Midway, Battle of (1942), a decisive naval battle of
World War II.Disappointed with the results of his attack on the U.S. Pacific fleet at
Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japan's combined fleet, planned to capture Midway, a defended American atoll 1,100 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. He hoped to lure the U.S. Pacific fleet into battle and destroy it. Such a success could have opened the prospect of invading
Hawai'i and perhaps, he hoped, ending the war. The preliminary air attack on Midway was scheduled for 4 June 1942 and the invasion on 6 June. Warned of the forthcoming attack by U.S. cryptanalysts who had penetrated the Japanese Navy's communications, Admiral Chester
Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet, strengthened Midway and quietly stationed three aircraft carriers nearby.
The Japanese air attack on Midway's air base on 4 June devastated most of the base's aircraft. But U.S. planes, attacking from nearby carriers, destroyed all four of the Japanese aircraft carriers, with all their airplanes and many of their pilots. Japan's losses in carriers and pilots proved irreplaceable; the American losses did not. Having saved Midway, and perhaps Hawai'i, from invasion, the United States took advantage of the Japanese losses to go on the offensive in the South Pacific—an offensive that ended with Japan's surrender in August 1945. The Battle of Midway was a crucial turning point in the Pacific war.
Bibliography
John B. Lundstrom , The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941–June 1942, 1976.
Gordon W. Prange,, Donald M. Goldstein,, and and Katherine V. Dillon , Miracle at Midway, 1982.
Frank Uhlig Jr.