Five Minutes Over Midway

Contents

Victory disease

The Philippines fell. Wake Island fell. Guam fell. Singapore surrendered 80,000 troops to a force that had come down the Malay Peninsula largely on bicycles. Japan's carriers ran from the Indian Ocean to the central Pacific almost without serious opposition, and Japanese planners began to speak of a "victory disease": confidence so complete it was hardening into carelessness.

That overconfidence had a plan by May 1942. Operation MI would seize Midway Atoll, a tiny American-held island about 1,300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. Taking it would remove a forward air base and listening post. More important, it would force the last American carriers into a decisive battle that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto expected to be quick and fatal.

With those carriers gone, Japan could hold its Pacific perimeter and negotiate from strength.

Accumulated inference

Station Hypo was not a glamorous place. Rochefort's linguists, mathematicians and communications analysts never read every word of JN-25. By spring they read enough to rebuild the outline of Japanese intentions even where gaps remained.

There was no single moment of revelation. There were route indicators, logistics messages and repeated references to AF. The water-shortage trick confirmed the target, and the analysis came with an estimated date and the order of battle for Nagumo's carriers.

Washington circulated more cautious assessments. Nimitz chose to trust Rochefort. He would place his carriers northwest of Midway, outside Japanese search range, and hit Nagumo while the enemy was busy with the island. The surprise Yamamoto counted on would belong to the Americans.

Five minutes

The decisive hits on the first three carriers came in about five minutes, though the full sequence of attacks that morning ran longer. The Americans looked down on four carriers with disordered decks and fighter cover low and scattered.

Lt. Richard Best of VB-6 attacked Akagi after most of his squadron had gone for Kaga. Historical accounts credit him with a hit on the flight deck that exploded among armed and fueled aircraft near the center elevator. With ordnance and fuel piled below decks, one bomb in the right place started fires damage control could not stop.

Hit counts differ between American and Japanese sources. The figures most often cited are four on Kaga, two on Akagi and three on Soryu.

The turning point

Japan never again mounted a strategic offensive with carriers at its center. Within months the initiative passed to the United States and never returned. The island campaigns that brought bombers within range of Japan were built on Midway's outcome.

The outcome looked inevitable only in retrospect.

The American attack was poorly coordinated and partly lost. It won through a few minutes of directed effort in conditions created by the chaos before it. Behind those minutes were the codebreakers, the dry dock, years of carrier doctrine and training, and men like Waldron's crews who flew in knowing the odds.