"Your enemy has three courses of action open to him, and he usually chooses the fourth."- Helmuth von Moltke. Possibly the worst aspect of the Japanese planning was their unguarded optimism: they believed they'd win, to the point of overlooking caution.
The primary flaw of Yamamoto's plan was that its success was dependent on Nimitz, Fletcher and Spruance doing exactly what Yamamoto expected them to do.
To be fair the Japanese went in with the Knowledge that to win the War, they HAD to win. It was less optimistism and more a knowledge they couldn't afford to lose.
I recommend Montemayor's video on "The Battle of Midway, told from the Japanese perspective". Its a detailed but easy to understand video. You are also put in the admirals seat, which makes a immersive experience
The Japanese reaction to the loss at Midway was telling. Everyone who was there was ordered to remain silent. They were also transfered to out of they way postings. Family members of the crews of the lost carriers were not told what had happened to their husbands/ brothers/ sons and were told not to ask any more questions.
I read that one way the Japanese were able to tell that Japan was losing the war was because even though the newspapers reported every battle against the Americans as an overwhelming victory, each new victory took place closer and closer to the Japanese home islands. Anyone in Japan with half a brain had to wonder why the Americans were getting closer after each defeat they suffered.
What shocked the Japanese to their core was the fact that their doctrine failed them - they acted by the book - but the book was wrong. A pity because the Japanese pilots who played the US in the war games the night before the battle, got everything right - even down to where the American carriers were located - at Point Luck.
You missed the Big One. The IJN didn't tell Tojo about it -- until the IJA confronted the IJN about newspapers provided by the German Ambassador. A whole month had gone by!
The Japanese themselves said that the primary cause was "victory disease". They had become used to winning and couldn't believe that they could lose. Let's not forget the incredible job done by Naval intelligence.
Agree...they rolled over inferior armed forces throughout the Pacific countries and used Banzai charges, like the Confederate "Rebel Yell", on poorly trained and lead troops. They had everything planned out for at least a year in advance. They got way too COCKY before the game was even at halftime
The government by assassination has been going on for a while. Like taking the most patriotic people and putting them in a room, and then repeatedly stabbing the least patriotic of them without consequence. These guys could risk assassination by rival factions if they weren't yes-men.
@King Royal Yes and no. Remember, Midway was intended to be a trap for the US Navy. The Japanese themselves recognized that Midway was not critical to them. It was just to lure for the "great sea battle to destroy the American navy.
I've read many books and seen many documentaries about this battle and these were the key factors 1. The US knew they were coming including critical details of when and where from 2. The IJN suspected the US might know an attack was coming but had no idea their code was 80% broken by US intelligence and had already committed a giant fleet 3. The multiple failed attacks first by the land based aircraft and first few waves of carrier based aircraft were continual and overlapping, preventing Nagumo from launching any kind of strike 4. The last torpedo plane attack by the US drew the IJN CAP away and to a low altitude and with impeccable timing and good intuition by McClusky 50 dive bombers approached from two directions from much too high for the zeroes to have time to get after them. 5. Poor fire control systems on Japanese carriers coupled with the fact that there were bombs strewn across the hangar decks and fully fueled Japanese planes when those dive bombers struck. In summary, the US had the element of surprise, not the Japanese and taking the incessant although ineffective attacks especially with extra land based aircraft they kept the IJN carrier force on their heels until they could deliver a mortal blow to enemy. Despite having superior quality in aircraft and pilot expertise over the US, those 5 minutes basically sealed the outcome.
Mostly agree, except - there's been several folks who have pointed out that the Zero's speed and rate of climb means that the Japanese fighters could have easily reached the dive bombers anyway.... if they'd known they were coming, except for the other inconvenient fact: the Zeroes could have responded but most of them had already blown all their ammo shooting down the torpedo bombers. It's more the fact that all the low altitude attacks had distracted all attention away from searching for high altitude attack formations, so no-one noticed the incoming attack, than any inability of the Zero to get back up there if anyone had seen the dive bombers approaching.
@Joseph Russo. Probably item 1 (which is linked to item 2) are the most telling of the outcome in the list. Even then, as you write, "[were it not for] those five minutes".
To me the biggest failure in books and documentries is the lack of acknowledgement for the role of the the island of Midway. The island, IMO, should be called the "4th" US carrier. It provided soooo many resources critical to the battle. The island's defenses launched army and naval air attacks via B-17's and B-26's, fighters, and the most critical aircraft the PBY Catalina. The Cat's were used to scout enemy locations and provide intelligence over a 1200 mile range. These island attacks held Nagumo's hands when it came to responding and really prevented him from being able to respond effectively. The constant attacks from the islands forces essentially held the IJN's aircraft in the hangers and constantly delayed the need to launch aircraft to protect their carriers.
But you're missing the key thing that made all of this possible. Code talkers. US had 30 second response time during communication, when Japanese had 20 minutes.
"An argument without a counter-argument appears usually very impressive and convincing, yet ultimately can be quiet misleading" - in today's world this is a critically important yet so often neglected :( great video as usual!
Yep. I too thought that was a very strong finish for a MHV video. They are always worth watching, but I feel this one has many implications beyond the battle of midway and historical analysis. It seemed as much a video about how to lead a good debate as much as it was a video about an actual battle. I approve.
I am not sure though, the way how people keep arguing about rather earth is flat without providing proper counter-argument seems to be the trend those day
There are fighting admirels and then their are all the rest. (Meaning great naval leaders are as rare as great heavyweight boxers. We can go generations between the greats.) Yamamoto and Bill Halsey were ambitious but deeply flawed naval leaders. Both sought their glory in WWII. The American side was wise enough to, at that critical moment, see that Bill Halsey was no where near the battle. He was the ranking admirel, but no matter. The more rigid Japanese had Yamamoto in Command. But, he was there for glory and not to do his job as best he could. The Japanese have a tradition for dispatching enemies with archaic weapons. At Midway US flyers we're fished from the waters by submarines and the pilots would be ritually beheaded on the deck of the sub. Yamamoto endangered the operation by a similar behavior. Yamamoto understood the value of the carrier, but at Midway the plan was that the Japanese carriers only "pin" the US fleet, distract them as Yamomoto (who was with a separate group of slower, obsolete battleships.) moved in and performed a ritual "beheading" of the US fleet with his battleships. He convinced himself that the US was badly overmatched and he could pursue personal glory at the expense of assuring victory as a first priority. He kept the only Japanese radar with him and the battleships, so the Japanese carriers did not have the advantage of knowing when their enemy approached. And Yamamoto could not warn the carriers by radio without revealing his location to the Americans. Yamamoto made a mess of it and assured Japan's defeat by his grasping for personal glory.
Sorry, but I find TIK often asserting too much based on his sources which also sometimes seem to be picked one-sided according to his biases. I personally don't like that, so I don't watch him anymore and wouldn't recommend his channel. But opinions may vary and certainly not all he is saying or presenting is wrong or bad.
@@zogzog1063 she may have made it into port, and if so, probably could have been present for Guadalcanal. Imagine how differently the naval actions there could have played out with an extra carrier
@@archiveacc3248 if it was just Coral sea damage. It’s likely she would have been ready in time for Santa Cruz. But with this damage. Even if Nimitz had every shipwright and builder at puget sound working around the clock. While preparing an Air Group at the same time. It will be cutting it close.
@@archiveacc3248 Yorktown, had she not been ambushed by I-168, would have needed months of repairs before she would have been operational again, as eating two torpedoes is something any capital ship will need yard time for. If she had only had bomb hits, she would have been repairable at Pearl, but torpedo damage requires a drydock and facilities that were only available at San Diego to fix. It wasn't just the holes in her that had to be fixed, it was the shock damage around the holes. They were going to have to rebuild part of Yorktown's hull before she could see service again. So a month for transit and 6 months of repairs, then a couple weeks back to the fight. She would have missed Guadalcanal, just as Saratoga did.
Actually, the Yorktown was finally sunk by American torpedoes. The attack by the I168 stopped the recovery efforts and sank a destroyer that was providing power to the DC crews.
American naval intelligence & one of the luckiest events in military history. The American dive bombers getting lost & then suddenly finding the Japanese carriers at their most vulnerable moment.
tyro apache - Yup, the old “follow the silly Japanese destroyer back to the main IJN battle fleet” trick... but they weren't lost, they always knew where they were, they just didn't know the exact position of the enemy yet. McClusky was tasked to search for the enemy, and that's what he did... and successfully I might add.
Chad Gautier The luck part was them getting lost in the first place. The then they got even more lucky finding the Japanese fleet at a moment when they're most vulnerable.
Not to mention the tactical victory, but strategic loss for Japan in the Coral sea. The two extra carriers would probably have a huge impact on the battle
Ignace Jespers The battle of coral sea, I think really didn't have as huge an impact. The Japanese still had a superior naval task force for the battle. And despite this video pointing out how minimal the number of aircraft between each naval force was. One needs to remember, at that point in the war, the Japanese navy had superior fighters (Zero) & pilots, who were better trained & far more experienced. If the dive bombers don't show up when they do. The strike being launched against the American carriers, would've obliterated them.
The Japanese violated the first principle of combat, and paid the price. Always base your plans on what the enemy CAN do, and not on what you EXPECT them to do.
Yamamoto made another big mistake (much greater than Nagumo's ones): on Yamato he was totally aware that the surprise was gone (yamato's big antennas perfectly received the outstanding growth of radio traffic from and to midway base) and kept radio silence thinking that also the shorter akagi's antennas had received the messages. Not at all. So he preferred surprise (that was clearly gone) than efficiency. This was a capital mistake.
@TheWingsofprey probably Yamamoto wasn't completely conscious on this situation. The fact is that nobody advised Nagumo about the outstanding growth of American radio messaging to and from Midway. There was lack of communication between the 2 admirals and high retention of radio silence.
I was surprised that it wasn’t mentioned that the Yorktown was actually hit twice by strike groups before it was sunk, leading Nagumo to believe that there was only one US carrier remaining before essentially having his men take a break, which may not have been the decisive factor, but it deserves to be mentioned. One of the real miracles of the battle was simply the fact that a heavily damaged Yorktown was able to be put back to sea so quickly. The fact that it was already badly damaged at the start of the battle, and was then able to shrug off the first strike is amazing, the repair crews deserve a lot of credit, the second strike assumed it was another carrier simply because the crews had repaired her so well that there was little evidence of the first attack.
I have studied this subject so much. One thing I find so surprising(hindsight is always 20/20) was how afterwards, the Japanese were not more suspicious that their codes had been broken. The fact that Midway itself had so much more action as observed by subs, and that the US carriers were already there and waiting should have tipped the IJN that the US knew they were coming. I read some leaders did suspect that-and some small changes were made to codes-but there was not a complete change in what they used
Well, one of the Japanese scout planes had problems being launched, by the time they had better info, it was already too late for a change of plans....
The perception of the battle as a miracle has a good deal to do with the echoes of the time passing down through cultural osmosis. Americans felt like they were on the back foot after the sudden war and then the Japanese conquests of SE Asia. That America possessed close parity in strength at the time in an objective sense contrasts with Americans anxious about a war suddenly dropped on their doorstep. The surprise of the victory has a lot to do with it serving as good news after months of bad to middling news - even strategic victories like Coral Sea came with a bloody price, and are hard to sell to a concerned public. But Midway was such an overwhelming victory that it’s importance was easily transmitted and remained powerful for years later. For those at the time, it seemed like a miracle relative to their experiences at that moment - and American retellings of the story have continued that narrative.
Not surprisingly. The stunning swiftness with which 3/4 of the Japanese carrier force was annihilated made sure the battle became the stuff of legends. Had that Japanese submarine not finally finished off the Yorktown, she might have made it home and made the battle a 4-0 whitewash. But even as it stands, losing one carrier (and a hastily repaired one at that) to sink four is a damn good trade.
jsm666 it’s also about the timing. It was a miracle that came at an opportune time... and was touted as a miracle at home to help build war support. That ensured it was a battle that was remembered by the people at home as well as the soldiers, sailors and airmen who were there - and why it has maintained a mythos to this day. I love that the video explains the nuts and bolts of this popular assumption, showing how it doesn’t exactly gel with what actually did happen.
Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu. Notwithstanding any others present, these were the four against which the Americans were engaged. The first three were annihilated in the initial American attack; Hiryu was finished off afterwards. So that's how I got three quarters.
00Billy - _You_ look it up: the diplomatic code had been broken, but the high level IJN codes had only been partially broken and had been changed immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor (and please note: it was a shared effort by the US, UK NZ, Aus, and the Netherlands). Obviously, before the Dec 7th attack, the US knew an attack was probable, but _when_ and _where_ was open for debate. All of this is well documented from multiple sources. Read a book sometime, it's the only cure for ignorance.
The main flaw with the Japanese strategy was to assume that an Ambusher couldn't get Ambushed themselves! They went in to Midway, confident in their own plan, but without considering that the other guy gets to choose his own course of action..
damagejackal10 Actually Yamamoto suspected that the Naval code has been cracked and sent scouts out to where he would have planted an ambush and got it spot on. However the plane that discovered the American carriers had a faulty radio. Had it been working, Yamamoto would have been able to strike the US carriers first and most likely won Midway and possibly got the USA yo sue for peace as they would have had no carrier fleet and hardly any capital ships left.
they had +300 Aircraft If he really suspected that the enemy knew the plan, he would have send more, he only send 7 scout planes ONLY 7, and some of them had some trouble with the engines and of course bad luck of the radio... If I am correct even the US send some dive bombers as scout... Of course not every plane is a perfect scout but you get the point... If yamamoto knew something we would have been a lot more cautious.
Denis Muto I never said he knew for certain, I said he suspected. The US knew that the Japanese were attacking and were ready. The Japanese did not know the US had cracked their Naval codes and thus did not expect them to be there so soon. The plan was to draw them out once Midway was attacked. Furthermore you miss the point. He correctly predicted the position of the US fleet and a scout overflew the US Navy. Only a faulty radio saved them from defeat. If he had sent 100 planes out, why would he cover the same area rather than covering other possible positions, considering how vast the ocean is? The issue was not the lack of scouts, but one single faulty radio.
an examination of hindsight is crucial to understand if one intends to plan successful military operations. failures must be understood as completely as victories, and those lessons learned and applied...
Im japanese but I am proud of the us navy's victory in this battle. Because no country will ever make a carrier division that can fight equally with the US navy. And I'm glad if you know about the CV:Hiryu's counterattack. I hope the US-Japan alliance will be stronger🇺🇸🇯🇵
hibiki minami : both the Japanese and German races and cultures were incredible challenges for the Allies in WW2 . It is amazing a country as small as Japan and Germany fought off so many Allied countries for 5 years...even more amazing is how Japan and Germany recovered so quick after the war to become industrial powerhouses to this day.
@@hertzair1186 The reason they recovered so quickly was because the US helped them and MADE them do so. Not only did the US give them billions and billions of dollars worth of financial aid, but they also played a key part is orchestrating the government to get the country to recover. Germany owes nearly all of their modern success to US assistance, and even their modern military is puny and mostly rely on US defenses stationed there.
Not exactly. It wasn't victory disease that was responsible for the German defeat in Russia... it was desperation. Germany was running out of oil. Hell, they invented Coal Liquefaction to stave off the lack of oil, but it was in critical supply. They HAD to push to the middle east with their developed oil fields if they wanted to continue to put gas in their tanks. Unfortunately, Stalingrad was the perfect staging area for Russia to cut that supply line, and HAD to be eliminated and occupied to protect this vital resource. In many ways, Stalingrad was even more important to the German offensive than Moscow was. That was the key turning point. The Germans turned Stalingrad into an abattoir, both for their own men and Germany's. They kept throwing bodies into Stalingrad because they knew that as long as it held, Germany was all but defeated. Germany didn't predict such fierce opposition, and was counting arms production for troop deployments. Russia sent bodies. There were more soldiers than guns sent. Germany didn't anticipate that. They had been fighting the French and British, who tended to rely on quality over quantity. They were not used to an opponent who realized that quantity possessed a quality all its own.
@@ShneekeyTheLost Germany lost because they tried to fight the war on too narrow an industrial base. The Germans walked in and out of the Soviet Union. When the Soviets arrived in Berlin at the end of the war, they were fully motorized with each each soldier wearing a pair of US made boots. The Germans hauled everything ,exceeding the modest rail network with horses. The number one haulded product: horse feed.
I agree. Hitler conducted the campaign as if he could not possibly lose. In August the Germans were 200 miles from Moscow and he started moving his panzers around. Guderian was livid. If Hitler had left the war to his extraordinary Generals they would have taken Moscow. They probably would have lost anyway, but by not taking Moscow in the initial campaign the Wehrmacht did not have a chance.
Correction: The Yorktown wasn't ultimately sunk by the air attack, but the attack lead to it, when a Japanese picked her off later on. Enjoyed this video? Consider supporting me on patreon: patreon.com/mhv Ör donating a book from my wishlist: www.amazon.de/hz/wishlist/ls/3LJIXNJIUXJES
Military History Visualized - I love your content, your conclusions are usually right on the money ! This video is no exception. At Midway the IJN failed to take into account that the element of surprise for Japan may not be won. The IJN plan was dependent upon absolute surprise. The best military plan assumes that your enemy can read your codes, and as such redundancy must be built into a successful campaign. Even if the US Navy had only 2 of their carriers at Midway, without the element of surprise the battle odds would essentially have been that of parody because of the airfield on the island of Midway. That stationary and UNSINKABLE carrier, known as Midway Island could take wave after wave of punishment while a single accurate bombing run from just one of the 17 B-17’s stationed on the island could have knocked one of Japan’s carriers out of the fight. Although those land-based B-17’s had no damage impact on the IJN fleet at Midway the effect that they did have was to keep the main battle fleet off balance. Further the IJN failed to account for Midway’s land-based reconnaissance aircraft, which allowed for US better targeting of Japan’s main battle fleet. With 3 US floating carriers plus the unsinkable land-based carrier of Midway Island, the US had the equivalent of 5-6 carriers. Just one B-17 carries the equivalent of 4 Navy dive-bombers or while 17 B-17’s carried 1 1/2 times the bomb weight of a Lexington Class Carrier. It was a damaged land-based B-26 flown directly into the IJN carrier Akagi that may have led Admiral Nagumo to launch his reserve strike force, armed for anti-ship operations, at Midway Island instead. This move countermanded what Admiral Yamamoto had ordered in the original battle plan, and left the Akagi vulnerable to attack from US carrier aircraft. Every naval action in WW II by the IJN depended upon surprise. From Pearl Harbor straight through the war till Okinawa and Operation Ten-Go, also known as the Battle of the East China Sea, the expectation of surprise attack by the Japanese Navy was what the IJN hung each and every plan upon. They expected the US Navy to be one step behind them in planning. They saw the US Admiralty as upstarts rather than equally capable strategists.
I love military history but I hate reading books for a long period of time. It has always been conflicting for me when I want to pick up some good books to read without someone forcing me to do so. Your channel is a great balance for me and I hope more people can discover your channel. Great work again!
My best advice for you is make reading to a habit. Read an hour everyday on a particular time that suits you the best and stick with it. Don't read books at night that aren't fantasy novels for instance because you can't process all the important informations at night that well. The best time for this kind of genre to read is probably early morning and noon :)
Thanks for the advice. I remember reading history books for college classes on the Pacific War.I loved the books and the knowledge that I have learnt from it but I only binge read those books before essays and the experience is horrible. Maybe if I make it a habit I will actually be able to enjoy the process along with the result.
Yeah I am fully aware. Have done much critical thinking myself and also does my own research from time to time but it is simply impossible to go deep on everything I am interested in so finding a good enough secondary source is important for me. And no, I am not giving up school work, video games and beer to spend all my time on books.
I don't have time and interest for that. For me it's enough to watch a few opinions. No one really knows the truth anyway, people just guess closer or further from the truth.
Actually, their plan had many places where they were doing two things at once -- invade the Aleutians, provide a distraction to the US Fleet, lure the US Carrier Fleet out to attack and ambush it, bomb the Midway Garrison, Invade Midway Island....it was self contradictory. How could the Aleutians be a distraction if it happens at the same time as the attack? If it did distract the fleet, doesn't this mean that the carriers would be safe blowing up the small fleet supporting the attack in Alaska and the Kido Butai would be stuck idle doing nothing? If the Japanese kept the plan secret, why would they think the US Fleet at Pearl would be ready to respond instantly? They knew we had substantial forces in the South Seas at Coral Sea. Might we not have deployed carriers south with the supposed loss of both carriers there? Why would the US Fleet even rush off to protect Midway or the Aleutians? We had not done so for Wake, Guam, or the Phillipines, after all. And the Japanese couldn't stay stationed off Midway forever even if they had taken it - the would have eventually had to retire and the base would be exposed for capture at the US convenience.
Good video! I haven't had a chance to read Shattered Sword yet. Craig Symonds in The Battle of Midway makes another series of persuasive arguments. First, he noted that had the Japanese scout plane from the Tone launched on time, its search pattern would have actually not detected the American fleet. Second, as was alluded to in the video (but not explained) the Japanese wargames had a simulation where the Americans appeared pretty much from the same direction they actually did and hit two of the American carriers. He also went into detail on how the Hornet airgroup led by Cmd. Stanhope Ring set on an incorrect course, which Waldron's formation of torpedo planes disobeyed orders and broke formation to arrive at the Japanese carrier fleet. All but one man from Waldron's group was killed, and the attack seems to have alerted the US strike groups of the Japanese location. Symonds argued that had Ring flown on the correct course, they might have sunk all the Japanese carriers and spared the Yorktown. He also suggested Nagumo was struck by the tenacity of the American pilots from Midway who flew in suicidally against overwhelming odds. Overall, like Shattered Sword, Symonds also presents an excellent critical look at Midway that uses Japanese primary sources that appeared to have been overlooked by previous authors and counters the "Miracle at Midway" argument. I highly recommend this one. A Dawn Like Thunder by Robert J Mrazek also provides an excellent account of VT-8's attacks from both Midway Island (using the new Avengers flown separately to the island) and the doomed Hornet Air Group.
Its great. But fun not at all. Its boring. Several thousands of men defending Midway, and most of them had nephews and also great ones. A lot of them died if 90 or older. That one of them uncles is yours Is great and fun for you but for nobody else.
I had an uncle who was in the Battle of The Bulge (he didn't know it at the time, was just out there in the woods trying to keep the howitzers going). He lived to 92. I also had an uncle in the Flying Tigers in China, another on a destroyer in the Pacific, another in the Army air corps as well as my dad who were both about to deploy when the war ended. All the sons came out of the war unscathed but neither of my grandparents on that side survived the war due to stress and illness.
It's been my contention for a long time, that while Midway sealed the fate of the Imperial Japanese, It was at the Coral Sea and Port Moresby that Japan actually lost the war. They could have sued for peace after that on way better terms than spending the next 3 years being systematically being crushed! It's all a moot point, once their communications were compromised there was nothing much they could really do about it. On the other hand, it took time and a hard learning curve on the part of the U.S Navy, Marines and Army along with sorting out things like faulty torpedos and getting the production of the things needed to fight the war. The Pacific was a huge battle space, both in terms of size and distance. It was a huge logistical problem that had to be overcome, all the while playing second fiddle to the ETO, then there was the China-Burma theater and not only that, America provided Mountains of lend-lease aid to Britain, Russia( Soviet Union) China. All of it could have been avoided, but the leadership in the UK and France was still gun shy from the first world war, the Soviets colluded and America Isolationist. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20 things were not so clear in the Spring and Summer of '42. The most unsung people in the Second World War was the guy or guys who figured out how to load a ship and in what order you load it.
Imho nothing would have stopped the americans short of a sound defeat at Guadalcanal with the loss of all carriers AND the marine divisions sent there. It is possible to imagine that if by the end of 1942 the US would have continued to suffer from several defeats, maybe the public and politicians might have considered putting the pacific theater on ice and focus on europe. After all, no matter what Japan would do, they were in no position to invade Hawaï and even less the west coast whereas letting England be invaded or Russia fall could have had much more severe repercussions.
Well written George, but in my opinion you have the wrong battle. Just my very personal opinion mind you, but I think it was Guadalcanal that did the Japanese in. In Coral Sea the US learned it could go toe to toe with the Japanese Navy. But, in Guadalcanal it was the American fighting man who found his legs. Army, and marines, and the Navy as well after the disaster with Crutchly. Strategically, as with Coral Sea, the importance of Guadalcanal can't be understated. I'm sure you'll agree with me, on this point. In the end however, Japan was doomed the moment the first bomb left the aircraft over Pearl Harbor. It was really only ever a matter of how, and how long it would take.
I disagree that the Japanese lost the war at the Coral Sea. I would say that they lost the war at Pearl Harbor. The only hope the Japanese had to win was to make the war too costly in lives, money and time for the Americans to stomach. Opening the war with a humiliating and (seemingly) underhanded attack like Pearl Harbor ensured that the American public was going to be angry enough to pay any price. America's weakness was the will to fight, and Japan handed them a reason to fight to the bitter end on a silver platter. If instead the Japanese had just gone after Indonesia and Malaysia without attacking the US, they would have either avoided war with America entirely or more likely forced Roosevelt to declare war on them, fundamentally changing the political calculus. Would Americans be able to stomach bloodbaths like Okinawa or Tarawa if they had started the war themselves?
They lost because they neither understood or respected their enemy! They were convinced that they were Smarter, better equipped, better Trained, more highly motivated and Superior in every way. They were wrong!!
I just want to say that your channel is absolutely amazing, I am a major fan of military history especially of ww2, but your channel is especially great because of the objective view, you always state facts and very reliable sources and always have a very objective point of view. Thank you for all of the great content and rock on \m/
I love it when he talks about both sides of a battle with Japan or even Japan's logistics and how it could've been better. A very open view and very entertaining.
I have only read and studied naval combat in the 17th century, but I can't help shake off the impression that naval battles are more prone to happenstance than other types of engagements. Major impactors like the weather, lines of communication, group movements and enemy intelligence combine badly with the general decisive nature of naval engagements: once in, it's hard to get out unless both combatant's noses have been bloodied. It isn't so weird that with that idea in mind, the authors of the work you cited flip back and forth between a decisive statement and a more reluctant one: naval combat depends on the willingness to engage and, once engaged, happenstance rears its ugly head.
It is ttue. And its mostly a result of them being fought on larger timescales by fewer assets in fewer battles. The rule of avrages has less chance to apply.
There was quite a bit of happenstance in land wars for much of human history as well, since the armies fielded were generally much smaller, and more difficult to replace, which meant that decisive actions were extremely impactful. Then industrial war happened and everything on land became a huge war of attrition because they could just keep replacing the losses and things were rarely decisive. Except when they were, like the Battle of France, where a combination of bold action, a lot of luck, and a lot of incompetence saw Germany win.
16:22 "Yet it is a good reminder that an argument without a counter-argument appears usually very impressive and convincing yet ultimately can be quite misleading." Classic wisdom. Proverbs 18:17, "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." (ESV)
Excellent stuff! I never thought that such in-depth analysis would be so available. It seems that WWII docs peaked in the 1970s, YT has added so much info and analysis! Thanks.
Yamamoto was used to fighting an enemy that was retreating. He was in a sense fighting against AI or Bots. Then he realized too late the enemy was not retreating, were not Bots going into battle as he expected them to do and far from being lured were in fact luring the IJN onto their trap. He went hunting and became the hunted.
Also, the retreating thing is ridiculous. Where the U.S. Retreated from was because the Japanese forced it too in battle. They didn't just start retreating. But the Americans had struck back several times, though the success was mostly in moral.
Really excellent detailed diagnosis, both on the battle and the historians! I'm an amateur historian with good knowledge about this battle (not excellent, but good) and you've added to that knowledge's finer details considerably! Thank you!
There is a reason for IJN air group not reinforcing other carriers, most air group is trained on a specific carrier and will stay on said carrier once they reach combat effectiveness, that added to the rivalry between ships and you get a very unhealthy human resources problem
Also because of the night landings, while the airmen of those flight groups were mostly intact the airgroup still lost most of their strike aircraft during the battle. It's rather doubtful that the Japanese could have made the group ready to be operation in time for the battle.
But they did it several times afer Midway. During the battle of the salomons and Santa Cruz, both Zuikaku and Shokaku airgroups were made of pilots from different carriers gathered to make up for the losses. It worked perfectly given the standardized procedures of the IJN. At Midway, they just didn't feel the need.
All, there were moments when the Japanese could still have assembled a formidable air wing, if they'd had an un-burning carrier deck to fly them from. Moreover each Map carrier had reserveaircraftin kit form which they couldn't assemblrin time be useful. The failureofthe Japanese carrier's fire fighting arrangements eventually destroyed Kido But!
Enjoyed your analysis of the Midway campaign. I believe you're leaving out some critical points which I would like to pass on to you. But first I would like to comment on the plans being overly complex. There was a comment on another video dealing with the subject of "The Battle of Midway" and how the mind set of Japanese worked at that time. When any plan was drawn up they put in place rules and then ran wargames to validate a plan they were going to use. If they lost the battle they would NOT look for fault with the plans but just change the rules to change the outcome in there favor. I think that could be classified as part of your description of "victory disease". Here is the point which you do mention. In my opinion, cracking there is code is a HUGE advantage and the Japanese with there overly complex plan and assumptions about there enemy do not put into place a means of protecting themselves. And this is evident because the submarine that showed up at Pearl Harbor to watch over the carrier forces they were trying to destroy wasn't just hours or a day late, it was an entire week late. That is a complex plan with NO safety valve. And my second point. Part of the plan was the taking of Port Moresby. Oh sure, they thought they had sunk a carrier but there initial plan failed and yet no one drew back to reassess the plan. Which brings me to my first observation. The Japanese Navy had NO CONCEPT of damage control. None!!! And this shows up because twice they reported Carriers sunk, once at Coral Sea and once at Midway just because one or more bombs had hit there target. As an example, damage control was built into our carriers. A carrier carries lots of "aviation fuel" a very volatile substance. When attacked the hoses on American Carriers are drained then filled with nitrogen. Not Japanese carriers. And my second observation is the American ships had radar, not the Japanese ships. A big difference if you are given time to prepare for an attack versus finding out when they are already screaming down at you from above.
The Japanese did more things wrong, and the Americans did more things right. There's rarely one thing that decides a battle, but people in general look for simple answers. It's only scholars who are willing to study and truly understand the complexities involved.
LOL. Teachers teach because they cannot do. You do realize the people analyzing the data at usa war college are soldiers? Only a soldier can understand ... Others put in laymans terms for the common man
Perhaps ONE THING that did affect the outcome was the Japanese destroyer that had stayed behind to depth charge an American submarine. One or two American flights of dive bombers that could not find their Japanese targets followed that destroyer as it steamed at high speed back to its fleet and those bombers wound up sinking 2 or 3 of the Japanese carriers. Those Japanese carriers were on the verge of launching a massive air strike that would devastated the American fleet.
@@ToddSauve There was amazing courage and sacrifice on the part of the American Torpedo Bombers -- they were slaughtered (they did not have a chance) and yet these pilots pressed on their attack. BUT if that Japanese destroyer did not lead the American Dive Bombers to the Japanese Carriers a MASSIVE 150 plane attack is launched by the Japanese against the American Carriers and the Japanese win a decisive victory at Midway -- and it's an entirely different war.
The Quick turnaround of the Yorktown was made possible the US response after the Pearl Harbor Attack. The US had a huge number of Naval salvage and repair workers in Pearl harbor recovering the sunken and damaged ships. They were all assigned to the Yorktown. Us Carriers showed they were better designed to survive battle damage, and suppress fires. The Aircraft from Midway and the unsuccessful torpedo attacks caused japanese carriers to maneuver in ways that prevent air operations. Japanese CAP patrol aircraft ran out of 20mm ammo and were requesting to resupply when US dive bombers arrived. The US also made first use of new fighter tactics at Midway (Thatch Weave), which reduced the effectiveness of Japanese fighter protection. Finally one of the most fatal parts to Japan was the diversionary attack, not only did it strip 2 carriers from Midway, the US captured a flyable Zero in the Aleutian Islands. The Weaknesses of the Zero were discovered and applied to fighter tactics, and were sent to Grumman to influence the Design of the F6F. The Result was that even when the Japanese rebuilt strength for the battle of the Philippine sea, The new US planes, Tactics, and proximity AA fuses lead to an end of effective Japanese Naval forces.
You wrote: "Us Carriers showed they were better designed to survive battle damage, and suppress fires." Strongly agree. And contrast the USN's tight DC & fire fighting practices with the embarrassingly sloppy IJN (leaving open fuel lines and ordnance laying around on the flight deck at the time of the attack) in this battle. These sorts of details add up and win or lose battles and ultimately wars. Having spent much time in Japan, sloppy is about the last word I'd normally use to describe the Japanese, but they really dropped the ball at Midway. They seemed generally confused.
As for the Akutan Zero - things like that were bound to happen in such a huge war. Most major warring nations captured, through various means some planes of the opposing side. The Japanese had a few captured Corsairs etc. It is the greaterUS industrial capacity, with consequently greater ability to react to such intelligence couos, that was the deviding factor in the long run.
They needed the Americans to respond to the attack the way the Japanese expected. They didn't not expect the US codebreakers to know the plan, that the Aleutians were bait. The Americans had a bit of luck as well. The indecision between finishing off Midway or setting up to attack the US Carriers, with Dauntless's attacking the carriers with lots of ordnance on the carrier decks contributed to their doom.
leftcoaster67 actually the Aleutian Islands wasn’t a diversion. In no document from the war by the Japanese indicate it was ever supposed to be a diversion. Also the amount of forces deployed where too larger than what they would’ve likely deployed if it was truly a diversion. But the major problem was that Yamamoto plan thought the US was going to bring it’s slow BBs from Pearl Harbor however the USN has other plans and left the BBs behind.
leftcoaster67 Luck went both ways. Japanese dodged all early bombs and torpedoes from first wave of attacks from Midway. Also dodged submarines placed in their path. Could easily have lost a carrier early on. Also with the sinking of Yorktown which might have been saved. US made their own luck via code breaking genius and gutsy aggressive action from admirals on down.
@ Paul Gee. Yes it is true that American skill and determination won the battle, but it is also true that the needle swung heavily in favor for the US Navy that day.
Maybe because Devastator Torpedo bombers were flying coffins. Sad, when you consider they are superior to Swordfish. But Avengers later on in the war were far superior.
A book by Capt. Tamechi Hara, "Destroyer Captain" throws a much more critical perspective on Midway and the IJN policies and strategies. According to Hara, the hubris was a major factor and the Japanese were far too confident. He also notes systemic issues after Midway with individual commanders and the insular attitude of the Army in government vs the naval views of strategy. The Midway period is only short, but it's a fantastic read. Hara was almost the only surviving destroyer captain after the way, I think.
I love history, especially WWII. You attention do detail and sighting of available data is awesome. So many times history is one sided and totally written by the winner. I really enjoyed your insight into both sides of the issue!! Keep up the good work and I just subscribed. Thanks for the awesome video on a pivotal battle of WWII!!!
Japan lost the war at pearl harbor. Their industrial output and potential was a fraction of what the u.s. could produce. Combined with the Japanese army and navy constantly at odds with one another, they were doomed from the beginning. They bet their entire strategy on that the u.s. would likely sue for peace after the attack on pearl. Most wars are started from flawed (often times seriously) misconceptions about the strength, resilience and motives of the other side. Japan is a prime case study.
weirdshibainu:. We are all victims of our history. Japan had the misfortune of having, in 1905, "sucker punched" a larger Russia that was weakened and distracted by a coming revolution. Japan survived this recklessness and repeated it when they attacked China. As they came into confrontation with the US, their judgement in who they could safely pick a fight with was tragicly compromised. The more cautious heads in Japan had been discredited by the success Japan had been enjoying attacking bigger but less aggressive nation's.
Very good point. The Americans have very good memories. It probably wasn't a great idea to bomb pearl harbor. Might have been smarter to focus on China and move North into Russia.
A quote by the historian Shelby Foote on the American Civil War comes to mind: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back ... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War." The industrial might of the Union was something the Confederacy couldn't ever hope to match. In the same way, the Japanese Empire couldn't ever go toe-to-toe with the US and its massively powerful economy. The same goes for Nazi Germany. Really, Allied victory in WW2 was assured not only by military victories, but primarily by the supplies used in those victories. The Allies (America in particular) could make more, and make more faster.
Great video. The debate here around Midway is a typical one that we see raised nearly everywhere the US was involved in WWII or any conflict since. And it stems from a basic unwillingness on the part of many to accede that the US fighting force, or in this case the USN in WWII in the pacific, could do things right. The adversary, be they the japanese, or germans, or whoever, MUST have done something wrong in order to lose to the US. Its a prideful muddying of perspective resulting in obtuse or just plain sloppy historical acumen, research and analysis.
Indeed. I'm squarely in the camp of the Americans won at Midway. But it is an overwhelmingly unpopular opinion. And you've hit on one of the main reasons its unpopular.
on the other hand, as sun tzu quote: "He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated." The Japanese lost because they made more mistakes, and they made more mistakes because they were not as good as the American were.
@@MrIronhat the japanese had no radar or code breaking. made a big diffrence. our ships and midway island knew 10 to 15 min before each attack and what direction it was coming from.
@@MrIronhat Right it's about more or less mistakes, "no mistakes" is perfect and perfect does not exist where man is involved and certainly not at sea or in war. Which goes back to the overly complex and rigid plans being a fault.
The Yorktown, was not sunk by air attack, it was heavily damaged. It was while she was under tow, three days later, I think, that she was sunk by a Japanese Submarine, which had spotted the oil slick, coming from the Yorktown. I know this because I too have researched the battle of Midway, because I had a Great Uncle who was on the island, during the attack.
Lexington was the same. Not actually sunk by the Japanese, just damaged. She was lost due to poor damage control and was eventually scuttled. She was not that badly hurt and carriers later in the war would be hit much harder and survive. Her loss was inexcusable. Likewise, as soon as Yorktown was hit the first time at Midway, Nimitz should have ordered to withdraw. She remained on station and was hit a second time and critically damaged. Her loss was not because of her damage but because of the operational decisions that kept her exposed.
Not exactly. Her strike was still in the air attacking Hyru at the time she got her boilers re-lit. She had about 20 minutes after she came to 20 knots when more planes were spotted on radar headed her way. She dodged 2 torpedoes but a 3rd hit her. The Captain assumed she was about to capsize and ordered abandon ship but she floated into the next day when repair operations were begun to save her. A lot of time was wasted that could have been used to save her. Poor on-scene decision making. There was no reason to lose except a bad assessment of the situation.
@@VersusARCH Taiho was destroyed by the US because after she was attacked no further effort was made to scuttle her. None of the escorting ships, most of which had torpedoes fired on her. She merely had progressive flooding until she sank.
On thing I never hear about is how inferior the Japanese merchant fleet was so small and insufficient they could not resupply or import material that they needed throughout the war...
The Japanese never had a chance so long as US had that overwhelming industrial capacity to replace all their lossess and then some, and the Japanese had no way to reduce that capacity.
That the Japanese had no way to reduce our industrial capacity is key here. They were doomed before they started. We were already in the process of building what would be 24 Essex class carriers.
What did in the Japanese even more than losing at Midway was their lack of anti submarine capabilities. The US submarine fleet decimated the Japanese merchant fleet and made it impossible to move supplies to where they were needed. Carriers get the glory but the submarines deserve their place in history too
@Mar Wolfking Gundams will take too long. They should use the radiation from Fukushima to supercharge Mothra and Godzilla to soften up the world before using the Gundams and Space Battleship Yamato, which will hopefully be ready by then.
Jaye Bass the IJN was not doomed before they started. Many don’t understand the big head start the IJN had over the US since the US had to split its force with the Atlantic and Pacific fleet. At Midway the vessel count was as follows: Battleships 11-0. Zero. The US had none and this is where the IJN blew it at Midway. They IJN could have surrounded Midway with 4 battleships and shell the island. There would have been no changing out of bombs. By August the IJN completed Musashi. Carriers - Zuikaku was available. Planes and pilots especially zero pilots were not short of. That’s 5 main carriers plus the IJN could have had Ryujo and Junyo at Midway vs the Aleutians. The IJN could have made better use of Zuiho and Hosho. So it’s 9 carriers IJN vs 2.5 for US. Yorktown was limping in. Saratoga was being repaired as the Shokaku was. Wasp was eventually going to be moved from Atlantic to the Pacific. The IJN finished the Carrier Hiyo 53 planes by August. IJN also completed 3 fleet carriers. Cruisers - IJN 21 vs 8. Destroyers - 63 vs 30 The only vessels which the US made some ground in 1942 was with destroyers. Only 1 Essex Carrier was finished by end of 1942. Only 3 were finished by end of 1943. Had the IJN won at Midway which they easily could have and should have had they brought their battleships into action and engaged in vessel vs vessel combat then feel free to explain how the US would have engaged the IJN in a turning point battle.
@@f430ferrari5 thats a bad idea because you will send like 75% of your ships just to destroy 3 CVs that would be a big waste of fuel which the ijn was lacking and not just that the USN knows their plan so if they knew that the ijn will be sending most of their ships they would evacuate midway but before they do that they will make fake tanks and fake jeeps so that the ijn would waste more ammunition trying to destroy those fake tanks because they might be real and they would add more traps so that the landing force would take massive casualties It would be a big resource loss for the ijn because they bombarded an island that have no occupants and they also wasted alot of fuel trying to move 75% of their ships to midway and they also achieved nothing because their main goal is to destroy the CVs and the CVs didnt show up because they have no chance in winning the battle (Note: i wrote this comment in the middle of the night so sorry if i made some mistakes on grammar, spelling, and percentages)
Unspoken in most of these reviews is that the CAG of Hornet nearly lost the battle. Commander Ring led 1/4 of the Navy's airpower in a flight to no place. A action that takes them largely out of the battle, sans Torpedo 8. Also
Miles Browning screwed up at midway and I screwed up a guada canal when he placed his cap at too low of an altitude making it easy for Japanese planes to damage the Saratoga.
If Ring had done what McClusky did, a box search after not finding the enemy fleet where it was expected, he might have found Kido Butai and not be vilified as he is today. When the first of VF-8's pilots turned for home in a sweeping left turn that brought him further south, he saw smoke to the south/southwest which was the Japanese fleet. This was about 9 AM and if he had reported it to his squadron leader or directly to Ring, the Hornet dive bombers would have been in position to dive while VT-8 were attacking and maybe put a few bombs into the Hiryu and Soryu which were the northern most Japanese carriers. Jim Gray of VF-6 might have seen the Hornet's dive bombers and given them cover since he couldn't find the Enterprise's bombers. Alternatively without the fighter pilot's sighting, if Ring had done a box search to the south he might have seen the carriers and attacked. Depending on when he started the box search, his bombers could have been diving anywhere from 9:30 AM to 10 AM. History might have viewed this battle as a rout if there were no Japanese strikes on the US Fleet and the Yorktown never attacked. I do blame Nimitz and his subordinates for not getting the Saratoga escort ships to allow her to sail from San Diego on either May 26 or 27 to Pearl Harbor or even better directly to the Midway area. She could have made it to Midway on June 3 or the morning of June 4 if she stopped overnight at Pearl Harbor to fuel and pick up VF-5, VF-72, and the VT-8 detachment with the new TBF Avenger planes. Otherwise, she would have just 14 Wildcats of the VF-2 detachment, 23 or so VS-3 dive bombers with assorted aircraft as cargo.
This was a classic case of a commander (several really) seeing what they expected to see. You also need to point out that Spruance managed to make only correct decisions when he had no previous experience with this kind of command. He displayed what Clausewitz described as an all important intuition on the battlefield. And most importantly, you left out any mention of the Aleutians diversion. The IJN didn't just leave the Zuikaku at home, they also sent two second rate carriers with 80 some aircraft to wander about in the fog off Alaska. Think what Tamon Yamaguchi might have done if he could have drawn on those other carriers.
The Jun'yo carriers sent to the Aleutians were too slow for fleet operations while Ryujo only had one elevator capable of handling the larger Japanese planes. They weren't actually of much use in Midway. The Japanese were not seeing what they wanted to see. The Japanese had sent a submarine picket line, in addition to the 7 scout aircrafts. None of which detected anything. The intelligence report indicated increased radio traffic and patrols. Nothing about presence of US carriers. So which report do they listen to? The float planes did eventually detect the US carriers, but by then it was too late. Yamamoto and Nagumo decided to proceed with the operation for good reason. For one, they had about a year before US industrial capability really kicks in force. Additionally, there was no evidence of surprise being lost outside of the intelligence report. The submarine picket line detected nothing, and neither did the float planes. Secondly, Nagumo had to neutralize Midway within 2 days because that is when the invasion force arrives. There isn't that much time to actually wait around searching for US carriers that could likely not even be there. Even if the invasion force was told to wait around, the longer they sit around, the likelier they are to be detected. In fact shortly after the Midway Strike Group took off, Nagumo's carriers was spotted by a PBY. So even if Nagumo wanted to make sure no US carriers were present, he would HAVE to launch an attack on Midway once he was spotted. Unless you expect him to let his carriers get attacked by Midway's aircrafts without retaliating. Practically speaking, there is insufficient reason, and also impractical to cancel or delay the operation and secondly act as if US carriers were present.
The carriers heading to Aleutian islands were cosidered as bait to lure american navy out of Midway and weaken their forces there. Of course japanese didn't know that their codes were broken and that americans were aware of japanese plans.
The problem with the entire Midway narrative and the missing link in all this that has never been explained by record or the experts; why were the Japanese planes armed and spotted for a fleet strike after the midway strike was launched? Why did they have to re-arm for surface strikes if the US navy was believed to be 2 days away at Pearl?
@@davidberlow9858 I believe this was just basic, cautious, wartime practice. Always be ready for an attack. Just like the 7th Fleet battleships at Leyte Gulf were armed mostly with HE shells for support of the troops ashore but they still carried a supply of AP, just in case.
@@davidberlow9858, this has actually been explained. If I recall, the Japanese did have a strike group armed for an anti-ship strike when the 1st Midway strike force took off. Such a force wouldn't be spotted for launch, however - the decks would be needed for the fighters of the CAP. They need to land and refuel (and possibly rearm) Adm. Nagumo ordered the strike group re-armed to strike Midway after getting reports from this 1st strike and being attacked by Midway's planes. As this was going on, Japanese search planes located American naval vessels. Nagumo then changed his orders and had the planes re-re-armed for an anti-shipping strike. As for 2 days away, I think that the Japanese expected the US response to take 4 days to reach Midway.
I love the academic structure of your presentation. Love all the book citations up front…not the”i’ve put the citation links below”which is what others do! TY! Very interesting !
I think the Japanese lost at Midway mainly because they were just too overconfident and too arrogant (following an almost unbeaten six-months Victory streak), believing that the enemy would dance by their tune, believing they could pull off two operations at the same time, believing that four carriers were more than enough to win. Numerically the IJN was far larger than the US Pacific Fleet at that point in the war, that they still found a way to loose is almost impressive.
Overconfident ... arrogant ... thought they couldn't lose ... tried to fight on two fronts with only enough forces to win on one ... The Third Reich invading Russia and the "Coalition of the Willing" invading Iraq both come to mind.
If you look at the Second Gulf War as Coalition Forces vs. Iraqi Army, then it was a rousing success. The Iraqi Army was decisively routed, Saddam was removed from power, and Coalition forces seized control of the country. The problem was occupying the country while simultaneously prepping Iraq for a new government. The US government in particular made several key mistakes, chief among them being the disbandment of the Iraqi Army. The Army was necessary to maintain order and it was necessary to build them back up, if for no other reason than that the Coalition in general and US forces in particular should not have realistically been expected to occupy the country indefinitely. Instead, they disbanded the Iraqi Army, which left hundreds of thousands of angry young men with no money, a lot of anger and access to guns. That led to an insurgency which pulled in National Guard units (which aren't intended for that purpose) and drained resources from the Afghan front. It's already an open secret that the invasion of Iraq was conducted under fraudulent pretenses, so I won't argue about that. What I will argue is that had the US made the right decisions, Iraq wouldn't be in the shape it is today.
Well, yeah, staying the hell out of Iraq would have been a smarter decision and both Iraq and Afghanistan would be in better shape today if our Glorious And Beloved Leaders had made that decision. Too much focus on offensive power, nowhere near enough soldiers to protect everything afterwards, nowhere near enough linguists, too much focus on getting the offensive forces psyched up and full of hate and nothing like enough effort to get a large number of people who knew the culture and language and could be respectful and sympathetic points of contact for the local people, too much emphasis on getting Halliburton their oil contracts, not enough on any other part of "what happens next," ... books.google.co.uk/books?id=dBOF8Q685mAC&pg=PA793&lpg=PA793&dq=%22At+one+point,+he+threatened+to+fire+the+next+person+who+talked+about+the+need+for+a+post-war+plan,%22&source=bl&ots=-mJwXX58IU&sig=f_z1koG0dZSkTruATN6LR2PlxdM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj616PBuqbcAhVSVsAKHc76CPkQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=%22At%20one%20point%2C%20he%20threatened%20to%20fire%20the%20next%20person%20who%20talked%20about%20the%20need%20for%20a%20post-war%20plan%2C%22&f=false Ugly URL for a document with an example of a US Gov't failing in the run-up to that invasion. We didn't have the people, the equipment, the fuel, the aircraft, the ammunition or the money to fight in both wars at once, any more than Nazi Germany in November 1940 had what it needed to take and hold Russia.
It is hard to believe that Yamamoto would plan this operation thinking that the Americans would not be all gung ho to fight. The Admiral had spent may years in the United State and knew the Americans well. He was even quoted that if Japan had not defeated The United States and forced them to sue for peace within the first 6 months of the war that the industrial might of American Industry would overwhelm Japan. He was right on that account. The US forces won with superior intelligence and luck.
Mr. Eugene-I have always wondered how Japan went from a country that sometimes ate its captives to an industrialized nation after two atomic bombs. It was like "we quit, now let's start making cars." Such a rapid transformation. An as an aside, I would have knocked off that guy's top hat who, I believed the peace treaty.
@@cynthiafischer5006 I definitely think Japan is in the place it is now because of USA in the 40's. After the war the USA molded Japan into something it liked and with it brought all forms of capitalism and the sort. Same thing happened in Korea and now look at South Korea, it's amazing.
@@kieranschafer5180 Japan had capitalism and advanced industry before we got there, even a fledgling democracy early in the 20th century. I agree that some of the US rubbed off on Japan, certainly, but I think the take home lesson of our occupation was that the war itself was the disaster, not their defeat. I doubt we'll ever truly be able to calculate whether the atomic bombs should have been played the way they were, but it seems clear that the Emperor's intervention saved Japan from (at best) a Pyrrhic victory that would have led to a lot more dead Allied and Japanese soldiers not to mention enormous civilian casualties. Instead of pointlessly wasting all those lives, Japan built itself into a major economic player respected by the west with powerful military allies. Perhaps this was a 'defeat' in chest-thumping nationalist circles, but I would make the argument that ending the war and surrendering was a victory for the Japanese people.
@@briankearney5994 Hi Brian. I beg to disagree on the use of atomic bombs. I'll point to a few things to support my case. 1. The island of Saipan where civilians jumped to their deaths or were shot by the IJA rather than surrender. 2. The firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities with no surrender, and 3. No surrender after the first atomic bomb, so the second was requested. What the US was faced with in summernof '45 was an enemy that was NEVER going to surrender and was willing to use it's own people as bait to kill as many Americans as possible. Planners were anticipating 5 more years and millions of deaths, or a stalemate similar to what is now North and South Korea. Thankfully, we don't have that but instead a most powerful and loyal friendship. Not just an ally.
@@jamesvaughn7389 I’m not clear on what you disagree with. If your point is that Japan was unlikely to surrender without two bombs, I suspect that is the case and never meant to imply otherwise, but we will never know for sure as that is a mega-counterfactual. I don’t think nuclear weapons can really be called ‘good’ and ‘right’ (not that you argued this) but few if any things in war can be. I at least understand Truman’s perspective, and would likely make the same difficult decision, especially if I knew it would end the war (of course, he had no such guarantees). As an aside for “3”, Japan had contact with Germany about nuclear weapons and they figured the US only could have one given the enormous resources required. Two bombs was a bit of a bluff itself, but the US planned had the capacity to produce plenty more given time.
A meticulous and balanced examination of the issue which narrows the focus to precisely those points requiring further discussion. Would that ALL debates were conducted in so constructive a manner!
I am a student of WW2 for the last 30 years. Very impressive re-count of the Battle for Midway island. The Americans were lucky to have not suffered more losses. Over confidence is fools paradise. Thanks for the upload.
Great Video as always. You're the only source thats trust worthy on CZcams, even the documentries ripped from tv are all hyperbole. You should join the US Army we need a guy like you.
I’m GregTully and I totally agree true grit was in no short supply with the American spirit once you have freedom in your blood no power on earth can defeat it
Top notch and unbiased and chock full of factual data with researched and peer reviewed quotes ...I just don't think a better platform for people who are avid students and history buffs or just the average citizen wanting to settle a debate on the military actions that have literally shaped our current social hierarchy worldwide. Good stuff and well received !!!
This video deserves a like just for the quote at the end. 'An argument presented without a counter argument seems very convincing at first but is often very misleading...' Thinking about that the next time I'm on tiktok.
The Japanese finally had the possibility to muster 7 carriers at Midway: Fast repaired Zuikaku plus the two light carriers Jun’yo and Hiyo, which had a relatively small air group. But these could have made a difference if not sent to attack Dutch Harbour instead.
There are three fundamental reasons as to why the Japanese lost the battle of Midway. Firstly, the Americans had foreknowledge of Japanese strength, dispositions, and intentions ; and although that knowledge was not complete, the overall content of that knowledge constituted a significant advantage for the United States Navy. Secondly (to borrow Sun Tzu's terminology, the Japanese knew neither their enemy nor themselves. They assumed that the unexpected and resounding successes of previous operations displayed an inherent Japanese superiority, and that the Americans would prove relatively incapable of effective resistance. Lastly, random factors operated against the Japanese (in plain non-Vulcan English, they were unlucky). The failure of American flight deck crews to get off a coordinated strike at the Japanese resulted in piecemeal torpedo attacks which gradually drew the Japanese combat air patrol down to sea level- while the personal initiative of Commander McClusky (unintentionally aided by a Japanese destroyer) resulted in American dive bombers (arriving from two different directions) pushing over into their attacks unopposed. Their are other reasons to be sure, but these are predominant. To sum up, Japanese overconfidence combined with American foreknowledge placed the Americans in an advantageous position. This advantage was lost by inexperience- and then recovered by personal initiative and courage to produce a truly incredible victory.
There is a fourth factor that I don't hear much and that is that the Americans felt they were against the ropes and desperate so they threw caution to the wind. They sent out a badly damaged Yorktown. They launched an airstrike knowing that these planes would not be able to make it back to the carriers. They engaged in a suicidal torpedo attack without fighter cover to protect the slow moving unmaneuverable bombers.
While the Americans had experienced a series of defeats during the first six months of the war, the U.S. Pacific Fleet had not. They had launched a series of small carrier raids in the early months of the war and then launched the Doolittle Raid in April- and fought the Imperial Navy to a draw of sorts at the Coral Sea. Yorktown was fully capable of flight operations but was limited in speed to 25 knots, so I'm unsure whether that constitutes "badly damaged". The aircraft launched at the 1st Carrier Striking Force from Enterprise and Hornet were launched at extreme range, and not on a one-way mission. Lastly, the American torpedo attacks were not originally intended to go in without fighter protection, and although their crews were aware of their own vulnerability to fighter interception, the suicidal nature of their efforts only became apparent after the fact. With all this in mind, I think it difficult to say that the Americans saw themselves as "on the ropes"; certainly Pacific fleet command saw in the situation an opportunity to surprise the Japanese.
That's a long way of saying that Japan got too used to fighting tiny, scattered forces across the Pacific, and a US navy base that was surprise attacked. That said, Wake Island should have woke them up a little.
ManilaJohn01 I'd say the extra 6 or 7 knots could have saved Yorktown. The Yorktowns were quite agile at speed. (Compare the Lex and Sara.) The Enterprise survived the Solomans due to her maneuverability. Avoiding Japanese torpedoes had a... great... err... advantage.
In "Combined Fleet Decoded" John Prados pointed out that Japanese air groups were considered a part of the carrier they were assigned to, and were not routinely shifted to a different carrier, which would explain why Yamamoto didn't scrape together a functional air group from Zuikaku and Shokaku after Coral Sea, and send it to sea at Midway aboard the undamaged Zuikaku. The USN did something similar in the prewar years--Hornet (CV-8) had Air Group 8, and so forth--but even in the first months of the war, they were much more flexible about operating air groups off different carriers. That fifth carrier, even with a scratch air group, could have made a big difference. Also, I agree completely with a previous commenter regarding the Aleutian sideshow. Yamamoto's overly-complex Midway plan can be justified in many respects--this video essay does just that--but there isn't any way to justify a separate operation that drew away valuable assets, and ended up producing nothing positive. Indeed, the Aleutians would be an ongoing drain on scarce Japanese resources, and also lead to the American capture of the first flyable A6M Zero. While not exactly decisive, that Zero was still an important intelligence coup. Overall, this is an excellent and informative video. Very well done.
I just went to little event dedicated to this battle. It definitely had effort put into it, as the mayor even showed up to give a speech. Some veterans of the battle were there, (one of which was over a hundred years old,) and they got actors to play out these little skits where they acted like they were actually like they were actually living in those times, and they even got an old naval aircraft to fly overhead of us, (I believe it was a Wildcat. It had cat in it at the very least).
Excellent analysis of events. Whilst the Japanese plan was too fragmented, there were other significant strategic and operational failures as you have outline. The seed of failure “hubris” were planted with the attack on pearl harbour and not chasing down the carriers and destroying the maintenance and fuel facilities. Overnight the American fleet moved from 20 knots to 32knots with the carriers coming back to haunt them. Napoleon asked his generals were they lucky. The Americans had “luck”, June 4 1942, lost dive bombers finding the wake of a destroyer, catching all the carriers together whilst changing over weapons, no CAP in place and poor Japanese damage control, the list is endless.
DC - A fair amount of "luck" and Station Hypo. The US Navy wouldn't even have known the IJN was moving on Midway had it not been for the code breakers at Hypo.
morskojvolk totally agree. Also John Tiltman had broken into the Japanese army codes, whilst Gordon Welchmain introduced modern traffic analysis to Bletchley and its outstations plus access to the German command cypher. I think the Allies knew a lot more about the Japanese plans than has been released. The Allies had high frequency direction finding and 10cm radars in the Atlantic to find u-boats, that must have gone to the Pacific. Perhaps they made their own luck.
that is a huge point, if those attacks happened, the fuel and repair facilities would have made midway a different story. why didn't they do it ? so first we accuse japan of under confidence at pearl harbor by not hitting more oil and repair facilities,then we accuse them of over confidence at midway. hindsight is 20/20
Because fuel and repair facilities could have been repaired quite quickly. It might have impaired the US navy for a few months at best. The japanese did not ensure Hawaï could be blockaded and therefore, anything destroyed on 7th december would have been repaired or replaced in no time.
Excellent analysis - As usual. Japan underestimated USA before, during and long after Dec. 07, 1941. They were blinded by their earlier successes against lesser foes - unprepared, under-armed and inferiorly out-dated Militaries. Their prejudices against the USA blinded judgement and caused their Military ' Think Tank ' to blunder under inferior analysis & intelligence gathering. USA was evenly matched & well prepared at Midway, which totally baffled the Japanese long after their defeat at Midway. Thus, a harbinger or things to come...….. Total Defeat.
@paul kohler Hum, japan underestimated the USA? no they didn't! Yamamoto literally predicted the outcome of the war before it even started, japan knew they were going against a mighty opponent, if anyone was underestimating anyone, it was the USA underestimating the japanese, they knew the USA had more modern ship and more of them, as well as an industry japan could only dream of at the time, it was because they knew all that that the attack on pearl harbor was thought up, and the prejudice part is completely reversed, you could not have gotten that more wrong, the USA was the one thinking japan was inferior, the USA refused to believe the reports that the Zero was unbeatable in the sky for some months because they were too racist to think japan able of designing such a good plane.
Then we built aircraft carriers to memorialize great victories; that's why many WW2 carriers were named after Revolutionary War [ie. Yorktown, Lexington] or Civil War battles. USS Franklin was named after a Civil War battle, NOT after Ben Franklin as is mistakenly believed. Now we name $13B carriers after idiots like Jerry Ford and George H.W. Bush. I presume they'll be another one named after Dubya and one after Slick Willie, too. What a disgrace those would be. Then we'll get the USS Barrack Obama!
Techpriest - Yes, but you can plan for bad luck and Japan didn’t... “...expect the worst, hope for the best...” The best/most successful battle outcomes are based upon that concept.
Yes but US essex carriers suffering from similar damages in 1945 (kamikaze crashing in a hangar full of fuelled and armed planes) were not able to return to the fight even if they had miraculously survived.
Two things there decided together: - luck - radio malfunction Also Japanese should realize the enemy has broken their codes...but they weren't cautious. Pilot J.C. Waldron guess good the position of the Japanese because Mitscher thought enemy carriers are sailing in two battlegroups. If he failed, he would back with nothing. I would shell Midway during the night too...because i am cautious hero...XD
The Japanese lost because they picked a fight with a country that was capable of defending itself militarily. The Japanese military preyed upon countries that had small and weak military forces and used sneak attack/quick withdrawal tactics against more capable opponents. This gave them a false sense of confidence in the power of their military that did not serve them well when they faced opponents that had sophisticated and powerful military forces, like the US and Great Britain.
Admiral Nagumo was, at heart, a black shoe admiral, not a brown shoe commander. Also, he lacked that unique "spark" found in all great commanders. Having said that, from the start of the war, the Japanese were doomed. Their greatest battle was one of scientific development and industrial production, a battle in which they had no chance. They were never given time to back off from battle, regroup, and replace their losses, and they lacked the raw materials to do so anyway. They were, essentially, overwhelmed.
Very informative delivery and instructional design. The "Victory Disease" concept has many historical and even business applications. Success can breed complacency. Thank you.
Captain Carrot - exactly. There are benefits to being a major Patreon supporter of this channel, especially if you have access to the Discord server MHV and Bismarck operate.
Very good video, and thank you for the time you put into this history. The Battle of Midway was the number-one key battle of the entire US-Japanese war. It highlighted everything that was deficient in Japanese culture relative to attempting to defeat a western culture in warfare. Furthermore, it was the central turning point of that war, and amazingly happened within just a mere 6 months of Pearl Harbor. The US won this battle due to the nature of its culture in which individual low-ranking American's took the initiative in everything from repairing the USS YORKTOWN to discovering the Japanese carriers. Western and US culture emphasize individual freedom of initiative, and that is what won this battle. Admiral Halsey, despite his best wishes, was not who won this battle. In quite contrast, on the Japanese side, their Bushido-code culture suppressed individual initiative. When Admiral Yamamoto dictated one of the most stupid plan in all of naval history, not ONE single subordinate commander questioned the Admiral. On the other hand, western combat leaders work with staffs and war councils in a setting of peers. Fellow citizens in the United States are all equals. No truly bad ideas were really possible in the US Navy because discussion, freedom of thought, criticism, red-hatting and other analysis among commanders generally rooted out bad and idiotic thinking and plans. The Japanese did not have this culture of peer-ship. Rather, their culture was based on a feudal bushido-code aristocracy. By the end of the war, the Japanese had not developed one single new class of ship, aircraft or weapon, and built very few new equipment. The United States, on the other hand, dwarfed the Japanese with new planes, new ships, new tactics, new thinking, new technology, new weapons and massive industrial capacity. The US was adaptive. The Japanese ensconced. The US was flexible. Japan was rigid. The US obtained peer review of all plans. The Japanese dictated orders. Japan lost Midway due to its cultural way of thinking. It is not surprising that the Americans .. again and again and again .. always and constantly had such "good luck". It was not luck at all. The culture of the US reflects the achievement of centuries of Greco-Roman thinking, and that culture set the foundation for things to happen in the favor of the Americans again and again, battle after battle. Japan defeated itself through its own lack and inability to understand western culture DESPITE having adopted western arms, training and means. In fact, Admiral Yamamoto was educated at UCLA(?) I believe .. but failed to ever grasp the culture. He only knew enough to know that picking a fight with the west and the US ... was a mistake.
mathisje, Rome's loss at Cannes brought the destruction of Carthage. The US loss at Pearl Harbor brought the nuking of Japan. Russian leap into space brought EU and US dominance in space. Any free culture will outperform a dictatorship in the end.
I disagree that Midway was the turning point. It was a fantastic defeat of the IJN, but it was the battle at Guadacanal that truly set the Japanese into its death spiral. Though the IJN lost much of its talent, it still held a very powerful fleet and a surviving carrier force that was more than enough to challenge what the USN had in the Pacific, even with Wasp and Saratoga showing up. What Guadacanal did though was drag both the Japanese fleet and the Japanese army into something that they themselves tried to avoid from the very beginning: a battle of attrition. During that battle the US was brought to the brink, to the point where we had to borrow a British carrier just to cover for the losses we suffered, and we had no choice but to throw two of our newest battleships into combat because we literally had nothing left to stem the tide after the many battles in Ironbottom sound. However, we COULD sustain such losses, and in the end, the Japanese suffered a massive and lasting defeat that was so decisive that it would forever put them on the defensive. Midway showed that the US could win the war, while Guadacanal put us firmly on the path. Of course, really the moment the US won the war against Japan was when the first IJN aircraft took off the carrier decks on December 7th. The logistical disparity alone is breathtaking and it begs belief as to how the Japanese even entertained the thought that they could win against the US in the first place.
Oh the US Navy had some big culture problems. Check into the Richardson brothers. Better intelligence could have done much good w/o those guys. Rochefort even got sacked _after_ Midway!
I can't really sympathize with Levy's point of view. I feel like the authors of Shattered Sword made a much more sober and thorough evaluation while Levy's response almost seems like "No the US won because the US is tha best".
"America has always and will always have the tactical edge when it comes to warfare." This sentence. It's just the perfect example. The very reason I wrote what I wrote. This is the feeling I get from what Levy wrote. Just pure hubris, arrogance, and unsubstantiated patriotic gibberish. Thank you sir.
It does sound Jingoistic but...I'm not sure he is wrong. America does have the best funded military in the world. I mean it is true until it is no longer the case, and with the current administration it seems like that could be soonish.
Not in 1942. For all the things the american did right that day, they still had a fair amount of luck. There are several steps before and during the battle where different decisions made by the japanese could have made the outcome of the battle change drastically. If the Zuikaku had been there, the japanese would probably not have needed a second attack on midway and then they would have been able to attack the US ships as soon as they had been spotted. And even if they had decided to rearm their bombers, the japanese still would have 2 carriers to counter attack after losing 3, they would have had enough planes to put the yorktown out of the battle of not sinking it outright, and the 2nd counter attack would have been headed toward Enterprise and Hornet before the american could have any chance to finish the job. Then all bets would have been off. If Nagumo had not decided to charge the american fleet head on but had chosen to cautiously retreat to the north to put midway as far as possible, the US carriers attack would have come from a single vector, preventing the complete collapse of the japanese carrier air patrol suffered when facing threats coming from different directions. Then it is possible that the japanese would have been able to launch their attack and not lose all 3 carriers in the morning. If Tone N°4 had signaled carriers were there instead of just surface ships, Nagumo might have attacked sooner even with bombs designed for land targets or with a limited strike which would have indered the damages suffered later on. And there are also the parts where luck meddles with US pilots skills. What were the odds of finding a japanese destroyer leading to the combined fleet for american bombers in the whole ocean? If mcClusky had not found that destroyer (luck) and decided (skill) to follow her, then Enterprise bombers would not have destroyed both Kaga and Akagi, the 2 biggest carriers with the finest japanese pilots. Do you imagine what untold damage those 2 carriers could have done if they had been in any position to lauch their planes ? Also only 3 planes led by Richard Best managed to destroy Akagi. Best's bomb landed right in the middle of the elevator going through until exploding withing the lowest hangar where torpedo planed were being rearmed and refuelled. One of his wigmen also managed to jam the rudder of the ship. 3 bombers managed to put out of commission the flagship of the combined fleet. What are the odds given the low percentages of US hits throughout the day? It almost comparable to swordfishes putting a torp in the rudder of the Birsmarck. But if those men had not managed to do that (and they also attacked akagi despite breaking the navy doctrine because all other bombers had gone after Kaga) do you realize thrice the number of bombers could have been sent against yorktown? And the list goes on. The battle was not won thanks only to american brilliance that day. Fair enough the US navy fought admirably, but the japanese not only took the wrong decisions at every level but also suffered from quite alot of bad luck almost every time it mattered.
vlad78th all good points. And the list does go on and on. IJN should not sent a force to the Aleutians. Had that force gone directly south then the IJN would have had 82 more aircraft to attack the US carriers. IJN had the Ryujo and Jun’yō carriers that went to the Aleutians plus a cruiser and 5 destroyers. The IJN also kept back two smaller carriers in the Zuiho and Hosho. This was 45 more total planes. They stayed with the Yamato. IJN should have brought their battleships into battle and use them to shell Midway Island. Had they done this and with all the additions planes Nagumo would not have had to switch the bombs out of his planes. Code breaking would have been irrelevant. I’d the IJN was attacking from all sides the best the US could do was simply retreat and give up Midway island.
I believe that Nagumo should have launched the strike on the US fleet. Having the aircraft on board the carriers would not be good if an attack came, and they wouldnt be able to launch the planes if an attack came. Also, in a carrier battle, often he who strikes first will get an advantage. It is also important to understand something else though: why Nagumo decided against it. This can be attributed to the fact that Nagumo was someone who went by the manual instead of going by his instincts. Thus, he would almost always do it exactly by the book. In this case, waiting for the strike force to return from midway before launching would have been more in line with Japanese carrier doctrine.
This is more sports but I think in a way it applies in regards to "Victory Disease". I come from St. Louis. Rams 1999-2003 or 2004 were one of the most amazing offensive teams the NFL had ever seen in history. It was razzle dazzle, it was amazing, I'm not even into football, and this team felt like one of the greats. Ok, greatest football teams, there's a lot of greats, Dan Marino and the dolphins, Vince Lombardi's Greenbay Packers, Tom Landry's Cowboys, Cowboys were a force in the 90's of course. 1985 Bears easily one of the top 2 most legendary teams ever? 70's Pittsburg Steelers. And in the 2000's the Patriots. So in 2002, we were going into a 2nd Superbowl in not even 3 years? And we had started out our first 3 seasons 7-0 before we took a loss. Bear in mind though 95-99 were one of the shittiest teams in the NFL though. For me that's part of why it drew my attention so much. Anyways, we had a victory disease I think. Because we went into that Superbowl with the largest estimated spread between winners and losers in NFL history at that point, we were expected to beat the Patriots, by a full 2 touch downs by handicappers. It was nuts. Obviously that wasn't the case. Patriots go down in history as one of or THE most unrivaled NFL dynasty of all time. I'm not an NFL freak. I just have a penchant for remembering details and facts like this. But it's a good example of victory disease I think as well, too.
What I've always thought, and this is just in general about the whole war, was that cultural differences, and them not being taken into account, is what decided the war. For instance, how would the Japanese felt if they had been bombed at a major naval station like Pearl Harbor was? Would they be angry like the Americans got? I would say no. They would rather be shamed. The loss of face/honor at such a reeling surprise defeat would have touched the Japanese cultural mind in a far worse way then it did to the Americans. Assuming that your enemy will feel, at an emotional level, the same, and following through with it decided the War in the very beginning. If nothing else, the ability of the US to build ships was far greater then the Japanese. Even if it took a while to build up forces, and even more importantly keep up morale, the US was going to win. Americans simply refused to lose, in the end. They got angry, very much so. Hell, so much so that, after reviewing the pure destructive power of the atomic bombs, they used them.
I know this isn't from WW2 but I think the sentiment is the same. This was said by Marine John Ligato about the battle of Hue - "Americans Adapt. We Improvise. The most ferocious fighting machine the world has ever seen is a 19-year-old pissed off Marine. Because you'll take that kid from Detroit or Mississippi and you'll train him in Marine Corps boot camp, and you'll put him in a situation that's foreign to him, and he will adapt and improvise and become that situation and deal with it."
Air Recon As I understand it. IJN practice was to use floatplanes from escorting battleships and cruisers and to only use carrier aircraft for Combat Air Patrol.
john babylon got it correctly. you should have said more to make your point on Yamamoto. when he accepted this assignment to attack Pearl Harbor, he told everyone that what they were about to do was not a good idea. he explained to them that should they attack that they had six months to complete their plan and after that, the "Sleeping Giant will awaken". he told them that in six months after that first strike, the industrial might 0f the United States would produce more armament than the world had ever seen. Six months after December 7th came The Battle of Midway. he was Japan's greatest naval strategist. the problem that Yamamoto had was that his plans were flawed. like the American's did and Japan did not, the issue about Murphy's Law was the deciding factor- i really liked your presentation. my respects to you. thank you
"Your enemy has three courses of action open to him, and he usually chooses the fourth."- Helmuth von Moltke.
Possibly the worst aspect of the Japanese planning was their unguarded optimism: they believed they'd win, to the point of overlooking caution.
The primary flaw of Yamamoto's plan was that its success was dependent on Nimitz, Fletcher and Spruance doing exactly what Yamamoto expected them to do.
Well, everything had been going so well!
We sure were a bad match for them
The Japanese planners loved a complicated plan. Almost like more is always better
To be fair the Japanese went in with the Knowledge that to win the War, they HAD to win. It was less optimistism and more a knowledge they couldn't afford to lose.
I recommend Montemayor's video on "The Battle of Midway, told from the Japanese perspective". Its a detailed but easy to understand video. You are also put in the admirals seat, which makes a immersive experience
If only he would finish it.
@@eodyn7 he did, HE DID!!! IT'S finiShED!!!! _TWO MORE SEGMENTS!!!_
Excellent 3 part video complete.
And you're right it is an excellent presentation & experience.
Being able to to take a front seat in the battle is a very fun and immersive experience.
Cant wait for Task Force Admiral.
Japanese POV: Damn they're good...
American POV: I have no idea why the fuck this is working but i'll take it LMAO.
The Japanese reaction to the loss at Midway was telling. Everyone who was there was ordered to remain silent. They were also transfered to out of they way postings. Family members of the crews of the lost carriers were not told what had happened to their husbands/ brothers/ sons and were told not to ask any more questions.
I read that one way the Japanese were able to tell that Japan was losing the war was because even though the newspapers reported every battle against the Americans as an overwhelming victory, each new victory took place closer and closer to the Japanese home islands. Anyone in Japan with half a brain had to wonder why the Americans were getting closer after each defeat they suffered.
@@Tommykey07 same in germany. Great victories coming closer and closer to germany
What shocked the Japanese to their core was the fact that their doctrine failed them - they acted by the book - but the book was wrong.
A pity because the Japanese pilots who played the US in the war games the night before the battle, got everything right - even down to where the American carriers were located - at Point Luck.
You missed the Big One. The IJN didn't tell Tojo about it -- until the IJA confronted the IJN about newspapers provided by the German Ambassador. A whole month had gone by!
Pride is commonly a wrench in the gears of communication.
The Japanese themselves said that the primary cause was "victory disease". They had become used to winning and couldn't believe that they could lose. Let's not forget the incredible job done by Naval intelligence.
Agree...they rolled over inferior armed forces throughout the Pacific countries and used Banzai charges, like the Confederate "Rebel Yell", on poorly trained and lead troops. They had everything planned out for at least a year in advance.
They got way too COCKY before the game was even at halftime
The government by assassination has been going on for a while. Like taking the most patriotic people and putting them in a room, and then repeatedly stabbing the least patriotic of them without consequence. These guys could risk assassination by rival factions if they weren't yes-men.
Totalitarians are known to refuse bad news.
@King Royal Yes and no. Remember, Midway was intended to be a trap for the US Navy. The Japanese themselves recognized that Midway was not critical to them. It was just to lure for the "great sea battle to destroy the American navy.
@@sabrecatsmiladon7380simple. They weren't battling a 3rd rate army anymore
I've read many books and seen many documentaries about this battle and these were the key factors
1. The US knew they were coming including critical details of when and where from
2. The IJN suspected the US might know an attack was coming but had no idea their code was 80% broken by US intelligence and had already committed a giant fleet
3. The multiple failed attacks first by the land based aircraft and first few waves of carrier based aircraft were continual and overlapping, preventing Nagumo from launching any kind of strike
4. The last torpedo plane attack by the US drew the IJN CAP away and to a low altitude and with impeccable timing and good intuition by McClusky 50 dive bombers approached from two directions from much too high for the zeroes to have time to get after them.
5. Poor fire control systems on Japanese carriers coupled with the fact that there were bombs strewn across the hangar decks and fully fueled Japanese planes when those dive bombers struck.
In summary, the US had the element of surprise, not the Japanese and taking the incessant although ineffective attacks especially with extra land based aircraft they kept the IJN carrier force on their heels until they could deliver a mortal blow to enemy. Despite having superior quality in aircraft and pilot expertise over the US, those 5 minutes basically sealed the outcome.
Mostly agree, except - there's been several folks who have pointed out that the Zero's speed and rate of climb means that the Japanese fighters could have easily reached the dive bombers anyway.... if they'd known they were coming, except for the other inconvenient fact: the Zeroes could have responded but most of them had already blown all their ammo shooting down the torpedo bombers. It's more the fact that all the low altitude attacks had distracted all attention away from searching for high altitude attack formations, so no-one noticed the incoming attack, than any inability of the Zero to get back up there if anyone had seen the dive bombers approaching.
@Joseph Russo. Probably item 1 (which is linked to item 2) are the most telling of the outcome in the list. Even then, as you write, "[were it not for] those five minutes".
To me the biggest failure in books and documentries is the lack of acknowledgement for the role of the the island of Midway. The island, IMO, should be called the "4th" US carrier. It provided soooo many resources critical to the battle. The island's defenses launched army and naval air attacks via B-17's and B-26's, fighters, and the most critical aircraft the PBY Catalina. The Cat's were used to scout enemy locations and provide intelligence over a 1200 mile range.
These island attacks held Nagumo's hands when it came to responding and really prevented him from being able to respond effectively. The constant attacks from the islands forces essentially held the IJN's aircraft in the hangers and constantly delayed the need to launch aircraft to protect their carriers.
@@markjensen7091 You make some interesting and valid points.
But you're missing the key thing that made all of this possible. Code talkers. US had 30 second response time during communication, when Japanese had 20 minutes.
"An argument without a counter-argument appears usually very impressive and convincing, yet ultimately can be quiet misleading" - in today's world this is a critically important yet so often neglected :( great video as usual!
Yep. I too thought that was a very strong finish for a MHV video. They are always worth watching, but I feel this one has many implications beyond the battle of midway and historical analysis. It seemed as much a video about how to lead a good debate as much as it was a video about an actual battle. I approve.
I am not sure though, the way how people keep arguing about rather earth is flat without providing proper counter-argument seems to be the trend those day
Braindead
well planning a battle is similar to a debate . The battle itself is indeed akin to a debate .
There are fighting admirels and then their are all the rest. (Meaning great naval leaders are as rare as great heavyweight boxers. We can go generations between the greats.)
Yamamoto and Bill Halsey were ambitious but deeply flawed naval leaders. Both sought their glory in WWII. The American side was wise enough to, at that critical moment, see that Bill Halsey was no where near the battle. He was the ranking admirel, but no matter. The more rigid Japanese had Yamamoto in Command. But, he was there for glory and not to do his job as best he could.
The Japanese have a tradition for dispatching enemies with archaic weapons. At Midway US flyers we're fished from the waters by submarines and the pilots would be ritually beheaded on the deck of the sub. Yamamoto endangered the operation by a similar behavior. Yamamoto understood the value of the carrier, but at Midway the plan was that the Japanese carriers only "pin" the US fleet, distract them as Yamomoto (who was with a separate group of slower, obsolete battleships.) moved in and performed a ritual "beheading" of the US fleet with his battleships. He convinced himself that the US was badly overmatched and he could pursue personal glory at the expense of assuring victory as a first priority. He kept the only Japanese radar with him and the battleships, so the Japanese carriers did not have the advantage of knowing when their enemy approached. And Yamamoto could not warn the carriers by radio without revealing his location to the Americans. Yamamoto made a mess of it and assured Japan's defeat by his grasping for personal glory.
Matteo what is quiet misleading?
Your channel is one of the few history channels that focuses on the logistics on both sides, backed by quotes and data. Great stuff!
Check TIK channel aswell. ^^
TIK is even more detailed. You need to check it out!
Sorry, but I find TIK often asserting too much based on his sources which also sometimes seem to be picked one-sided according to his biases. I personally don't like that, so I don't watch him anymore and wouldn't recommend his channel. But opinions may vary and certainly not all he is saying or presenting is wrong or bad.
Logistics win wars. :) Midway has always been my favorite battle, I did a paper on it in HS.
TIK?
The Yorktown was not sunk by an air attack but by the Japanese submarine I-168 while being towed towards port.
That was just the 'last straw'.
@@zogzog1063 she may have made it into port, and if so, probably could have been present for Guadalcanal. Imagine how differently the naval actions there could have played out with an extra carrier
@@archiveacc3248 if it was just Coral sea damage. It’s likely she would have been ready in time for Santa Cruz. But with this damage. Even if Nimitz had every shipwright and builder at puget sound working around the clock. While preparing an Air Group at the same time. It will be cutting it close.
@@archiveacc3248 Yorktown, had she not been ambushed by I-168, would have needed months of repairs before she would have been operational again, as eating two torpedoes is something any capital ship will need yard time for. If she had only had bomb hits, she would have been repairable at Pearl, but torpedo damage requires a drydock and facilities that were only available at San Diego to fix. It wasn't just the holes in her that had to be fixed, it was the shock damage around the holes. They were going to have to rebuild part of Yorktown's hull before she could see service again. So a month for transit and 6 months of repairs, then a couple weeks back to the fight. She would have missed Guadalcanal, just as Saratoga did.
Actually, the Yorktown was finally sunk by American torpedoes. The attack by the I168 stopped the recovery efforts and sank a destroyer that was providing power to the DC crews.
"Everybody has a Plan till they get punched in the Face" Mike Tyson
"It's a bad plan that can't be changed" - Julius Caesar.
@@Conn30Mtenor No plan survives contact with the enemy, Von Clausewitz.
My cat's breath smells like catfood. - ralph wiggum.
@@feelthepony well played sir xD
@@ericsbuds sir: you are a man of culture. It was well played. 😸
Your research seem thorough and unbiased.
I salute you.
American naval intelligence & one of the luckiest events in military history. The American dive bombers getting lost & then suddenly finding the Japanese carriers at their most vulnerable moment.
The Americans had the good fortune that often favours the brave (and the well prepared).
tyro apache - Yup, the old “follow the silly Japanese destroyer back to the main IJN battle fleet” trick... but they weren't lost, they always knew where they were, they just didn't know the exact position of the enemy yet. McClusky was tasked to search for the enemy, and that's what he did... and successfully I might add.
Chad Gautier The luck part was them getting lost in the first place. The then they got even more lucky finding the Japanese fleet at a moment when they're most vulnerable.
Not to mention the tactical victory, but strategic loss for Japan in the Coral sea. The two extra carriers would probably have a huge impact on the battle
Ignace Jespers The battle of coral sea, I think really didn't have as huge an impact. The Japanese still had a superior naval task force for the battle. And despite this video pointing out how minimal the number of aircraft between each naval force was. One needs to remember, at that point in the war, the Japanese navy had superior fighters (Zero) & pilots, who were better trained & far more experienced. If the dive bombers don't show up when they do. The strike being launched against the American carriers, would've obliterated them.
The Japanese violated the first principle of combat, and paid the price. Always base your plans on what the enemy CAN do, and not on what you EXPECT them to do.
Yamamoto made another big mistake (much greater than Nagumo's ones): on Yamato he was totally aware that the surprise was gone (yamato's big antennas perfectly received the outstanding growth of radio traffic from and to midway base) and kept radio silence thinking that also the shorter akagi's antennas had received the messages. Not at all.
So he preferred surprise (that was clearly gone) than efficiency. This was a capital mistake.
@@paoloborghi2024 Very good point!!!!
@TheWingsofprey probably Yamamoto wasn't completely conscious on this situation. The fact is that nobody advised Nagumo about the outstanding growth of American radio messaging to and from Midway.
There was lack of communication between the 2 admirals and high retention of radio silence.
TRUE. Do NOT expect an enemy to act according to your 'script'. That leads to DEFEAT.
Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable" - Dwight D. Eisenhower
I was surprised that it wasn’t mentioned that the Yorktown was actually hit twice by strike groups before it was sunk, leading Nagumo to believe that there was only one US carrier remaining before essentially having his men take a break, which may not have been the decisive factor, but it deserves to be mentioned. One of the real miracles of the battle was simply the fact that a heavily damaged Yorktown was able to be put back to sea so quickly. The fact that it was already badly damaged at the start of the battle, and was then able to shrug off the first strike is amazing, the repair crews deserve a lot of credit, the second strike assumed it was another carrier simply because the crews had repaired her so well that there was little evidence of the first attack.
“Oops, we picked-on the wrong country.” - Emperor Hirohito at the end of WW2.
Interestingly though Hirohito would end up building a fairly good relation with the US postwar, despite being quite involved in the war.
'When we are finished with them, Japanese will be spoken only in Hell!'-'Bull' Halsey, December 8, 1941, after bringing Enterprise into port.
they lost due to nagumo's failures
I have studied this subject so much. One thing I find so surprising(hindsight is always 20/20) was how afterwards, the Japanese were not more suspicious that their codes had been broken. The fact that Midway itself had so much more action as observed by subs, and that the US carriers were already there and waiting should have tipped the IJN that the US knew they were coming. I read some leaders did suspect that-and some small changes were made to codes-but there was not a complete change in what they used
Well, one of the Japanese scout planes had problems being launched, by the time they had better info, it was already too late for a change of plans....
The perception of the battle as a miracle has a good deal to do with the echoes of the time passing down through cultural osmosis. Americans felt like they were on the back foot after the sudden war and then the Japanese conquests of SE Asia. That America possessed close parity in strength at the time in an objective sense contrasts with Americans anxious about a war suddenly dropped on their doorstep. The surprise of the victory has a lot to do with it serving as good news after months of bad to middling news - even strategic victories like Coral Sea came with a bloody price, and are hard to sell to a concerned public.
But Midway was such an overwhelming victory that it’s importance was easily transmitted and remained powerful for years later. For those at the time, it seemed like a miracle relative to their experiences at that moment - and American retellings of the story have continued that narrative.
Not surprisingly. The stunning swiftness with which 3/4 of the Japanese carrier force was annihilated made sure the battle became the stuff of legends. Had that Japanese submarine not finally finished off the Yorktown, she might have made it home and made the battle a 4-0 whitewash. But even as it stands, losing one carrier (and a hastily repaired one at that) to sink four is a damn good trade.
jsm666 it’s also about the timing. It was a miracle that came at an opportune time... and was touted as a miracle at home to help build war support. That ensured it was a battle that was remembered by the people at home as well as the soldiers, sailors and airmen who were there - and why it has maintained a mythos to this day.
I love that the video explains the nuts and bolts of this popular assumption, showing how it doesn’t exactly gel with what actually did happen.
+jsm666 Half, not 3 quarters.
Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu. Notwithstanding any others present, these were the four against which the Americans were engaged. The first three were annihilated in the initial American attack; Hiryu was finished off afterwards. So that's how I got three quarters.
"close parity in strength at the time"? What have YOU been smoking? ROTFL.
Code breakers allowed US to create an ambush in the vastness of the Pacific. They are unsung heroes- all else stems from their genius.
they usa broke the codes before the war... USA wanted war.
Paul Gee
yes, they should be remembered too.
00Billy nope they just weren't stupid saw what was about to happen that war with the empire of Japan was likely
"was likely" so you dont know... lol
LOOK IT UP.
after a year of sanctions.... no one especially the usa were surprised.
It was all a set up/.
00Billy - _You_ look it up: the diplomatic code had been broken, but the high level IJN codes had only been partially broken and had been changed immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor (and please note: it was a shared effort by the US, UK NZ, Aus, and the Netherlands). Obviously, before the Dec 7th attack, the US knew an attack was probable, but _when_ and _where_ was open for debate. All of this is well documented from multiple sources. Read a book sometime, it's the only cure for ignorance.
The main flaw with the Japanese strategy was to assume that an Ambusher couldn't get Ambushed themselves! They went in to Midway, confident in their own plan, but without considering that the other guy gets to choose his own course of action..
damagejackal10 Actually Yamamoto suspected that the Naval code has been cracked and sent scouts out to where he would have planted an ambush and got it spot on. However the plane that discovered the American carriers had a faulty radio. Had it been working, Yamamoto would have been able to strike the US carriers first and most likely won Midway and possibly got the USA yo sue for peace as they would have had no carrier fleet and hardly any capital ships left.
I think If he suspected that he would double the scout planes but he didn't.
This battle is just facinating
Denis Muto I don't understand your comment. He did suspect it and sent out extra scouts. He couldn't have expected a faulty radio however.
they had +300 Aircraft If he really suspected that the enemy knew the plan, he would have send more, he only send 7 scout planes ONLY 7, and some of them had some trouble with the engines and of course bad luck of the radio...
If I am correct even the US send some dive bombers as scout... Of course not every plane is a perfect scout but you get the point... If yamamoto knew something we would have been a lot more cautious.
Denis Muto I never said he knew for certain, I said he suspected. The US knew that the Japanese were attacking and were ready. The Japanese did not know the US had cracked their Naval codes and thus did not expect them to be there so soon. The plan was to draw them out once Midway was attacked. Furthermore you miss the point. He correctly predicted the position of the US fleet and a scout overflew the US Navy. Only a faulty radio saved them from defeat. If he had sent 100 planes out, why would he cover the same area rather than covering other possible positions, considering how vast the ocean is? The issue was not the lack of scouts, but one single faulty radio.
This is a clever treatise. You've turned an 'examination of hindsight' into a science and into an intriguing and entertaining technique. Many thanks.
an examination of hindsight is crucial to understand if one intends to plan successful military operations. failures must be understood as completely as victories, and those lessons learned and applied...
Im japanese but I am proud of the us navy's victory in this battle.
Because no country will ever make a carrier division that can fight equally with the US navy.
And I'm glad if you know about the CV:Hiryu's counterattack.
I hope the US-Japan alliance will be stronger🇺🇸🇯🇵
hibiki minami : both the Japanese and German races and cultures were incredible challenges for the Allies in WW2 . It is amazing a country as small as Japan and Germany fought off so many Allied countries for 5 years...even more amazing is how Japan and Germany recovered so quick after the war to become industrial powerhouses to this day.
Happy Hertzair It's called Marshall plan.
What idiot leaves out the Hiryu's counterstrike? It fatally crippled the Yorktown! Didn't sink it, though, but l won't split hairs. Who does that!?
totally agree. id be a very sad boy without my daily dose of anime. Japanese artists and authors have mastered their craft.
@@hertzair1186 The reason they recovered so quickly was because the US helped them and MADE them do so. Not only did the US give them billions and billions of dollars worth of financial aid, but they also played a key part is orchestrating the government to get the country to recover. Germany owes nearly all of their modern success to US assistance, and even their modern military is puny and mostly rely on US defenses stationed there.
You have the best sources, respect. Parshall is an authoritative source. Victory intoxication was also responsible for German defeat in Russia.
Not exactly. It wasn't victory disease that was responsible for the German defeat in Russia... it was desperation.
Germany was running out of oil. Hell, they invented Coal Liquefaction to stave off the lack of oil, but it was in critical supply. They HAD to push to the middle east with their developed oil fields if they wanted to continue to put gas in their tanks. Unfortunately, Stalingrad was the perfect staging area for Russia to cut that supply line, and HAD to be eliminated and occupied to protect this vital resource.
In many ways, Stalingrad was even more important to the German offensive than Moscow was. That was the key turning point. The Germans turned Stalingrad into an abattoir, both for their own men and Germany's. They kept throwing bodies into Stalingrad because they knew that as long as it held, Germany was all but defeated. Germany didn't predict such fierce opposition, and was counting arms production for troop deployments. Russia sent bodies. There were more soldiers than guns sent. Germany didn't anticipate that. They had been fighting the French and British, who tended to rely on quality over quantity. They were not used to an opponent who realized that quantity possessed a quality all its own.
@@ShneekeyTheLost Germany lost because they tried to fight the war on too narrow an industrial base. The Germans walked in and out of the Soviet Union. When the Soviets arrived in Berlin at the end of the war, they were fully motorized with each each soldier wearing a pair of US made boots. The Germans hauled everything ,exceeding the modest rail network with horses. The number one haulded product: horse feed.
I agree. Hitler conducted the campaign as if he could not possibly lose. In August the Germans were 200 miles from Moscow and he started moving his panzers around. Guderian was livid. If Hitler had left the war to his extraordinary Generals they would have taken Moscow. They probably would have lost anyway, but by not taking Moscow in the initial campaign the Wehrmacht did not have a chance.
Correction: The Yorktown wasn't ultimately sunk by the air attack, but the attack lead to it, when a Japanese picked her off later on.
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One thing lost the battle of midway for the empire of the sun : DAUNTLESS!
Military History Visualized - I love your content, your conclusions are usually right on the money ! This video is no exception.
At Midway the IJN failed to take into account that the element of surprise for Japan may not be won. The IJN plan was dependent upon absolute surprise. The best military plan assumes that your enemy can read your codes, and as such redundancy must be built into a successful campaign. Even if the US Navy had only 2 of their carriers at Midway, without the element of surprise the battle odds would essentially have been that of parody because of the airfield on the island of Midway. That stationary and UNSINKABLE carrier, known as Midway Island could take wave after wave of punishment while a single accurate bombing run from just one of the 17 B-17’s stationed on the island could have knocked one of Japan’s carriers out of the fight.
Although those land-based B-17’s had no damage impact on the IJN fleet at Midway the effect that they did have was to keep the main battle fleet off balance. Further the IJN failed to account for Midway’s land-based reconnaissance aircraft, which allowed for US better targeting of Japan’s main battle fleet.
With 3 US floating carriers plus the unsinkable land-based carrier of Midway Island, the US had the equivalent of 5-6 carriers. Just one B-17 carries the equivalent of 4 Navy dive-bombers or while 17 B-17’s carried 1 1/2 times the bomb weight of a Lexington Class Carrier.
It was a damaged land-based B-26 flown directly into the IJN carrier Akagi that may have led Admiral Nagumo to launch his reserve strike force, armed for anti-ship operations, at Midway Island instead. This move countermanded what Admiral Yamamoto had ordered in the original battle plan, and left the Akagi vulnerable to attack from US carrier aircraft.
Every naval action in WW II by the IJN depended upon surprise. From Pearl Harbor straight through the war till Okinawa and Operation Ten-Go, also known as the Battle of the East China Sea, the expectation of surprise attack by the Japanese Navy was what the IJN hung each and every plan upon. They expected the US Navy to be one step behind them in planning. They saw the US Admiralty as upstarts rather than equally capable strategists.
I love military history but I hate reading books for a long period of time. It has always been conflicting for me when I want to pick up some good books to read without someone forcing me to do so. Your channel is a great balance for me and I hope more people can discover your channel. Great work again!
My best advice for you is make reading to a habit. Read an hour everyday on a particular time that suits you the best and stick with it. Don't read books at night that aren't fantasy novels for instance because you can't process all the important informations at night that well. The best time for this kind of genre to read is probably early morning and noon :)
Thanks for the advice. I remember reading history books for college classes on the Pacific War.I loved the books and the knowledge that I have learnt from it but I only binge read those books before essays and the experience is horrible. Maybe if I make it a habit I will actually be able to enjoy the process along with the result.
I agree with this comment 100%! don't have the time to study everything deeper than Wikipedia has to offer 😕
Yeah I am fully aware. Have done much critical thinking myself and also does my own research from time to time but it is simply impossible to go deep on everything I am interested in so finding a good enough secondary source is important for me.
And no, I am not giving up school work, video games and beer to spend all my time on books.
I don't have time and interest for that. For me it's enough to watch a few opinions. No one really knows the truth anyway, people just guess closer or further from the truth.
The Japanese intended to do one thing at a time. They got forced into doing two things at once and accomplished neither.
James Ricker , you get my vote for most insightful comment!
Actually, their plan had many places where they were doing two things at once -- invade the Aleutians, provide a distraction to the US Fleet, lure the US Carrier Fleet out to attack and ambush it, bomb the Midway Garrison, Invade Midway Island....it was self contradictory. How could the Aleutians be a distraction if it happens at the same time as the attack? If it did distract the fleet, doesn't this mean that the carriers would be safe blowing up the small fleet supporting the attack in Alaska and the Kido Butai would be stuck idle doing nothing? If the Japanese kept the plan secret, why would they think the US Fleet at Pearl would be ready to respond instantly? They knew we had substantial forces in the South Seas at Coral Sea. Might we not have deployed carriers south with the supposed loss of both carriers there? Why would the US Fleet even rush off to protect Midway or the Aleutians? We had not done so for Wake, Guam, or the Phillipines, after all. And the Japanese couldn't stay stationed off Midway forever even if they had taken it - the would have eventually had to retire and the base would be exposed for capture at the US convenience.
Good video! I haven't had a chance to read Shattered Sword yet. Craig Symonds in The Battle of Midway makes another series of persuasive arguments. First, he noted that had the Japanese scout plane from the Tone launched on time, its search pattern would have actually not detected the American fleet. Second, as was alluded to in the video (but not explained) the Japanese wargames had a simulation where the Americans appeared pretty much from the same direction they actually did and hit two of the American carriers. He also went into detail on how the Hornet airgroup led by Cmd. Stanhope Ring set on an incorrect course, which Waldron's formation of torpedo planes disobeyed orders and broke formation to arrive at the Japanese carrier fleet. All but one man from Waldron's group was killed, and the attack seems to have alerted the US strike groups of the Japanese location. Symonds argued that had Ring flown on the correct course, they might have sunk all the Japanese carriers and spared the Yorktown. He also suggested Nagumo was struck by the tenacity of the American pilots from Midway who flew in suicidally against overwhelming odds.
Overall, like Shattered Sword, Symonds also presents an excellent critical look at Midway that uses Japanese primary sources that appeared to have been overlooked by previous authors and counters the "Miracle at Midway" argument. I highly recommend this one.
A Dawn Like Thunder by Robert J Mrazek also provides an excellent account of VT-8's attacks from both Midway Island (using the new Avengers flown separately to the island) and the doomed Hornet Air Group.
"The Rising Sun" by John Toland. A little dated (1970), but a good book on the entire Pacific War from a Japanese perspective.
My Great Uncle was at Midway. He lived till he was 90. Fun fact
Zako Metereveli Respect to your Great Uncle. :)
My Dad was on the Yorktown at Coral Sea and Midway
Well he was a hero ;)
Its great. But fun not at all. Its boring. Several thousands of men defending Midway, and most of them had nephews and also great ones. A lot of them died if 90 or older. That one of them uncles is yours Is great and fun for you but for nobody else.
I had an uncle who was in the Battle of The Bulge (he didn't know it at the time, was just out there in the woods trying to keep the howitzers going). He lived to 92. I also had an uncle in the Flying Tigers in China, another on a destroyer in the Pacific, another in the Army air corps as well as my dad who were both about to deploy when the war ended. All the sons came out of the war unscathed but neither of my grandparents on that side survived the war due to stress and illness.
Absolutely incredible video filled to the brim with insight on one of WWII's most famous naval battles, your content is only getting better!
It's been my contention for a long time, that while Midway sealed the fate of the Imperial Japanese, It was at the Coral Sea and Port Moresby that Japan actually lost the war. They could have sued for peace after that on way better terms than spending the next 3 years being systematically being crushed! It's all a moot point, once their communications were compromised there was nothing much they could really do about it. On the other hand, it took time and a hard learning curve on the part of the U.S Navy, Marines and Army along with sorting out things like faulty torpedos and getting the production of the things needed to fight the war. The Pacific was a huge battle space, both in terms of size and distance. It was a huge logistical problem that had to be overcome, all the while playing second fiddle to the ETO, then there was the China-Burma theater and not only that, America provided Mountains of lend-lease aid to Britain, Russia( Soviet Union) China. All of it could have been avoided, but the leadership in the UK and France was still gun shy from the first world war, the Soviets colluded and America Isolationist. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20 things were not so clear in the Spring and Summer of '42. The most unsung people in the Second World War was the guy or guys who figured out how to load a ship and in what order you load it.
I read up on the land battle for Port Moresby, what a struggle! The ANZACs really had a bitter fight, as did the Japanese army.
Imho nothing would have stopped the americans short of a sound defeat at Guadalcanal with the loss of all carriers AND the marine divisions sent there. It is possible to imagine that if by the end of 1942 the US would have continued to suffer from several defeats, maybe the public and politicians might have considered putting the pacific theater on ice and focus on europe. After all, no matter what Japan would do, they were in no position to invade Hawaï and even less the west coast whereas letting England be invaded or Russia fall could have had much more severe repercussions.
Well written George, but in my opinion you have the wrong battle. Just my very personal opinion mind you, but I think it was Guadalcanal that did the Japanese in. In Coral Sea the US learned it could go toe to toe with the Japanese Navy. But, in Guadalcanal it was the American fighting man who found his legs. Army, and marines, and the Navy as well after the disaster with Crutchly. Strategically, as with Coral Sea, the importance of Guadalcanal can't be understated. I'm sure you'll agree with me, on this point. In the end however, Japan was doomed the moment the first bomb left the aircraft over Pearl Harbor. It was really only ever a matter of how, and how long it would take.
I disagree that the Japanese lost the war at the Coral Sea. I would say that they lost the war at Pearl Harbor. The only hope the Japanese had to win was to make the war too costly in lives, money and time for the Americans to stomach. Opening the war with a humiliating and (seemingly) underhanded attack like Pearl Harbor ensured that the American public was going to be angry enough to pay any price. America's weakness was the will to fight, and Japan handed them a reason to fight to the bitter end on a silver platter.
If instead the Japanese had just gone after Indonesia and Malaysia without attacking the US, they would have either avoided war with America entirely or more likely forced Roosevelt to declare war on them, fundamentally changing the political calculus. Would Americans be able to stomach bloodbaths like Okinawa or Tarawa if they had started the war themselves?
well put!!!!!
They lost because they neither understood or respected their enemy! They were convinced that they were Smarter, better equipped, better Trained, more highly motivated and Superior in every way. They were wrong!!
They were basically that skinny-ass kid that thought they could take on the big guys, and got smacked around when they tried it.
I just want to say that your channel is absolutely amazing, I am a major fan of military history especially of ww2, but your channel is especially great because of the objective view, you always state facts and very reliable sources and always have a very objective point of view. Thank you for all of the great content and rock on \m/
I love it when he talks about both sides of a battle with Japan or even Japan's logistics and how it could've been better. A very open view and very entertaining.
I have only read and studied naval combat in the 17th century, but I can't help shake off the impression that naval battles are more prone to happenstance than other types of engagements. Major impactors like the weather, lines of communication, group movements and enemy intelligence combine badly with the general decisive nature of naval engagements: once in, it's hard to get out unless both combatant's noses have been bloodied.
It isn't so weird that with that idea in mind, the authors of the work you cited flip back and forth between a decisive statement and a more reluctant one: naval combat depends on the willingness to engage and, once engaged, happenstance rears its ugly head.
It is ttue.
And its mostly a result of them being fought on larger timescales by fewer assets in fewer battles.
The rule of avrages has less chance to apply.
100 percent TRUE.
There was quite a bit of happenstance in land wars for much of human history as well, since the armies fielded were generally much smaller, and more difficult to replace, which meant that decisive actions were extremely impactful.
Then industrial war happened and everything on land became a huge war of attrition because they could just keep replacing the losses and things were rarely decisive. Except when they were, like the Battle of France, where a combination of bold action, a lot of luck, and a lot of incompetence saw Germany win.
16:22 "Yet it is a good reminder that an argument without a counter-argument appears usually very impressive and convincing yet ultimately can be quite misleading."
Classic wisdom. Proverbs 18:17, "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." (ESV)
I cannot remotely grasp how much time goes into your video,
jolly good work!
We also have to consider English isn’t his first language.
@@jamiekamihachi3135 I didn't know that. Magnificent effort all the more!
Excellent stuff! I never thought that such in-depth analysis would be so available. It seems that WWII docs peaked in the 1970s, YT has added so much info and analysis! Thanks.
Yamamoto was used to fighting an enemy that was retreating. He was in a sense fighting against AI or Bots. Then he realized too late the enemy was not retreating, were not Bots going into battle as he expected them to do and far from being lured were in fact luring the IJN onto their trap.
He went hunting and became the hunted.
The Americans didn't lure, they set a trap at a point the Japanese were already preparing to attack.
Also, the retreating thing is ridiculous. Where the U.S. Retreated from was because the Japanese forced it too in battle. They didn't just start retreating. But the Americans had struck back several times, though the success was mostly in moral.
Really excellent detailed diagnosis, both on the battle and the historians!
I'm an amateur historian with good knowledge about this battle (not excellent, but good) and you've added to that knowledge's finer details considerably! Thank you!
There is a reason for IJN air group not reinforcing other carriers, most air group is trained on a specific carrier and will stay on said carrier once they reach combat effectiveness, that added to the rivalry between ships and you get a very unhealthy human resources problem
Also because of the night landings, while the airmen of those flight groups were mostly intact the airgroup still lost most of their strike aircraft during the battle. It's rather doubtful that the Japanese could have made the group ready to be operation in time for the battle.
But they did it several times afer Midway. During the battle of the salomons and Santa Cruz, both Zuikaku and Shokaku airgroups were made of pilots from different carriers gathered to make up for the losses. It worked perfectly given the standardized procedures of the IJN. At Midway, they just didn't feel the need.
All, there were moments when the Japanese could still have assembled a formidable air wing, if they'd had an un-burning carrier deck to fly them from. Moreover each Map carrier had reserveaircraftin kit form which they couldn't assemblrin time be useful. The failureofthe Japanese carrier's fire fighting arrangements eventually destroyed Kido But!
Enjoyed your analysis of the Midway campaign. I believe you're leaving out some critical points which I would like to pass on to you. But first I would like to comment on the plans being overly complex. There was a comment on another video dealing with the subject of "The Battle of Midway" and how the mind set of Japanese worked at that time. When any plan was drawn up they put in place rules and then ran wargames to validate a plan they were going to use. If they lost the battle they would NOT look for fault with the plans but just change the rules to change the outcome in there favor. I think that could be classified as part of your description of "victory disease". Here is the point which you do mention. In my opinion, cracking there is code is a HUGE advantage and the Japanese with there overly complex plan and assumptions about there enemy do not put into place a means of protecting themselves. And this is evident because the submarine that showed up at Pearl Harbor to watch over the carrier forces they were trying to destroy wasn't just hours or a day late, it was an entire week late. That is a complex plan with NO safety valve. And my second point. Part of the plan was the taking of Port Moresby. Oh sure, they thought they had sunk a carrier but there initial plan failed and yet no one drew back to reassess the plan. Which brings me to my first observation. The Japanese Navy had NO CONCEPT of damage control. None!!! And this shows up because twice they reported Carriers sunk, once at Coral Sea and once at Midway just because one or more bombs had hit there target. As an example, damage control was built into our carriers. A carrier carries lots of "aviation fuel" a very volatile substance. When attacked the hoses on American Carriers are drained then filled with nitrogen. Not Japanese carriers. And my second observation is the American ships had radar, not the Japanese ships. A big difference if you are given time to prepare for an attack versus finding out when they are already screaming down at you from above.
I lost Midway everytime playing the computer game based on the actual event... and I lost badly.
I can't believe we won .
then it was a faulty simulation.
The game was probably balanced to give Japan and even chance.
Or more likely gave the Japanese better fleet defense than they actually had.
@John Smith maybe battlestations: midway
Playing the Japanese, you know the American carriers are out there.
The US won because the RNG was generous to America in the real battle!
The Japanese did more things wrong, and the Americans did more things right. There's rarely one thing that decides a battle, but people in general look for simple answers. It's only scholars who are willing to study and truly understand the complexities involved.
LOL. Teachers teach because they cannot do. You do realize the people analyzing the data at usa war college are soldiers? Only a soldier can understand ... Others put in laymans terms for the common man
Perhaps ONE THING that did affect the outcome was the Japanese destroyer that had stayed behind to depth charge an American submarine. One or two American flights of dive bombers that could not find their Japanese targets followed that destroyer as it steamed at high speed back to its fleet and those bombers wound up sinking 2 or 3 of the Japanese carriers. Those Japanese carriers were on the verge of launching a massive air strike that would devastated the American fleet.
@@peterhunt135 Timing is everything. Was it just a fluke? I don't believe that for a moment.
@@ToddSauve There was amazing courage and sacrifice on the part of the American Torpedo Bombers -- they were slaughtered (they did not have a chance) and yet these pilots pressed on their attack. BUT if that Japanese destroyer did not lead the American Dive Bombers to the Japanese Carriers a MASSIVE 150 plane attack is launched by the Japanese against the American Carriers and the Japanese win a decisive victory at Midway -- and it's an entirely different war.
@@peterhunt135 It sure helps to have somebody upstairs looking out for you ...
The Quick turnaround of the Yorktown was made possible the US response after the Pearl Harbor Attack. The US had a huge number of Naval salvage and repair workers in Pearl harbor recovering the sunken and damaged ships. They were all assigned to the Yorktown.
Us Carriers showed they were better designed to survive battle damage, and suppress fires.
The Aircraft from Midway and the unsuccessful torpedo attacks caused japanese carriers to maneuver in ways that prevent air operations. Japanese CAP patrol aircraft ran out of 20mm ammo and were requesting to resupply when US dive bombers arrived.
The US also made first use of new fighter tactics at Midway (Thatch Weave), which reduced the effectiveness of Japanese fighter protection.
Finally one of the most fatal parts to Japan was the diversionary attack, not only did it strip 2 carriers from Midway, the US captured a flyable Zero in the Aleutian Islands. The Weaknesses of the Zero were discovered and applied to fighter tactics, and were sent to Grumman to influence the Design of the F6F. The Result was that even when the Japanese rebuilt strength for the battle of the Philippine sea, The new US planes, Tactics, and proximity AA fuses lead to an end of effective Japanese Naval forces.
You wrote: "Us Carriers showed they were better designed to survive battle damage, and suppress fires." Strongly agree. And contrast the USN's tight DC & fire fighting practices with the embarrassingly sloppy IJN (leaving open fuel lines and ordnance laying around on the flight deck at the time of the attack) in this battle. These sorts of details add up and win or lose battles and ultimately wars. Having spent much time in Japan, sloppy is about the last word I'd normally use to describe the Japanese, but they really dropped the ball at Midway. They seemed generally confused.
As for the Akutan Zero - things like that were bound to happen in such a huge war. Most major warring nations captured, through various means some planes of the opposing side. The Japanese had a few captured Corsairs etc. It is the greaterUS industrial capacity, with consequently greater ability to react to such intelligence couos, that was the deviding factor in the long run.
They needed the Americans to respond to the attack the way the Japanese expected. They didn't not expect the US codebreakers to know the plan, that the Aleutians were bait. The Americans had a bit of luck as well. The indecision between finishing off Midway or setting up to attack the US Carriers, with Dauntless's attacking the carriers with lots of ordnance on the carrier decks contributed to their doom.
leftcoaster67 actually the Aleutian Islands wasn’t a diversion. In no document from the war by the Japanese indicate it was ever supposed to be a diversion. Also the amount of forces deployed where too larger than what they would’ve likely deployed if it was truly a diversion. But the major problem was that Yamamoto plan thought the US was going to bring it’s slow BBs from Pearl Harbor however the USN has other plans and left the BBs behind.
leftcoaster67
Luck went both ways. Japanese dodged all early bombs and torpedoes from first wave of attacks from Midway. Also dodged submarines placed in their path. Could easily have lost a carrier early on. Also with the sinking of Yorktown which might have been saved. US made their own luck via code breaking genius and gutsy aggressive action from admirals on down.
@ Paul Gee.
Yes it is true that American skill and determination won the battle, but it is also true that the needle swung heavily in favor for the US Navy that day.
Maybe because Devastator Torpedo bombers were flying coffins. Sad, when you consider they are superior to Swordfish. But Avengers later on in the war were far superior.
A book by Capt. Tamechi Hara, "Destroyer Captain" throws a much more critical perspective on Midway and the IJN policies and strategies. According to Hara, the hubris was a major factor and the Japanese were far too confident. He also notes systemic issues after Midway with individual commanders and the insular attitude of the Army in government vs the naval views of strategy. The Midway period is only short, but it's a fantastic read. Hara was almost the only surviving destroyer captain after the way, I think.
I love history, especially WWII. You attention do detail and sighting of available data is awesome. So many times history is one sided and totally written by the winner. I really enjoyed your insight into both sides of the issue!! Keep up the good work and I just subscribed. Thanks for the awesome video on a pivotal battle of WWII!!!
Japan lost the war at pearl harbor. Their industrial output and potential was a fraction of what the u.s. could produce. Combined with the Japanese army and navy constantly at odds with one another, they were doomed from the beginning. They bet their entire strategy on that the u.s. would likely sue for peace after the attack on pearl. Most wars are started from flawed (often times seriously) misconceptions about the strength, resilience and motives of the other side. Japan is a prime case study.
well, I basically state your first sentence in this podcast: czcams.com/video/Cp_ZOoTJ0QU/video.html
weirdshibainu:. We are all victims of our history. Japan had the misfortune of having, in 1905, "sucker punched" a larger Russia that was weakened and distracted by a coming revolution. Japan survived this recklessness and repeated it when they attacked China. As they came into confrontation with the US, their judgement in who they could safely pick a fight with was tragicly compromised. The more cautious heads in Japan had been discredited by the success Japan had been enjoying attacking bigger but less aggressive nation's.
Very good point. The Americans have very good memories. It probably wasn't a great idea to bomb pearl harbor. Might have been smarter to focus on China and move North into Russia.
Ben Stewart the key to axis success was Japan and Germany taking down the soviets
A quote by the historian Shelby Foote on the American Civil War comes to mind: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back ... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War." The industrial might of the Union was something the Confederacy couldn't ever hope to match. In the same way, the Japanese Empire couldn't ever go toe-to-toe with the US and its massively powerful economy. The same goes for Nazi Germany. Really, Allied victory in WW2 was assured not only by military victories, but primarily by the supplies used in those victories. The Allies (America in particular) could make more, and make more faster.
Great video.
The debate here around Midway is a typical one that we see raised nearly everywhere the US was involved in WWII or any conflict since. And it stems from a basic unwillingness on the part of many to accede that the US fighting force, or in this case the USN in WWII in the pacific, could do things right. The adversary, be they the japanese, or germans, or whoever, MUST have done something wrong in order to lose to the US. Its a prideful muddying of perspective resulting in obtuse or just plain sloppy historical acumen, research and analysis.
Indeed. I'm squarely in the camp of the Americans won at Midway. But it is an overwhelmingly unpopular opinion. And you've hit on one of the main reasons its unpopular.
on the other hand, as sun tzu quote: "He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated."
The Japanese lost because they made more mistakes, and they made more mistakes because they were not as good as the American were.
@@MrIronhat the japanese had no radar or code breaking. made a big diffrence. our ships and midway island knew 10 to 15 min before each attack and what direction it was coming from.
@ yamamoto knew as he stated a rifle behind every blade of grass.
@@MrIronhat Right it's about more or less mistakes, "no mistakes" is perfect and perfect does not exist where man is involved and certainly not at sea or in war. Which goes back to the overly complex and rigid plans being a fault.
"Shattered Sword" is such an awesome book.
Another fine video! You are unequalled in gathering, presenting, and evaluating historical data. Well done!
The Yorktown, was not sunk by air attack, it was heavily damaged. It was while she was under tow, three days later, I think, that she was sunk by a Japanese Submarine, which had spotted the oil slick, coming from the Yorktown. I know this because I too have researched the battle of Midway, because I had a Great Uncle who was on the island, during the attack.
Lexington was the same. Not actually sunk by the Japanese, just damaged. She was lost due to poor damage control and was eventually scuttled. She was not that badly hurt and carriers later in the war would be hit much harder and survive. Her loss was inexcusable. Likewise, as soon as Yorktown was hit the first time at Midway, Nimitz should have ordered to withdraw. She remained on station and was hit a second time and critically damaged. Her loss was not because of her damage but because of the operational decisions that kept her exposed.
Not exactly. Her strike was still in the air attacking Hyru at the time she got her boilers re-lit. She had about 20 minutes after she came to 20 knots when more planes were spotted on radar headed her way. She dodged 2 torpedoes but a 3rd hit her. The Captain assumed she was about to capsize and ordered abandon ship but she floated into the next day when repair operations were begun to save her. A lot of time was wasted that could have been used to save her. Poor on-scene decision making. There was no reason to lose except a bad assessment of the situation.
@@cadengrace5466 By your logic the Taiho was also not destroyed by the Americans.
@@VersusARCH Taiho was destroyed by the US because after she was attacked no further effort was made to scuttle her. None of the escorting ships, most of which had torpedoes fired on her. She merely had progressive flooding until she sank.
@@cadengrace5466 And who attacked Lexington after the final Japanese torpedo hits?
Just one thing... it's Yamamoto, not Yamamomoto :D
well, Omahaha beach is also a thing, so why not Yamamomoto
Too bad the US never built the Montanana class then...
And South Dakokota
Oh god... this is getting a bit thick.
La-Galalalssioneeere
Bananana daiquiri
Another great video again. Thanks a lot for the work you do.
The vid was just released a few minutes ago, yet you've watched the whole thing?
aren berberian
Ikr?!
aren berberian Nah I commented after watching a couple minutes of it. I mean he does a great work in general.
No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Desert Storm begs to differ
Helmuth von Moltke.
On thing I never hear about is how inferior the Japanese merchant fleet was so small and insufficient they could not resupply or import material that they needed throughout the war...
Come to think about it, I never hear much beyond some line about all shipping being shot down by summer 1945 by subs. Woukd make a good video through.
I've known about this for decades. US subs strangled Japans shipping.
The Japanese never had a chance so long as US had that overwhelming industrial capacity to replace all their lossess and then some, and the Japanese had no way to reduce that capacity.
That the Japanese had no way to reduce our industrial capacity is key here. They were doomed before they started. We were already in the process of building what would be 24 Essex class carriers.
What did in the Japanese even more than losing at Midway was their lack of anti submarine capabilities. The US submarine fleet decimated the Japanese merchant fleet and made it impossible to move supplies to where they were needed. Carriers get the glory but the submarines deserve their place in history too
@Mar Wolfking
Gundams will take too long. They should use the radiation from Fukushima to supercharge Mothra and Godzilla to soften up the world before using the Gundams and Space Battleship Yamato, which will hopefully be ready by then.
Jaye Bass the IJN was not doomed before they started. Many don’t understand the big head start the IJN had over the US since the US had to split its force with the Atlantic and Pacific fleet.
At Midway the vessel count was as follows:
Battleships 11-0. Zero. The US had none and this is where the IJN blew it at Midway. They IJN could have surrounded Midway with 4 battleships and shell the island. There would have been no changing out of bombs. By August the IJN completed Musashi.
Carriers - Zuikaku was available. Planes and pilots especially zero pilots were not short of. That’s 5 main carriers plus the IJN could have had Ryujo and Junyo at Midway vs the Aleutians. The IJN could have made better use of Zuiho and Hosho. So it’s 9 carriers IJN vs 2.5 for US. Yorktown was limping in.
Saratoga was being repaired as the Shokaku was. Wasp was eventually going to be moved from Atlantic to the Pacific. The IJN finished the Carrier Hiyo 53 planes by August. IJN also completed 3 fleet carriers.
Cruisers - IJN 21 vs 8.
Destroyers - 63 vs 30
The only vessels which the US made some ground in 1942 was with destroyers.
Only 1 Essex Carrier was finished by end of 1942. Only 3 were finished by end of 1943.
Had the IJN won at Midway which they easily could have and should have had they brought their battleships into action and engaged in vessel vs vessel combat then feel free to explain how the US would have engaged the IJN in a turning point battle.
@@f430ferrari5 thats a bad idea because you will send like 75% of your ships just to destroy 3 CVs that would be a big waste of fuel which the ijn was lacking and not just that the USN knows their plan so if they knew that the ijn will be sending most of their ships they would evacuate midway but before they do that they will make fake tanks and fake jeeps so that the ijn would waste more ammunition trying to destroy those fake tanks because they might be real and they would add more traps so that the landing force would take massive casualties
It would be a big resource loss for the ijn because they bombarded an island that have no occupants and they also wasted alot of fuel trying to move 75% of their ships to midway and they also achieved nothing because their main goal is to destroy the CVs and the CVs didnt show up because they have no chance in winning the battle
(Note: i wrote this comment in the middle of the night so sorry if i made some mistakes on grammar, spelling, and percentages)
C. Wade McClusky!!! The kind of plucky initiative, pure chutzpah, and luck that really put this one in the US win column.
Him with the submariners doing their jobs.
Unspoken in most of these reviews is that the CAG of Hornet nearly lost the battle. Commander Ring led 1/4 of the Navy's airpower in a flight to no place. A action that takes them largely out of the battle, sans Torpedo 8. Also
If just VB8 and VS8 have been on hand you could have expected Yorktown's survival.
Miles Browning screwed up at midway and I screwed up a guada canal when he placed his cap at too low of an altitude making it easy for Japanese planes to damage the Saratoga.
@@its1110 Miles Browning was CAG at Midway and also Guadalcanal.
If Ring had done what McClusky did, a box search after not finding the enemy fleet where it was expected, he might have found Kido Butai and not be vilified as he is today. When the first of VF-8's pilots turned for home in a sweeping left turn that brought him further south, he saw smoke to the south/southwest which was the Japanese fleet. This was about 9 AM and if he had reported it to his squadron leader or directly to Ring, the Hornet dive bombers would have been in position to dive while VT-8 were attacking and maybe put a few bombs into the Hiryu and Soryu which were the northern most Japanese carriers. Jim Gray of VF-6 might have seen the Hornet's dive bombers and given them cover since he couldn't find the Enterprise's bombers.
Alternatively without the fighter pilot's sighting, if Ring had done a box search to the south he might have seen the carriers and attacked. Depending on when he started the box search, his bombers could have been diving anywhere from 9:30 AM to 10 AM. History might have viewed this battle as a rout if there were no Japanese strikes on the US Fleet and the Yorktown never attacked.
I do blame Nimitz and his subordinates for not getting the Saratoga escort ships to allow her to sail from San Diego on either May 26 or 27 to Pearl Harbor or even better directly to the Midway area. She could have made it to Midway on June 3 or the morning of June 4 if she stopped overnight at Pearl Harbor to fuel and pick up VF-5, VF-72, and the VT-8 detachment with the new TBF Avenger planes. Otherwise, she would have just 14 Wildcats of the VF-2 detachment, 23 or so VS-3 dive bombers with assorted aircraft as cargo.
@@FogerRox Capt. Browning was Spruance's chief of staff that he inherited from Halsey and too senior to be a CAG.
This was a classic case of a commander (several really) seeing what they expected to see.
You also need to point out that Spruance managed to make only correct decisions when he had no previous experience with this kind of command. He displayed what Clausewitz described as an all important intuition on the battlefield.
And most importantly, you left out any mention of the Aleutians diversion. The IJN didn't just leave the Zuikaku at home, they also sent two second rate carriers with 80 some aircraft to wander about in the fog off Alaska. Think what Tamon Yamaguchi might have done if he could have drawn on those other carriers.
The Jun'yo carriers sent to the Aleutians were too slow for fleet operations while Ryujo only had one elevator capable of handling the larger Japanese planes. They weren't actually of much use in Midway.
The Japanese were not seeing what they wanted to see. The Japanese had sent a submarine picket line, in addition to the 7 scout aircrafts. None of which detected anything. The intelligence report indicated increased radio traffic and patrols. Nothing about presence of US carriers. So which report do they listen to?
The float planes did eventually detect the US carriers, but by then it was too late.
Yamamoto and Nagumo decided to proceed with the operation for good reason. For one, they had about a year before US industrial capability really kicks in force. Additionally, there was no evidence of surprise being lost outside of the intelligence report. The submarine picket line detected nothing, and neither did the float planes.
Secondly, Nagumo had to neutralize Midway within 2 days because that is when the invasion force arrives. There isn't that much time to actually wait around searching for US carriers that could likely not even be there. Even if the invasion force was told to wait around, the longer they sit around, the likelier they are to be detected. In fact shortly after the Midway Strike Group took off, Nagumo's carriers was spotted by a PBY.
So even if Nagumo wanted to make sure no US carriers were present, he would HAVE to launch an attack on Midway once he was spotted. Unless you expect him to let his carriers get attacked by Midway's aircrafts without retaliating.
Practically speaking, there is insufficient reason, and also impractical to cancel or delay the operation and secondly act as if US carriers were present.
The carriers heading to Aleutian islands were cosidered as bait to lure american navy out of Midway and weaken their forces there. Of course japanese didn't know that their codes were broken and that americans were aware of japanese plans.
The problem with the entire Midway narrative and the missing link in all this that has never been explained by record or the experts; why were the Japanese planes armed and spotted for a fleet strike after the midway strike was launched? Why did they have to re-arm for surface strikes if the US navy was believed to be 2 days away at Pearl?
@@davidberlow9858 I believe this was just basic, cautious, wartime practice. Always be ready for an attack. Just like the 7th Fleet battleships at Leyte Gulf were armed mostly with HE shells for support of the troops ashore but they still carried a supply of AP, just in case.
@@davidberlow9858, this has actually been explained. If I recall, the Japanese did have a strike group armed for an anti-ship strike when the 1st Midway strike force took off. Such a force wouldn't be spotted for launch, however - the decks would be needed for the fighters of the CAP. They need to land and refuel (and possibly rearm) Adm. Nagumo ordered the strike group re-armed to strike Midway after getting reports from this 1st strike and being attacked by Midway's planes. As this was going on, Japanese search planes located American naval vessels. Nagumo then changed his orders and had the planes re-re-armed for an anti-shipping strike.
As for 2 days away, I think that the Japanese expected the US response to take 4 days to reach Midway.
I love the academic structure of your presentation. Love all the book citations up front…not the”i’ve put the citation links below”which is what others do! TY! Very interesting !
You always deliver to the highest standards. Bravo! I would also have liked some evaluation on the unfolding battle itself, though.
I think the Japanese lost at Midway mainly because they were just too overconfident and too arrogant (following an almost unbeaten six-months Victory streak), believing that the enemy would dance by their tune, believing they could pull off two operations at the same time, believing that four carriers were more than enough to win. Numerically the IJN was far larger than the US Pacific Fleet at that point in the war, that they still found a way to loose is almost impressive.
Schwatvogel ijlll
Nancy Bowers Only if they had the arcane technology of Flex Seal you see them shrugging off bullets like water hitting oil
Overconfident ... arrogant ... thought they couldn't lose ... tried to fight on two fronts with only enough forces to win on one ...
The Third Reich invading Russia and the "Coalition of the Willing" invading Iraq both come to mind.
If you look at the Second Gulf War as Coalition Forces vs. Iraqi Army, then it was a rousing success. The Iraqi Army was decisively routed, Saddam was removed from power, and Coalition forces seized control of the country. The problem was occupying the country while simultaneously prepping Iraq for a new government. The US government in particular made several key mistakes, chief among them being the disbandment of the Iraqi Army. The Army was necessary to maintain order and it was necessary to build them back up, if for no other reason than that the Coalition in general and US forces in particular should not have realistically been expected to occupy the country indefinitely. Instead, they disbanded the Iraqi Army, which left hundreds of thousands of angry young men with no money, a lot of anger and access to guns. That led to an insurgency which pulled in National Guard units (which aren't intended for that purpose) and drained resources from the Afghan front. It's already an open secret that the invasion of Iraq was conducted under fraudulent pretenses, so I won't argue about that. What I will argue is that had the US made the right decisions, Iraq wouldn't be in the shape it is today.
Well, yeah, staying the hell out of Iraq would have been a smarter decision and both Iraq and Afghanistan would be in better shape today if our Glorious And Beloved Leaders had made that decision.
Too much focus on offensive power, nowhere near enough soldiers to protect everything afterwards, nowhere near enough linguists, too much focus on getting the offensive forces psyched up and full of hate and nothing like enough effort to get a large number of people who knew the culture and language and could be respectful and sympathetic points of contact for the local people, too much emphasis on getting Halliburton their oil contracts, not enough on any other part of "what happens next," ...
books.google.co.uk/books?id=dBOF8Q685mAC&pg=PA793&lpg=PA793&dq=%22At+one+point,+he+threatened+to+fire+the+next+person+who+talked+about+the+need+for+a+post-war+plan,%22&source=bl&ots=-mJwXX58IU&sig=f_z1koG0dZSkTruATN6LR2PlxdM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj616PBuqbcAhVSVsAKHc76CPkQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=%22At%20one%20point%2C%20he%20threatened%20to%20fire%20the%20next%20person%20who%20talked%20about%20the%20need%20for%20a%20post-war%20plan%2C%22&f=false
Ugly URL for a document with an example of a US Gov't failing in the run-up to that invasion. We didn't have the people, the equipment, the fuel, the aircraft, the ammunition or the money to fight in both wars at once, any more than Nazi Germany in November 1940 had what it needed to take and hold Russia.
They lost because of two words: USS Enterprise
Yorktown too!
"Never let your kids forget this name: Enterprise"
or something like that idk
You got one thing right, "TWO WORDS". However, those two words are - CODE - TALKERS.
It is hard to believe that Yamamoto would plan this operation thinking that the Americans would not be all gung ho to fight. The Admiral had spent may years in the United State and knew the Americans well. He was even quoted that if Japan had not defeated The United States and forced them to sue for peace within the first 6 months of the war that the industrial might of American Industry would overwhelm Japan. He was right on that account. The US forces won with superior intelligence and luck.
Ben T
also, the US was enraged. my grandpa wanted to reenlist as a previously trained national guard corporal, but he was married with 3 kids.
True...The Japanese did have a superiority complex in that era and Yamamoto was not immune.
Well, to be quite frank about it, _most_ of the nations in the early 20th century had a "superiority complex".
But Yamamoto also had a fatalist streak in him. He knew what the US would do yet despite this he was quoted as "I am the sword of my Emperor"
gos to show you how dumb they are
I like the approach here. So I subscribed. Well done and looking for more.
I'm extremely impressed with your measuredness, that's a rare quality. Excellent video.
"No plan survives first contact with the enemy."
- Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising
@Nathan Henneka whatever. Tom Clancy is cooler.
@@nicholaswalsh4462 I disagree completely
Fine analysis, sir! This from a retired historian.
☺
Mr. Eugene-I have always wondered how Japan went from a country that sometimes ate its captives to an industrialized nation after two atomic bombs. It was like "we quit, now let's start making cars." Such a rapid transformation. An as an aside, I would have knocked off that guy's top hat who, I believed the peace treaty.
@@cynthiafischer5006 I definitely think Japan is in the place it is now because of USA in the 40's. After the war the USA molded Japan into something it liked and with it brought all forms of capitalism and the sort.
Same thing happened in Korea and now look at South Korea, it's amazing.
@@kieranschafer5180 Japan had capitalism and advanced industry before we got there, even a fledgling democracy early in the 20th century. I agree that some of the US rubbed off on Japan, certainly, but I think the take home lesson of our occupation was that the war itself was the disaster, not their defeat. I doubt we'll ever truly be able to calculate whether the atomic bombs should have been played the way they were, but it seems clear that the Emperor's intervention saved Japan from (at best) a Pyrrhic victory that would have led to a lot more dead Allied and Japanese soldiers not to mention enormous civilian casualties. Instead of pointlessly wasting all those lives, Japan built itself into a major economic player respected by the west with powerful military allies. Perhaps this was a 'defeat' in chest-thumping nationalist circles, but I would make the argument that ending the war and surrendering was a victory for the Japanese people.
@@briankearney5994 Hi Brian. I beg to disagree on the use of atomic bombs. I'll point to a few things to support my case. 1. The island of Saipan where civilians jumped to their deaths or were shot by the IJA rather than surrender. 2. The firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities with no surrender, and 3. No surrender after the first atomic bomb, so the second was requested.
What the US was faced with in summernof '45 was an enemy that was NEVER going to surrender and was willing to use it's own people as bait to kill as many Americans as possible. Planners were anticipating 5 more years and millions of deaths, or a stalemate similar to what is now North and South Korea. Thankfully, we don't have that but instead a most powerful and loyal friendship. Not just an ally.
@@jamesvaughn7389 I’m not clear on what you disagree with. If your point is that Japan was unlikely to surrender without two bombs, I suspect that is the case and never meant to imply otherwise, but we will never know for sure as that is a mega-counterfactual. I don’t think nuclear weapons can really be called ‘good’ and ‘right’ (not that you argued this) but few if any things in war can be. I at least understand Truman’s perspective, and would likely make the same difficult decision, especially if I knew it would end the war (of course, he had no such guarantees). As an aside for “3”, Japan had contact with Germany about nuclear weapons and they figured the US only could have one given the enormous resources required. Two bombs was a bit of a bluff itself, but the US planned had the capacity to produce plenty more given time.
Every time I read or watch any midway related contents the song Midway by Sabaton is being played endlessly in my head.
Same here. I love Sabaton.
A meticulous and balanced examination of the issue which narrows the focus to precisely those points requiring further discussion. Would that ALL debates were conducted in so constructive a manner!
I am a student of WW2 for the last 30 years. Very impressive re-count of the Battle for Midway island. The Americans were lucky to have not suffered more losses. Over confidence is fools paradise. Thanks for the upload.
Great Video as always. You're the only source thats trust worthy on CZcams, even the documentries ripped from tv are all hyperbole. You should join the US Army we need a guy like you.
I’m GregTully and I totally agree true grit was in no short supply with the American spirit once you have freedom in your blood no power on earth can defeat it
you are right
Top notch and unbiased and chock full of factual data with researched and peer reviewed quotes ...I just don't think a better platform for people who are avid students and history buffs or just the average citizen wanting to settle a debate on the military actions that have literally shaped our current social hierarchy worldwide. Good stuff and well received !!!
This video deserves a like just for the quote at the end. 'An argument presented without a counter argument seems very convincing at first but is often very misleading...'
Thinking about that the next time I'm on tiktok.
The Japanese finally had the possibility to muster 7 carriers at Midway: Fast repaired Zuikaku plus the two light carriers Jun’yo and Hiyo, which had a relatively small air group. But these could have made a difference if not sent to attack Dutch Harbour instead.
Their IJN Carriers sunk like Hermann Göring when he is trying to Swim
Naw, that fat boy was full of too much shit.
Great Chawmen accent, perfect for being an expert at World War II.
There are three fundamental reasons as to why the Japanese lost the battle of Midway. Firstly, the Americans had foreknowledge of Japanese strength, dispositions, and intentions ; and although that knowledge was not complete, the overall content of that knowledge constituted a significant advantage for the United States Navy. Secondly (to borrow Sun Tzu's terminology, the Japanese knew neither their enemy nor themselves. They assumed that the unexpected and resounding successes of previous operations displayed an inherent Japanese superiority, and that the Americans would prove relatively incapable of effective resistance. Lastly, random factors operated against the Japanese (in plain non-Vulcan English, they were unlucky). The failure of American flight deck crews to get off a coordinated strike at the Japanese resulted in piecemeal torpedo attacks which gradually drew the Japanese combat air patrol down to sea level- while the personal initiative of Commander McClusky (unintentionally aided by a Japanese destroyer) resulted in American dive bombers (arriving from two different directions) pushing over into their attacks unopposed. Their are other reasons to be sure, but these are predominant. To sum up, Japanese overconfidence combined with American foreknowledge placed the Americans in an advantageous position. This advantage was lost by inexperience- and then recovered by personal initiative and courage to produce a truly incredible victory.
There is a fourth factor that I don't hear much and that is that the Americans felt they were against the ropes and desperate so they threw caution to the wind. They sent out a badly damaged Yorktown. They launched an airstrike knowing that these planes would not be able to make it back to the carriers. They engaged in a suicidal torpedo attack without fighter cover to protect the slow moving unmaneuverable bombers.
While the Americans had experienced a series of defeats during the first six months of the war, the U.S. Pacific Fleet had not. They had launched a series of small carrier raids in the early months of the war and then launched the Doolittle Raid in April- and fought the Imperial Navy to a draw of sorts at the Coral Sea. Yorktown was fully capable of flight operations but was limited in speed to 25 knots, so I'm unsure whether that constitutes "badly damaged". The aircraft launched at the 1st Carrier Striking Force from Enterprise and Hornet were launched at extreme range, and not on a one-way mission. Lastly, the American torpedo attacks were not originally intended to go in without fighter protection, and although their crews were aware of their own vulnerability to fighter interception, the suicidal nature of their efforts only became apparent after the fact. With all this in mind, I think it difficult to say that the Americans saw themselves as "on the ropes"; certainly Pacific fleet command saw in the situation an opportunity to surprise the Japanese.
That's a long way of saying that Japan got too used to fighting tiny, scattered forces across the Pacific, and a US navy base that was surprise attacked. That said, Wake Island should have woke them up a little.
Look
ManilaJohn01
I'd say the extra 6 or 7 knots could have saved Yorktown. The Yorktowns were quite agile at speed. (Compare the Lex and Sara.) The Enterprise survived the Solomans due to her maneuverability.
Avoiding Japanese torpedoes had a... great... err... advantage.
In "Combined Fleet Decoded" John Prados pointed out that Japanese air groups were considered a part of the carrier they were assigned to, and were not routinely shifted to a different carrier, which would explain why Yamamoto didn't scrape together a functional air group from Zuikaku and Shokaku after Coral Sea, and send it to sea at Midway aboard the undamaged Zuikaku. The USN did something similar in the prewar years--Hornet (CV-8) had Air Group 8, and so forth--but even in the first months of the war, they were much more flexible about operating air groups off different carriers. That fifth carrier, even with a scratch air group, could have made a big difference. Also, I agree completely with a previous commenter regarding the Aleutian sideshow. Yamamoto's overly-complex Midway plan can be justified in many respects--this video essay does just that--but there isn't any way to justify a separate operation that drew away valuable assets, and ended up producing nothing positive. Indeed, the Aleutians would be an ongoing drain on scarce Japanese resources, and also lead to the American capture of the first flyable A6M Zero. While not exactly decisive, that Zero was still an important intelligence coup. Overall, this is an excellent and informative video. Very well done.
I just went to little event dedicated to this battle. It definitely had effort put into it, as the mayor even showed up to give a speech. Some veterans of the battle were there, (one of which was over a hundred years old,) and they got actors to play out these little skits where they acted like they were actually like they were actually living in those times, and they even got an old naval aircraft to fly overhead of us, (I believe it was a Wildcat. It had cat in it at the very least).
Excellent analysis of events. Whilst the Japanese plan was too fragmented, there were other significant strategic and operational failures as you have outline. The seed of failure “hubris” were planted with the attack on pearl harbour and not chasing down the carriers and destroying the maintenance and fuel facilities. Overnight the American fleet moved from 20 knots to 32knots with the carriers coming back to haunt them. Napoleon asked his generals were they lucky. The Americans had “luck”, June 4 1942, lost dive bombers finding the wake of a destroyer, catching all the carriers together whilst changing over weapons, no CAP in place and poor Japanese damage control, the list is endless.
DC - A fair amount of "luck" and Station Hypo. The US Navy wouldn't even have known the IJN was moving on Midway had it not been for the code breakers at Hypo.
morskojvolk totally agree. Also John Tiltman had broken into the Japanese army codes, whilst Gordon Welchmain introduced modern traffic analysis to Bletchley and its outstations plus access to the German command cypher. I think the Allies knew a lot more about the Japanese plans than has been released. The Allies had high frequency direction finding and 10cm radars in the Atlantic to find u-boats, that must have gone to the Pacific. Perhaps they made their own luck.
that is a huge point, if those attacks happened, the fuel and repair facilities would have made midway a different story. why didn't they do it ? so first we accuse japan of under confidence at pearl harbor by not hitting more oil and repair facilities,then we accuse them of over confidence at midway. hindsight is 20/20
Because fuel and repair facilities could have been repaired quite quickly. It might have impaired the US navy for a few months at best. The japanese did not ensure Hawaï could be blockaded and therefore, anything destroyed on 7th december would have been repaired or replaced in no time.
Excellent analysis - As usual. Japan underestimated USA before, during and long after Dec. 07, 1941. They were blinded by their earlier successes against lesser foes - unprepared, under-armed and inferiorly out-dated Militaries. Their prejudices against the USA blinded judgement and caused their Military ' Think Tank ' to blunder under inferior analysis & intelligence gathering. USA was evenly matched & well prepared at Midway, which totally baffled the Japanese long after their defeat at Midway. Thus, a harbinger or things to come...….. Total Defeat.
@paul kohler Hum, japan underestimated the USA? no they didn't! Yamamoto literally predicted the outcome of the war before it even started, japan knew they were going against a mighty opponent, if anyone was underestimating anyone, it was the USA underestimating the japanese, they knew the USA had more modern ship and more of them, as well as an industry japan could only dream of at the time, it was because they knew all that that the attack on pearl harbor was thought up, and the prejudice part is completely reversed, you could not have gotten that more wrong, the USA was the one thinking japan was inferior, the USA refused to believe the reports that the Zero was unbeatable in the sky for some months because they were too racist to think japan able of designing such a good plane.
Then we rubbed salt into the wound with the midway carrier.
Anna Lyn Whitt - Then put the carrier Midway in salt water. Salt cleans and heals... then kicks ass ! Lol
Exactly
Then we built aircraft carriers to memorialize great victories; that's why many WW2 carriers were named after Revolutionary War [ie. Yorktown, Lexington] or Civil War battles. USS Franklin was named after a Civil War battle, NOT after Ben Franklin as is mistakenly believed. Now we name $13B carriers after idiots like Jerry Ford and George H.W. Bush. I presume they'll be another one named after Dubya and one after Slick Willie, too. What a disgrace those would be. Then we'll get the USS Barrack Obama!
@@russg1801 I liked it better when we named ships after US states! Like USS Arizona, California, etc
They must be listening to you because we now have the USNS Harvey Milk and the USNS Cesar Chavez.
Wow. Your doing a great job. I just hope you keep continuing.
Great in depth look at a historical battle!
Crazy amount of bad luck was involved ^^
Techpriest - Yes, but you can plan for bad luck and Japan didn’t... “...expect the worst, hope for the best...” The best/most successful battle outcomes are based upon that concept.
Yes but US essex carriers suffering from similar damages in 1945 (kamikaze crashing in a hangar full of fuelled and armed planes) were not able to return to the fight even if they had miraculously survived.
"Miraculously" no US fleet carrier was lost after the Solomans.
Ok you got me there
The sons of Nippon had most of the bad luck.
Two things there decided together:
- luck
- radio malfunction
Also Japanese should realize the enemy has broken their codes...but they weren't cautious.
Pilot J.C. Waldron guess good the position of the Japanese because Mitscher thought enemy carriers are sailing in two battlegroups. If he failed, he would back with nothing.
I would shell Midway during the night too...because i am cautious hero...XD
The Japanese lost because they picked a fight with a country that was capable of defending itself militarily. The Japanese military preyed upon countries that had small and weak military forces and used sneak attack/quick withdrawal tactics against more capable opponents. This gave them a false sense of confidence in the power of their military that did not serve them well when they faced opponents that had sophisticated and powerful military forces, like the US and Great Britain.
Admiral Nagumo was, at heart, a black shoe admiral, not a brown shoe commander. Also, he lacked that unique "spark" found in all great commanders. Having said that, from the start of the war, the Japanese were doomed. Their greatest battle was one of scientific development and industrial production, a battle in which they had no chance. They were never given time to back off from battle, regroup, and replace their losses, and they lacked the raw materials to do so anyway. They were, essentially, overwhelmed.
Very informative delivery and instructional design. The "Victory Disease" concept has many historical and even business applications. Success can breed complacency. Thank you.
Communications Breakdown? [Cue Led Zeppelin]
mensch1066
How was your comment posted 4 days ago?
Time travel?
Patreon
Captain Carrot - exactly. There are benefits to being a major Patreon supporter of this channel, especially if you have access to the Discord server MHV and Bismarck operate.
It's always the same.
Very good video, and thank you for the time you put into this history. The Battle of Midway was the number-one key battle of the entire US-Japanese war. It highlighted everything that was deficient in Japanese culture relative to attempting to defeat a western culture in warfare. Furthermore, it was the central turning point of that war, and amazingly happened within just a mere 6 months of Pearl Harbor. The US won this battle due to the nature of its culture in which individual low-ranking American's took the initiative in everything from repairing the USS YORKTOWN to discovering the Japanese carriers. Western and US culture emphasize individual freedom of initiative, and that is what won this battle. Admiral Halsey, despite his best wishes, was not who won this battle. In quite contrast, on the Japanese side, their Bushido-code culture suppressed individual initiative. When Admiral Yamamoto dictated one of the most stupid plan in all of naval history, not ONE single subordinate commander questioned the Admiral. On the other hand, western combat leaders work with staffs and war councils in a setting of peers. Fellow citizens in the United States are all equals. No truly bad ideas were really possible in the US Navy because discussion, freedom of thought, criticism, red-hatting and other analysis among commanders generally rooted out bad and idiotic thinking and plans. The Japanese did not have this culture of peer-ship. Rather, their culture was based on a feudal bushido-code aristocracy. By the end of the war, the Japanese had not developed one single new class of ship, aircraft or weapon, and built very few new equipment. The United States, on the other hand, dwarfed the Japanese with new planes, new ships, new tactics, new thinking, new technology, new weapons and massive industrial capacity. The US was adaptive. The Japanese ensconced. The US was flexible. Japan was rigid. The US obtained peer review of all plans. The Japanese dictated orders. Japan lost Midway due to its cultural way of thinking. It is not surprising that the Americans .. again and again and again .. always and constantly had such "good luck". It was not luck at all. The culture of the US reflects the achievement of centuries of Greco-Roman thinking, and that culture set the foundation for things to happen in the favor of the Americans again and again, battle after battle. Japan defeated itself through its own lack and inability to understand western culture DESPITE having adopted western arms, training and means. In fact, Admiral Yamamoto was educated at UCLA(?) I believe .. but failed to ever grasp the culture. He only knew enough to know that picking a fight with the west and the US ... was a mistake.
I suppose VDH would tell us that Roman culture explains the outcome of Singapore as well.
mathisje, Rome's loss at Cannes brought the destruction of Carthage. The US loss at Pearl Harbor brought the nuking of Japan. Russian leap into space brought EU and US dominance in space. Any free culture will outperform a dictatorship in the end.
.....great analysis..... ...thanks
I disagree that Midway was the turning point. It was a fantastic defeat of the IJN, but it was the battle at Guadacanal that truly set the Japanese into its death spiral. Though the IJN lost much of its talent, it still held a very powerful fleet and a surviving carrier force that was more than enough to challenge what the USN had in the Pacific, even with Wasp and Saratoga showing up. What Guadacanal did though was drag both the Japanese fleet and the Japanese army into something that they themselves tried to avoid from the very beginning: a battle of attrition. During that battle the US was brought to the brink, to the point where we had to borrow a British carrier just to cover for the losses we suffered, and we had no choice but to throw two of our newest battleships into combat because we literally had nothing left to stem the tide after the many battles in Ironbottom sound. However, we COULD sustain such losses, and in the end, the Japanese suffered a massive and lasting defeat that was so decisive that it would forever put them on the defensive. Midway showed that the US could win the war, while Guadacanal put us firmly on the path.
Of course, really the moment the US won the war against Japan was when the first IJN aircraft took off the carrier decks on December 7th. The logistical disparity alone is breathtaking and it begs belief as to how the Japanese even entertained the thought that they could win against the US in the first place.
Oh the US Navy had some big culture problems. Check into the Richardson brothers. Better intelligence could have done much good w/o those guys. Rochefort even got sacked _after_ Midway!
I can't really sympathize with Levy's point of view. I feel like the authors of Shattered Sword made a much more sober and thorough evaluation while Levy's response almost seems like "No the US won because the US is tha best".
"America has always and will always have the tactical edge when it comes to warfare." This sentence. It's just the perfect example. The very reason I wrote what I wrote. This is the feeling I get from what Levy wrote. Just pure hubris, arrogance, and unsubstantiated patriotic gibberish. Thank you sir.
It does sound Jingoistic but...I'm not sure he is wrong. America does have the best funded military in the world. I mean it is true until it is no longer the case, and with the current administration it seems like that could be soonish.
Not in 1942. For all the things the american did right that day, they still had a fair amount of luck. There are several steps before and during the battle where different decisions made by the japanese could have made the outcome of the battle change drastically.
If the Zuikaku had been there, the japanese would probably not have needed a second attack on midway and then they would have been able to attack the US ships as soon as they had been spotted. And even if they had decided to rearm their bombers, the japanese still would have 2 carriers to counter attack after losing 3, they would have had enough planes to put the yorktown out of the battle of not sinking it outright, and the 2nd counter attack would have been headed toward Enterprise and Hornet before the american could have any chance to finish the job. Then all bets would have been off.
If Nagumo had not decided to charge the american fleet head on but had chosen to cautiously retreat to the north to put midway as far as possible, the US carriers attack would have come from a single vector, preventing the complete collapse of the japanese carrier air patrol suffered when facing threats coming from different directions. Then it is possible that the japanese would have been able to launch their attack and not lose all 3 carriers in the morning.
If Tone N°4 had signaled carriers were there instead of just surface ships, Nagumo might have attacked sooner even with bombs designed for land targets or with a limited strike which would have indered the damages suffered later on.
And there are also the parts where luck meddles with US pilots skills. What were the odds of finding a japanese destroyer leading to the combined fleet for american bombers in the whole ocean? If mcClusky had not found that destroyer (luck) and decided (skill) to follow her, then Enterprise bombers would not have destroyed both Kaga and Akagi, the 2 biggest carriers with the finest japanese pilots. Do you imagine what untold damage those 2 carriers could have done if they had been in any position to lauch their planes ?
Also only 3 planes led by Richard Best managed to destroy Akagi. Best's bomb landed right in the middle of the elevator going through until exploding withing the lowest hangar where torpedo planed were being rearmed and refuelled. One of his wigmen also managed to jam the rudder of the ship. 3 bombers managed to put out of commission the flagship of the combined fleet. What are the odds given the low percentages of US hits throughout the day? It almost comparable to swordfishes putting a torp in the rudder of the Birsmarck.
But if those men had not managed to do that (and they also attacked akagi despite breaking the navy doctrine because all other bombers had gone after Kaga) do you realize thrice the number of bombers could have been sent against yorktown?
And the list goes on.
The battle was not won thanks only to american brilliance that day. Fair enough the US navy fought admirably, but the japanese not only took the wrong decisions at every level but also suffered from quite alot of bad luck almost every time it mattered.
Levy frankly sounds like a cheat beating patriot who is more than ready to twist reality if it means he can feel superior.
vlad78th all good points. And the list does go on and on. IJN should not sent a force to the Aleutians. Had that force gone directly south then the IJN would have had 82 more aircraft to attack the US carriers.
IJN had the Ryujo and Jun’yō carriers that went to the Aleutians plus a cruiser and 5 destroyers.
The IJN also kept back two smaller carriers in the Zuiho and Hosho. This was 45 more total planes. They stayed with the Yamato.
IJN should have brought their battleships into battle and use them to shell Midway Island. Had they done this and with all the additions planes Nagumo would not have had to switch the bombs out of his planes.
Code breaking would have been irrelevant. I’d the IJN was attacking from all sides the best the US could do was simply retreat and give up Midway island.
I believe that Nagumo should have launched the strike on the US fleet. Having the aircraft on board the carriers would not be good if an attack came, and they wouldnt be able to launch the planes if an attack came. Also, in a carrier battle, often he who strikes first will get an advantage.
It is also important to understand something else though: why Nagumo decided against it. This can be attributed to the fact that Nagumo was someone who went by the manual instead of going by his instincts. Thus, he would almost always do it exactly by the book. In this case, waiting for the strike force to return from midway before launching would have been more in line with Japanese carrier doctrine.
This is more sports but I think in a way it applies in regards to "Victory Disease".
I come from St. Louis. Rams 1999-2003 or 2004 were one of the most amazing offensive teams the NFL had ever seen in history. It was razzle dazzle, it was amazing, I'm not even into football, and this team felt like one of the greats. Ok, greatest football teams, there's a lot of greats, Dan Marino and the dolphins, Vince Lombardi's Greenbay Packers, Tom Landry's Cowboys, Cowboys were a force in the 90's of course. 1985 Bears easily one of the top 2 most legendary teams ever? 70's Pittsburg Steelers. And in the 2000's the Patriots.
So in 2002, we were going into a 2nd Superbowl in not even 3 years? And we had started out our first 3 seasons 7-0 before we took a loss. Bear in mind though 95-99 were one of the shittiest teams in the NFL though. For me that's part of why it drew my attention so much.
Anyways, we had a victory disease I think. Because we went into that Superbowl with the largest estimated spread between winners and losers in NFL history at that point, we were expected to beat the Patriots, by a full 2 touch downs by handicappers. It was nuts. Obviously that wasn't the case.
Patriots go down in history as one of or THE most unrivaled NFL dynasty of all time.
I'm not an NFL freak. I just have a penchant for remembering details and facts like this. But it's a good example of victory disease I think as well, too.
What I've always thought, and this is just in general about the whole war, was that cultural differences, and them not being taken into account, is what decided the war. For instance, how would the Japanese felt if they had been bombed at a major naval station like Pearl Harbor was? Would they be angry like the Americans got? I would say no. They would rather be shamed. The loss of face/honor at such a reeling surprise defeat would have touched the Japanese cultural mind in a far worse way then it did to the Americans. Assuming that your enemy will feel, at an emotional level, the same, and following through with it decided the War in the very beginning. If nothing else, the ability of the US to build ships was far greater then the Japanese. Even if it took a while to build up forces, and even more importantly keep up morale, the US was going to win. Americans simply refused to lose, in the end. They got angry, very much so. Hell, so much so that, after reviewing the pure destructive power of the atomic bombs, they used them.
In other words we were just too angry to go down.
I know this isn't from WW2 but I think the sentiment is the same. This was said by Marine John Ligato about the battle of Hue - "Americans Adapt. We Improvise. The most ferocious fighting machine the world has ever seen is a 19-year-old pissed off Marine. Because you'll take that kid from Detroit or Mississippi and you'll train him in Marine Corps boot camp, and you'll put him in a situation that's foreign to him, and he will adapt and improvise and become that situation and deal with it."
The Japanese lost because of plot-armor. The bad guy always loses.
What you lacked in films of burning aircraft carriers, you more than made up with content!!!!
Air Recon As I understand it. IJN practice was to use floatplanes from escorting battleships and cruisers and to only use carrier aircraft for Combat Air Patrol.
john babylon got it correctly. you should have said more to make your point on Yamamoto. when he accepted this assignment to attack Pearl Harbor, he told everyone that what they were about to do was not a good idea. he explained to them that should they attack that they had six months to complete their plan and after that, the "Sleeping Giant will awaken". he told them that in six months after that first strike, the industrial might 0f the United States would produce more armament than the world had ever seen. Six months after December 7th came The Battle of Midway.
he was Japan's greatest naval strategist. the problem that Yamamoto had was that his plans were flawed. like the American's did and Japan did not, the issue about Murphy's Law was the deciding factor-
i really liked your presentation. my respects to you. thank you