The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese Combined Fleet under the command of Isoroku Yamamoto suffered a decisive defeat by two carrier strike groups of the U.S. Pacific Fleet near Midway Atoll, about northwest of Oahu. Yamamoto had intended to capture Midway and lure out and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet, especially the aircraft carriers which had escaped damage at Pearl Harbor.
Before the battle, Japan desired to extend its Pacific defense perimeter, especially after the Doolittle air raid by US carrier based aircraft on Tokyo in April 1942, and to clear the seas for attacks on Midway, Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii. A related Japanese attack on the Aleutian Islands began one day earlier, on 3 June. The Japanese strike force at Midway, known as the Kidō Butai, was commanded by Chuichi Nagumo. Yamamoto's plan for the operation, which depended on precise timing and coordination, was undermined by its wide dispersal of forces, which left the rest of the fleet unable to support the Kidō Butai effectively.
On 4 June, the Japanese began bombing Midway and prepared to wait for the Pacific Fleet to arrive from Pearl Harbor to defend the island. Unknown to Yamamoto, U.S. code breakers had determined the date and location of his planned attack, enabling the Americans to prepare their own ambush; Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, had sent a large force under Frank Jack Fletcher to the Midway area before the Japanese had arrived. Land-based planes from Midway and carrier-based planes from the U.S. fleet surprised and attacked Nagumo's force at the precise time that his carriers were rearming and refueling: the carrier Akagi was immolated by a single direct hit which exploded among the armed and fueled aircraft. All four Japanese fleet carriers present at the battle—, , , and were sunk, as was the heavy cruiser . Japan also lost 3,000 men, including many well-trained and difficult-to-replace pilots. The U.S. lost the carrier and the destroyer , while the carriers and (under the command of Raymond Spruance during the battle) survived the fighting without damage.
The Battle of Midway, along with the Guadalcanal campaign, is widely considered a turning point in the Pacific War. After Midway and the attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's ability to replace its losses in materiel and trained men rapidly became insufficient, while the Americans' massive industrial and training capabilities increased over time. Historian John Keegan called the battle "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare", while historian Craig Symonds called it "one of the most consequential naval engagements in world history, ranking alongside Salamis, Trafalgar, and Tsushima Strait, as both tactically decisive and strategically influential."
Background
After expanding the war in the Pacific to include western colonies, the Japanese Empire quickly attained its initial strategic goals of British Hong Kong, the Philippines, British Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, the last of whose oil resources were particularly important to Japan. Because of this, preliminary planning for the second phase of operations commenced as early as January 1942.
Because of strategic disagreements between the Imperial Army (IJA) and Imperial Navy (IJN), and infighting between the Navy's Imperial General Headquarters and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's Combined Fleet, a follow-up strategy was not formed until April 1942.; ; Yamamoto finally won the bureaucratic struggle with a thinly veiled threat to resign, after which his plan was adopted.; Yamamoto's primary strategic goal was the elimination of America's carrier forces, which he regarded as the principal threat to the overall Pacific campaign. This concern was acutely heightened by the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942, in which 16 United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-25 Mitchell bombers launched from bombed targets in Tokyo and several other Japanese cities. The raid, while militarily insignificant, was a shock to the Japanese and highlighted a gap in the defenses around the Japanese home islands as well as the vulnerability of Japanese territory to American bombers.
This, along with other successful hit-and-run raids by American carriers in the South Pacific, showed that they were still a threat, although seemingly reluctant to be drawn into all-out battle. Yamamoto reasoned that another air attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor would induce all of the American fleet to sail out to fight, including the carriers. However, considering the increased strength of American land-based airpower on the Hawaiian Islands since the 7 December 1941 attack, he judged that it was too risky to attack Pearl Harbor directly.
Instead, Yamamoto selected Midway, a tiny atoll at the extreme northwest end of the Hawaiian Island chain, approximately from Oahu. Midway was outside the effective range of almost all the American aircraft stationed on the main Hawaiian Islands. It was not especially important in the larger scheme of Japan's intentions, but the Japanese felt the Americans would consider Midway a vital outpost of Pearl Harbor and would be compelled to defend it vigorously.; The U.S. did indeed consider Midway vital: following the battle, the establishment of a U.S. submarine base on Naval Air Facility Midway Island allowed submarines operating from Pearl Harbor to refuel and re-provision, extending their radius of operations by . In addition to serving as a seaplane base, Midway's airstrips were a forward staging point for bomber attacks on Wake Island.
Yamamoto's plan
Typical of Japanese naval planning during World War II, Yamamoto's battle plan for taking Midway (named Operation MI) was exceedingly complex.; ; It required the careful coordination of multiple battle groups over hundreds of miles of open sea. His design was also predicated on optimistic intelligence suggesting that and USS Hornet, forming Task Force 16, were the only carriers available to the Pacific Fleet. During the Battle of the Coral Sea one month earlier, had been sunk and suffered so much damage that the Japanese believed she too had been lost. However, following hasty repairs at Pearl Harbor, Yorktown sortied and ultimately played a critical role in the discovery and eventual destruction of the Japanese fleet carriers at Midway. Finally, much of Yamamoto's planning, coinciding with the general feeling among the Japanese leadership at the time, was based on a gross misjudgement of American morale which was believed to be debilitated from the string of Japanese victories in the preceding months.
Yamamoto felt deception would be required to lure the U.S. fleet into a fatally compromised situation., derived from Japanese War History Series (Senshi Sōsho), Volume 43 ('Middowei Kaisen'), p. 118. To this end, he dispersed his forces so that their full extent (particularly his battleships) would be concealed from the Americans prior to battle. Critically, Yamamoto's supporting battleships and cruisers trailed Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's carrier force by several hundred miles. The original plans for the Midway attack are missing, but one school of thought is they were intended to come up and destroy whatever elements of the American fleet might come to Midway's defense once Nagumo's carriers had weakened them sufficiently for a daylight gun battle. This tactic was doctrine in most major navies of the time., derived from Senshi Sōsho, p. 196. Another theory of Yamamoto's intentions says that he distrusted the effectiveness of battleships in general and had no intention to use them in the battle, but dispatched them only for reasons of Navy politics and morale. He had so far left the battleships out of combat, and he sought to appease the battleship faction on the Navy General Staff by himself sailing on the battleship Yamato. name="Drabkin, p. 187
Unknown to Yamamoto, the U.S. had broken parts of the main Japanese naval code (dubbed JN-25 by the Americans), divulging many details of his plan. His emphasis on dispersal prevented his formations from supporting each other. For instance, although Nagumo's carriers were expected to carry out strikes against Midway and bear the brunt of American counterattacks, the only warships in his fleet larger than the screening force of twelve destroyers were two fast battleships, two heavy cruisers, and one light cruiser. By contrast, Yamamoto and Kondo had between them two light carriers, five battleships, four heavy cruisers, and two light cruisers, none of which saw action at Midway.
The light carriers of the trailing forces and Yamamoto's three battleships were unable to keep pace with the carriers of the Kidō Butai (; ) and so could not sail in company with them. The Kidō Butai would sail into range at best speed so as to increase the chance of surprise and would not have ships spread out across the ocean guiding the US Navy toward it. If the other parts of the invasion force needed more defense, the Kidō Butai would make best speed to defend them. Hence the slower ships could not be with the Kidō Butai. The distance between Yamamoto and Kondo's forces and Nagumo's carriers had grave implications during the battle. The invaluable reconnaissance capability of the scout planes carried by the cruisers and carriers, and the additional anti-aircraft capability of the cruisers and the other two battleships of the Kongō-class in the trailing forces, were unavailable to help Nagumo.
Aleutian invasion
To obtain support from the IJA for the Midway operation, the IJN agreed to support their invasion of the United States through the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska, part of the Alaska Territory. The IJA occupied these islands to place the Japanese home islands out of range of U.S. land-based bombers in Alaska. Most Americans feared that the occupied islands would be used as bases for Japanese bombers to attack strategic targets and population centers along the U.S. West Coast.
The Japanese operations in the Aleutians (Operation AL) removed yet more ships that could otherwise have augmented the force striking Midway. Whereas many earlier historical accounts considered the Aleutians operation as a feint to draw American forces away, according to the original Japanese battle plan, AL was intended to be launched simultaneously with the attack on Midway. A one-day delay in the sailing of Nagumo's task force resulted in Operation AL beginning a day before the Midway attack., derived from Senshi Sōsho, pp. 119–121.
Prelude American reinforcements
To do battle with the IJN, expected to muster four or five carriers, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, needed every available flight deck. He already had Vice Admiral William Halsey's two-carrier (Enterprise and Hornet) task force at hand, though Halsey was stricken with shingles and had to be replaced by Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, Halsey's escort commander.; Nimitz also hurriedly recalled Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's task force, including the carrier Yorktown, from the South West Pacific Area.
Despite estimates that Yorktown, damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea, would require several months of repairs at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, her elevators were intact and her flight deck largely so. The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard worked around the clock, and in 72 hours she was restored to a battle-ready state,; judged good enough for two or three weeks of operations, as Nimitz required. Her flight deck was patched, and whole sections of internal frames were cut out and replaced. Repairs continued even as she sortied, with work crews from the repair ship , herself damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier, still aboard.;