A Battle Between Fleets That Never Saw Each Other
The Battle of Midway took place from 4 to 7 June 1942 around Midway Atoll, a small American outpost in the central Pacific. It was fought mainly by aircraft launched from carriers. The opposing surface ships, for the most part, never came within gun range of one another. That alone marked a change from earlier fleet actions such as the Jutland fleet action of 1916, where battleships fired at each other across open water.
The Background
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 had damaged the American battleship fleet, but the American carriers were at sea and survived. In the following months Japan advanced widely across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. In May 1942 the Battle of the Coral Sea, between American and Japanese carrier forces, was the first naval battle in which the ships never sighted each other. It was a tactical success for Japan in ships sunk but a strategic setback, since the Japanese invasion of Port Moresby was halted.
The Japanese commander, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then planned an operation to seize Midway and draw out and destroy the remaining American carriers. The plan was complex, and it split Japanese forces into several groups. The main carrier force was commanded by Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo.
Code-Breaking and Preparation
American naval intelligence had been reading parts of the main Japanese naval code, and by analysing messages concluded that Midway was the target and roughly when the attack would come. This knowledge allowed the Americans to position their carriers, Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown, to the northeast of the atoll. Yorktown had been damaged at Coral Sea and was repaired in remarkably few days at Pearl Harbor. The Americans were commanded at sea by Rear Admirals Frank Jack Fletcher and Raymond Spruance.
The advantage was an informational one, not a numerical one. Japan had more carriers in the area, but the Americans had the airfield at Midway as an additional launch point, and they knew where to look.
The Battle
On the morning of 4 June, Japanese aircraft attacked Midway. Nagumo, receiving reports of American ships, was caught while rearming aircraft, an awkward moment, since weapons and fuel on the decks made the carriers vulnerable. American torpedo planes attacked first and suffered terrible losses without scoring hits. But they drew off the Japanese fighters and, at about the same time, American dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrived over the Japanese fleet at high altitude and found it with few defending fighters at hand. In a short period they hit three Japanese carriers: Akagi, Kaga and Soryu, which were left burning.
The remaining Japanese carrier, Hiryu, launched strikes that disabled Yorktown. Later that day, aircraft from Enterprise found and set Hiryu afire, and she sank early the next morning. Yorktown, under tow, was struck by a Japanese submarine and sank on 7 June, along with the destroyer Hammann. Japan lost four fleet carriers and a cruiser, and the Americans lost one carrier and one destroyer. Casualty totals favoured the Americans, but exact figures vary by source.
What It Changed
The loss of four carriers was a heavy blow, and Japan also lost many experienced aircrew and maintenance personnel, who were slow to replace. Historians often describe Midway as the turning point of the Pacific War, though more cautious writers note that Japan remained powerful for a long time afterwards, and the American advance across the Pacific took years of hard fighting. What Midway did show was that command of the air above a fleet decided who survived. The carrier had developed from the experimental aircraft carrier origins of the First World War into the capital ship of the fleet, and Midway made that change plain.
American industry then built carriers and aircraft in large numbers, which allowed the offensive in the following years. Warship thinking was altered permanently, and the idea of a fleet as a group of ships protecting carriers became standard. A very different struggle, the Atlantic convoy battle, was being fought at the same time over merchant shipping.