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Americans also got lucky that George Best and Wade McClusky were able to hit the carriers knowning that most attempts in the battle so far have utterly failed.

jabl 5y ago
It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits were enough to doom the ships. Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was the cause of many WWII carriers burning).
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty good and shows all the luck involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlkeZUj_gD_ACWGK6geCl-LMZx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlk...
  - ghaff 5y ago
    You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack of essentially any success early on was a bit unlucky. But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a case of everything going right at a couple points for the US. Probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer to Japan than Hawaii was.
  - graycat 5y ago
    As I studied Midway, the conclusion I came to was that the Japanese made a big mistake: They had two attacks for two quite different goals going at once, and the two conflicted and were one too many. The two attacks were (1) attacking the ground installations on Midway island and (2) defending against the US aircraft carriers. For (1), the main goal of the whole operation was to take Midway island, but early in that operation the goal was to destroy the ability of US planes on Midway to attack the Japanese ships. The Japanese kept worrying about attacks on their ships from US planes on Midway. For (2) the Japanese had tried to determine where the US carriers were but the effort failed, and, net, the Japanese didn't know where the US carriers were. The Japanese considered the possibility that the US carriers really were about ready to find and attack the Japanese ships. Then, net, handling both (1) and (2) was too much and led to (A) having the Japanese airplanes busy with (1) and unable to respond to (2) and (B) giving too little attention to (2) until too late. In particular, the Japanese had to wait, wait too long, wait on their airplanes returning from their attack on Midway and have their decks full of those returning airplanes. Also they had to wait, wait too long, wait to rearm their planes with torpedoes for attacking US ships instead of bombs for attacking Midway ground targets. Basically, either (1) for the island or (2) for the US ships was a long term effort, from getting ready, launching the planes, managing their fighter cover for their ships, recovering the planes, getting the planes below decks, refueled, rearmed, and ready for launching again. The Japanese were able to do well at all that for either (1) or (2) but not for both in the time available. The Japanese underestimated the challenge and threat of trying to do both at essentially the same time.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      Great post. And one of the things that sometimes is overlooked and might be a bit overshadowed in your post was the adherence to doctrine that Japanese commanders had - that’s why the planes were sitting on the carriers in the first place.
- onepointsixC 5y ago
  Midway had it's fortunate moments, but IJN didn't have much of a chance from the get go due to the absurd USN ship production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M
  - ansible 5y ago
    Yes. By the end of the war, the USA had more carriers than then entire IJN surface fleet. Never mind all the cruisers, destroyers and such. And the fuel to run them. The Japanese had absolutely no chance to win the war.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      I don’t think it was ever their goal to straight up fight the US. They just wanted the US standing navy ruined so that they could go about their business in the Pacific. I don’t think they counted on a few early problematic outcomes, and the US will to enter a fight over the loss of a few soldiers at Pearl Harbor.
      - jcranmer 5y ago
        Their naval plans specifically aimed for effectively a second Battle of Tsushima. Basically, harass the American strike force from afar to whittle them down as they steam towards the Home Islands in a decisive, epic showdown, and once the Americans lose that engagement and see their entire fleet sunk, they give up and go home. (The Kantai Kessen plan). The entire war, the Japanese were still waiting for the big decisive battle, no matter if they were winning or losing the various engagements, but they never got the big battle they wanted. Eventually, they did try to force it at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, although that attempt did not turn out well for them.
        hef19898 5y ago
        I sometimes get the impression that the last time "decisive" battles worked was during the Napoleonic Wars. And even then the Russian campaign played as much a role as did Waterloo. After that everybody trying to force decisive battles got wars of attrition wich were ultimately lost.
- ansible 5y ago
  > ... with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, ... The conventional narrative of the battle is that the torpedo bombers (coming in low as part of their standard attack pattern), drew off the IJN figher cover, using up their fuel and ammo. When the dive bombers attacked the IJN fleet, the figher cover wasn't in a position to stop them effectively. The price paid for this "distraction" (which wasn't planned as such) was steep, the losses among the torpedo bomber squadrons was severe.
  - jabl 5y ago
    Absolutely. Also the torpedo squadrons arriving piecemeal due to mishaps in navigation and the USN lack of capability to quickly launch a coordinated strike, meant that the IJN carriers were occupied with launching/recovering/refueling/rearming fighters, and weren't able to launch their own strikes. So when the dive bombers attacked, the IJN strike aircraft were waiting fully loaded and fueled in the hangars, with devastating results.
- ufmace 5y ago
  I've also read that while the IJN was quite good at carrier aviation, their lack of long-term experience fighting naval battles and focus on the offensive led to a severe deficit in damage control and efforts to reduce e.g. the risk and severity of fires from being hit, both in operation and at the design stage.
  - jabl 5y ago
    That's roughly my understanding, with the exception that AFAIK several of the IJN carriers and crew had been involved in operations in China during the invasion there, so they had combat experience (though AFAIK no attacks against the carriers occurred there). As for fuel fires, yes, several IJN carriers were essentially lost due to fuel fires or explosions after suffering damage that otherwise would have been perfectly survivable. Perhaps most spectacularly in the case of Taiho, were inept damage control essentially turned the entire ship into a giant fuel air bomb, resulting in a spark somewhere setting of a massive explosion with catastrophic loss of life (and the end of the ship). The USN lost Lexington that way, but crucially, they learned from this incident and instituted a system where they purged the aviation fuel lines with CO2 (cooled exhaust gases, presumably?). Also IJN carriers had dedicated damage control teams, and a very strict command hierarchy. If you weren't on such a team, you were supposed to do your assigned duty and not do anything about the ship burning or flooding. In the USN apparently everybody nearby was supposed to help with damage control efforts. IJN had also saved on money and used iron piping for the fire suppression system, as steel was expensive or in limited supply in Japan. This turned out to not be such a good idea when the shock from a nearby bomb blast shattered the pipes. Also said piping was not zoned to nearly the same extent as on US carriers. Not a good combination, as you can imagine.
    - tragomaskhalos 5y ago
      For the disastrous consequences of inept damage control, it's difficult to top the loss of the Shinano.
rjsw 5y ago
I read a suggestion recently that there was a higher probability of sinking IJN carriers during the Indian Ocean raid [1] than at Midway. Any attacks on them would have been done by radar equipped aircraft at night with no Zeros flying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  This was a very good read. So many communication problems. Ships or aircraft were spotted or encrypted messages were deciphered - but information was not relayed for various reasons.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
It wasn't as lucky as it seems. The dive bombers were able to dive straight down, almost vertically, with no risk of being shot down by the enemy Zero fighters (since they were drawn away by a previous attack). It's more lucky that they didn't attack the same targets, than that they hit their targets. Also, not directly relevant, but I'll plug this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel=Montemayor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel=... it's great.
- jabl 5y ago
  I agree, that video series is very good. (And, among its sources it lists the Shattered Sword book recommended elsewhere in this thread)
avereveard 5y ago
you seem to be confusing luck with experience and skill. what was luck was that the scouting plane flying above tf-16 didn't spot them, and even there it's debatable since the task forces where there intentionally due to an overcast weather forecast and that overcast weather was what allowed them to remain hidden. I may concede that yorktown being bombed twice was luck, or at least unlucky for the Japanese, but even then damage party skill played an important factor in the event.

jabl 5y ago

It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits were enough to doom the ships. Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was the cause of many WWII carriers burning).

SkyMarshal 5y ago
The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty good and shows all the luck involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlkeZUj_gD_ACWGK6geCl-LMZx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlk...
- ghaff 5y ago
  You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack of essentially any success early on was a bit unlucky. But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a case of everything going right at a couple points for the US. Probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer to Japan than Hawaii was.
- graycat 5y ago
  As I studied Midway, the conclusion I came to was that the Japanese made a big mistake: They had two attacks for two quite different goals going at once, and the two conflicted and were one too many. The two attacks were (1) attacking the ground installations on Midway island and (2) defending against the US aircraft carriers. For (1), the main goal of the whole operation was to take Midway island, but early in that operation the goal was to destroy the ability of US planes on Midway to attack the Japanese ships. The Japanese kept worrying about attacks on their ships from US planes on Midway. For (2) the Japanese had tried to determine where the US carriers were but the effort failed, and, net, the Japanese didn't know where the US carriers were. The Japanese considered the possibility that the US carriers really were about ready to find and attack the Japanese ships. Then, net, handling both (1) and (2) was too much and led to (A) having the Japanese airplanes busy with (1) and unable to respond to (2) and (B) giving too little attention to (2) until too late. In particular, the Japanese had to wait, wait too long, wait on their airplanes returning from their attack on Midway and have their decks full of those returning airplanes. Also they had to wait, wait too long, wait to rearm their planes with torpedoes for attacking US ships instead of bombs for attacking Midway ground targets. Basically, either (1) for the island or (2) for the US ships was a long term effort, from getting ready, launching the planes, managing their fighter cover for their ships, recovering the planes, getting the planes below decks, refueled, rearmed, and ready for launching again. The Japanese were able to do well at all that for either (1) or (2) but not for both in the time available. The Japanese underestimated the challenge and threat of trying to do both at essentially the same time.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Great post. And one of the things that sometimes is overlooked and might be a bit overshadowed in your post was the adherence to doctrine that Japanese commanders had - that’s why the planes were sitting on the carriers in the first place.
onepointsixC 5y ago
Midway had it's fortunate moments, but IJN didn't have much of a chance from the get go due to the absurd USN ship production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M
- ansible 5y ago
  Yes. By the end of the war, the USA had more carriers than then entire IJN surface fleet. Never mind all the cruisers, destroyers and such. And the fuel to run them. The Japanese had absolutely no chance to win the war.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I don’t think it was ever their goal to straight up fight the US. They just wanted the US standing navy ruined so that they could go about their business in the Pacific. I don’t think they counted on a few early problematic outcomes, and the US will to enter a fight over the loss of a few soldiers at Pearl Harbor.
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      Their naval plans specifically aimed for effectively a second Battle of Tsushima. Basically, harass the American strike force from afar to whittle them down as they steam towards the Home Islands in a decisive, epic showdown, and once the Americans lose that engagement and see their entire fleet sunk, they give up and go home. (The Kantai Kessen plan). The entire war, the Japanese were still waiting for the big decisive battle, no matter if they were winning or losing the various engagements, but they never got the big battle they wanted. Eventually, they did try to force it at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, although that attempt did not turn out well for them.
      - hef19898 5y ago
        I sometimes get the impression that the last time "decisive" battles worked was during the Napoleonic Wars. And even then the Russian campaign played as much a role as did Waterloo. After that everybody trying to force decisive battles got wars of attrition wich were ultimately lost.
ansible 5y ago
> ... with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, ... The conventional narrative of the battle is that the torpedo bombers (coming in low as part of their standard attack pattern), drew off the IJN figher cover, using up their fuel and ammo. When the dive bombers attacked the IJN fleet, the figher cover wasn't in a position to stop them effectively. The price paid for this "distraction" (which wasn't planned as such) was steep, the losses among the torpedo bomber squadrons was severe.
- jabl 5y ago
  Absolutely. Also the torpedo squadrons arriving piecemeal due to mishaps in navigation and the USN lack of capability to quickly launch a coordinated strike, meant that the IJN carriers were occupied with launching/recovering/refueling/rearming fighters, and weren't able to launch their own strikes. So when the dive bombers attacked, the IJN strike aircraft were waiting fully loaded and fueled in the hangars, with devastating results.
ufmace 5y ago
I've also read that while the IJN was quite good at carrier aviation, their lack of long-term experience fighting naval battles and focus on the offensive led to a severe deficit in damage control and efforts to reduce e.g. the risk and severity of fires from being hit, both in operation and at the design stage.
- jabl 5y ago
  That's roughly my understanding, with the exception that AFAIK several of the IJN carriers and crew had been involved in operations in China during the invasion there, so they had combat experience (though AFAIK no attacks against the carriers occurred there). As for fuel fires, yes, several IJN carriers were essentially lost due to fuel fires or explosions after suffering damage that otherwise would have been perfectly survivable. Perhaps most spectacularly in the case of Taiho, were inept damage control essentially turned the entire ship into a giant fuel air bomb, resulting in a spark somewhere setting of a massive explosion with catastrophic loss of life (and the end of the ship). The USN lost Lexington that way, but crucially, they learned from this incident and instituted a system where they purged the aviation fuel lines with CO2 (cooled exhaust gases, presumably?). Also IJN carriers had dedicated damage control teams, and a very strict command hierarchy. If you weren't on such a team, you were supposed to do your assigned duty and not do anything about the ship burning or flooding. In the USN apparently everybody nearby was supposed to help with damage control efforts. IJN had also saved on money and used iron piping for the fire suppression system, as steel was expensive or in limited supply in Japan. This turned out to not be such a good idea when the shock from a nearby bomb blast shattered the pipes. Also said piping was not zoned to nearly the same extent as on US carriers. Not a good combination, as you can imagine.
  - tragomaskhalos 5y ago
    For the disastrous consequences of inept damage control, it's difficult to top the loss of the Shinano.

rjsw 5y ago

I read a suggestion recently that there was a higher probability of sinking IJN carriers during the Indian Ocean raid [1] than at Midway. Any attacks on them would have been done by radar equipped aircraft at night with no Zeros flying. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid

Gravityloss 5y ago
This was a very good read. So many communication problems. Ships or aircraft were spotted or encrypted messages were deciphered - but information was not relayed for various reasons.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

It wasn't as lucky as it seems. The dive bombers were able to dive straight down, almost vertically, with no risk of being shot down by the enemy Zero fighters (since they were drawn away by a previous attack). It's more lucky that they didn't attack the same targets, than that they hit their targets. Also, not directly relevant, but I'll plug this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel=Montemayor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel=... it's great.

jabl 5y ago
I agree, that video series is very good. (And, among its sources it lists the Shattered Sword book recommended elsewhere in this thread)

avereveard 5y ago

you seem to be confusing luck with experience and skill. what was luck was that the scouting plane flying above tf-16 didn't spot them, and even there it's debatable since the task forces where there intentionally due to an overcast weather forecast and that overcast weather was what allowed them to remain hidden. I may concede that yorktown being bombed twice was luck, or at least unlucky for the Japanese, but even then damage party skill played an important factor in the event.