-alone unit who's departure and attack coincided with the Midway force's. If it had been meant as a feint, it would have occurred more than one day earlier, so as to allow the US fleet to actually sortie. As it was, the battle for the Aleutians DID begin only 24 hours before Midway.

5)"The US Navy - outnumbered in carriers, ships, technology, planes and pilots - had achieved the greatest naval victory in modern history."

While Midway is arguably the greatest naval victory in modern history (which assessment I agree with, by the way), the US Navy wasn't particularly outnumbered where it counted: carriers and planes.

Consider these numbers: the Japanese had four carriers with an actual on-hand strength of 227 planes, plus another 21 Zeros destined to be the fighter garrison for Midway. Some of the pilots for those fighters were not carrier qualified, but we'll include the planes for completeness' sake, bringing the total to 248. This is somewhat less than what the carriers could actually carry, but operational losses (lost via combat, accident, or unreparable) in the previous six months had not yet been entirely replaced.

The US forces had three carriers, with 233 planes embarked. So, yes, they were technically outnumbered... until you include the island of Midway itself, and the roughly 120 planes based there at the time of the battle. Furthermore, Midway could not be sunk.

It was the JAPANESE that were outnumbered at the battle of Midway in the categories that counted, not the Americans.

If you want to go farther into the numbers, you can point out that the Japanese Carrier Force (the only force that actually fought against the US on June 5th, 1942) had 20 combatant ships (listed in #4, above). The US fleet had 25.

As far as being 'outnumbered' in technology goes, the Zero was a better performing fighter than the Wildcats and Buffaloes flown by the US (indeed, the Buffalo is widely considered the worst mainline fighter ever, though the Finnish airforce in WWII might argue that point), it had weaknesses. It was fragile, with no armor and no protection around the fuel tanks. A hit that would kill a Zero, on the other hand, would only damage a Wildcat, which was armored, and packed a heavier punch to boot.

The dive bombers primarily used in the battle, the Val and the Dauntless, were essentially even. The Dauntless could carry a larger bomb than the Val, but only at the expense of combat range.

The biggest advantage amongst the Japanese planes was in torpedo bombers. The Kate could carry a heavier torpedo than the Devastator, could fly twice as fast while doing so, and could drop it's torpedo from a higher altitude, a higher speed, and a longer range. Furthermore, at this point in the war, American torpedoes had an unfortunate tendency to malfunction and not explode, even if a hit was managed. In fact, after the battle of Midway was over, the Devastator was removed from combat roles completely.

In such things as radar, anti-aircraft weaponry and fire control, and particularly damage control aboard carriers, the US had an overwhelming advantage. For example, according to Senshi Shoho, the Akagi suffered only one bomb hit and two near misses during the climactic attack, yet this was enough to set her ablaze fatally. Part of this was due to the rearming/refuelling going on in her hangars when the bomb hit, but even that may have been controllable in an American carrier (witness the agonies the USS Franklin would endure later, or the Yorktown suffered at Midway).

Midway was decisive; one side lost four carriers, the other one. That's decisive in any book. Saying that it "represents one of the turning points of world history", however, is stretching a bit. Japan could not win the Pacific War. The best it could hope for was a negotiated peace, and some claim that that America would have folded if Midway was lost. This view ignores the point that fighters better than the Zero were already being produced and were entering squadron service at the time of Midway; the first Essex-class carriers were just a handful of months away from being commissioned; and that the US had carriers other than the Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise in service.

The median result would be that the war would likely have been extended a year or two. The end result would have been the same, except with higher casualties on both sides.

The worst Japan could imagine was what occurred.

(my thanks to Jonathan Parshall and A.P. Tully for their book, "Shattered Sword", the main reference for this post)

Posted by: Wonderduck at 05:45 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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