The Battle of Midway is a famous battle in naval history and the largest strategic offensive organized by the Japanese Navy in World War II. In this battle, the Japanese navy, which had absolute superiority, suffered heavy losses, while the U.S. navy won more victories with fewer victories, and the Battle of Midway became an important turning point in the Pacific War.
After a fierce battle, sea control changed hands
Midway is located in the middle of the Pacific route between Asia and North America, hence its name, and is about 2,800 nautical miles away from San Francisco in the United States and Yokohama in Japan, and about 1,100 nautical miles away from Pearl Harbor, the base camp of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. Pacific Fleet suffered heavy losses. At the time of crisis, Chester Nimitz became the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, organized a fleet of only four aircraft carriers and a number of escort ships, and attacked the Japanese army on the islands of the Central Pacific in 1942, and the bombing of Tokyo shook the Japanese government and the public. In order to retaliate against the U.S. counterattack, gain a forward base in the Pacific Ocean and annihilate the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet, the Japanese Navy's command approved the Midway operation plan called "Operation Rice," that is, to first feint the Aleutian Islands to disperse the forces of the U.S. aircraft carrier fleet, and then seize Midway.
On June 3, 1942, the Japanese fleet attacked the Dutch port in the Aleutian Islands in an attempt to induce the American army to divide its forces to help, but Nimitz, who had already learned of the Japanese army's battle plan through code breaking, was not fooled. In the early morning of 5 July, the aircraft carrier squadron led by Vice Admiral Nagumo Tadaichi, the main force of the Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet, dispatched reconnaissance planes and air combat alert planes northwest of Midway Island, and at the same time ordered the four aircraft carriers "Kaga," "Akagi," "Soryu," and "Flying Dragon," totaling 108 carrier-based planes, including 36 dive bombers, 36 horizontal bombers, and 36 "Zero" fighters, to attack Midway Island. Fifty minutes later, when Nagumo's troops were preparing to launch a second wave of attacks on Midway, they received a report from a reconnaissance plane that they had "spotted 10 enemy ships," so they decided to use the planes of the second wave of attacks to raid US surface ships. When the first plane to complete the torpedo refitting was about to take off, the aircraft carriers "Kaga", "Akagi", and "Soryu" were suddenly attacked by US forces and caught fire one after another. The "Flying Dragon" was not attacked because it was a little far away, and during the battle, it sank the US aircraft carrier "Yorktown," and was later bombed and caught fire by US planes. In the early morning of the next day, the "Flying Dragon" and "Akagi" were hopeless to save and were sunk by Japanese destroyers.
In the end, all four of the Japanese main aircraft carriers were sunk, and 332 aircraft were lost; 1 US aircraft carrier was sunk, 147 aircraft were lost. The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the Pacific War, and the initiative on the battlefield shifted from Japan to the United States.
The Japanese army was defeated by ideological rigidity and mistakes in battle
First, the strategic thinking of the "giant ship and artillery doctrine" is deeply rooted. The victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 at the Battle of Matsuma greatly influenced the Japanese Navy, which established the strategic idea of the "Giant Ship and Artillery Doctrine", and regarded the general decisive battle of the main fleet as the basic method of defeating the other side and gaining sea supremacy. After that, Japan attached great importance to the construction of large warships, first put forward the goal of the "88th Fleet" (a fleet with 8 battleships and 8 armored cruisers as the main force), and then proposed at the 1930 London Naval Disarmament Conference that the ratio of Japan's capital ships to Britain and the United States should be 7:10, and even withdrew from the Disarmament Conference in 1935 in order to develop capital ships. In 1937, Japan decided to build the "Yamato" and "Musashi" giant capital ships at a cost of 150 billion yen each (equivalent to the cost of building 1,000 aircraft), which far exceeded the displacement of the largest British and American battleships at the time.
However, with the development of naval theory and practice after World War I, the role of aircraft carriers in naval operations has become increasingly prominent. Japan possessed its first aircraft carrier, the "Hosho," in 1922, and it showed the might of the aircraft carrier in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but there is a view within the Japanese Navy that although the US military discovered earlier that the main combat force had been transferred from battleships to air forces, it was still beaten in the Pearl Harbor incident. As a result, Japan reveled in the unexpected results and still used battleships as the main force. Before the Battle of Midway, although there were different proposals within the Japanese Navy on the strategy and tactics of fighting against the United States, the top brass of the Japanese Navy headed by Combined Fleet Commander Isoroku Yamamoto always regarded the artillery of the giant ships and the decisive battle of the fleet as a magic weapon for victory.
For this reason, in the Battle of Midway, the aircraft carrier group led by Nagumo Tadaichi was deployed in the front, while the "Yamato" and other seven capital ships were incorporated into the main fleet and followed up at a distance of 300 nautical miles from the aircraft carrier group. The strategic design flaws of the aircraft carrier in front and the main fleet in the rear are obvious. First, because the "Yamato" and others were incorporated into the main fleet, the number of reconnaissance planes in the aircraft carrier formation was insufficient, and the reconnaissance planes dispatched by the Nagumo force northwest of Midway Island were only enough to conduct reconnaissance on one floor, and they were unable to discover the location of the US aircraft carriers in a timely manner. Second, the aircraft carrier formation could not be covered by the artillery fire of the battleships and was exposed to US attacks.
Second, the Japanese Navy's command and tactics made mistakes in battle. First, the method of using aviation forces is inappropriate. Although the Japanese divided the planes that attacked Midway into two waves, the planes of each wave were drawn from each aircraft carrier in proportion, resulting in the take-off and recovery of the planes of the four aircraft carriers being synchronized, that is, they may lose their combat effectiveness at the same time and cannot effectively respond to the surprise attack. Second, it failed to seize the fighter plane in time. After discovering one US aircraft carrier, the Japanese did not take the lead in launching an attack when some of the attack teams were ready, but waited for the first wave of attack planes to take back the air attack on Midway Island, and then took off for a surprise attack after ensuring that there were enough fighters to cover them and make a complete attack posture, resulting in a delay in the fighters.
Technical factors that should not be overlooked
First, Japan lost in the intelligence war. The Japanese side did not pay enough attention to intelligence and did not have enough reconnaissance. At the beginning of 1942, the Japanese army frequently used radio communication in the Pacific theater, and about 90% of the coded telegrams sent by the Combined Fleet were intercepted by US intelligence officers. Because of the haste of the work, the Japanese Navy did not change the cipher regularly as required. On the Allied side, Nimitz strengthened its intelligence agency after the Pearl Harbor attack and set up an operational intelligence team dedicated to intercepting, deciphering, and collating Japanese naval ciphers. At the same time, the US and Australian naval intelligence departments have also strengthened cooperation. Prior to the battle, the Australian Naval Intelligence Center provided a large amount of accurate and valuable information, and the U.S. Naval Intelligence team deciphered the Japanese Navy's "JN-25 code", so that the U.S. military was informed of the Japanese plan of action in advance. In view of the huge disparity in the strength of the Japanese and US navies, accurate intelligence enabled the US military to formulate a targeted combat plan against Japan and gain the operational initiative.
Second, Japan is lagging behind in key technologies such as radar. Although the nocturnal periscope of the Japanese Navy at that time had certain advantages, radar technology lagged behind. The radar signal can penetrate the dense fog and locate the enemy plane, and it has a significant advantage over the reconnaissance plane in early warning. In the Battle of Midway, the Japanese Navy failed to use radar and could only rely on reconnaissance aircraft. However, due to aircraft malfunction and cloud cover, the Japanese reconnaissance plane failed to discover the US fleet in time, while the US reconnaissance plane discovered the Japanese fleet two hours earlier than the Japanese side and gained the first opportunity on the battlefield.
The backwardness of the Japanese Navy's military thinking, the failure of command and tactics in the face of battle, and technical reasons combined to lead to the defeat of the Battle of Midway. After that, Japan stopped the ongoing construction of large battleships, urgently rebuilt some of the battleship hulls as aircraft carriers, and at the same time stepped up the development of radar technology. Six months after the end of the naval battle, radar technology was applied to its naval equipment. However, the large number of elite pilots lost by Japan in the Battle of Midway could not be compensated for in the short term. Due to the heavy losses in this operation, the Japanese army was forced to stop its all-out offensive strategically and go on the defensive, which had a profound impact on the entire situation of the Pacific War.