June 4, 1942

It was June 4, 1942, and World War II in the Pacific was almost six months old. Pearl Harbor lay far behind, a symbol of heartbreaking disaster; Singapore had fallen, and so had Rangoon, and so had Corregidor. The U.S. fleet, though it had won a strategic edge, had been mauled, and the carrier Lexington sunk, in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8). Japan was threatening Australia, and her ships scouted with impunity around the Indian Ocean and Ceylon. The U.S., a long way yet from the glory days of island landings, had to latch on to the one little triumph of Jimmy Doolittle's 30 seconds over Tokyo.

Now the Japanese carriers were on their way toward the biggest offensive of all. "Spirits were high--and why not?" exulted a Japanese naval aviator aboard the carrier flagship Akagi. "Every man was convinced that he was about to participate in yet another brilliant victory."

The fateful meeting was the Battle of Midway, fought 15 years ago this week. It was one of the decisive battles of history, a fight no less monumental than Salamis, or Lepanto, or Trafalgar. Japan's Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of victory at Pearl Harbor, had flung a vast armada of 200 ships and 700 planes across the Pacific to Wake Island and to the Aleutians, with the spearhead pointing toward a remote, strategic atoll called Midway (see map). His plan was to seize Midway, "sentry for Hawaii," draw out what was left of the U.S. fleet, and win the war quickly before U.S. industrial might could be brought to bear. "In the last analysis," he argued, "the success or failure of our entire strategy in the Pacific will be determined by whether or not we succeed in destroying the U.S. fleet, more particularly its carrier forces."

U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz, though heavily outnumbered, was not without hidden assets. Not long before, in perhaps the greatest intelligence victory of the war, the U.S. had managed to break the Japanese navy's principal code. Admiral Nimitz, thus forewarned of the Japanese grand strategy, now planned to throw his whole air strength against one part of the Japanese armada--the carrier strike force --before Admiral Yamamoto could concentrate overwhelmingly.

Specifically, Nimitz swung his three carriers--Enterprise, Hornet, Yorktown-- around to the northeast of Midway to take the Japanese by surprise from the flank. "You will be governed by the principle of calculated risk," Nimitz told his task force commanders, Rear Admirals Raymond A. Spruance and Frank Jack Fletcher, who well knew that the three carriers were about all that stood between the Japanese and California. Not far away, gliding serenely through a fog bank amid their great escort, the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu prepared for their strike to win the war.

"Ambush!" At 0430 the eastern sky was tinged with a faint glow as the battle began. A southeasterly breeze and calm seas provided ideal launching conditions for the Japanese airmen as they roared off, 108 dive bombers and covering fighters, to blast the defense and land-based aircraft on Midway. "There is no evidence of an enemy task force in our vicinity," said Yamamoto's strike force commander, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. "It is therefore possible for us to attack Midway . . . We can then turn around, meet an approaching enemy task force and destroy it."

But almost at once, Airman Nagumo, task force commander in the attack on Pearl Harbor, began to come unstuck. His scouting planes were late taking off and clumsy in their search for U.S. ships. His attack planes battered at Midway, beat down a Marine fighter squadron, but found that forewarned U.S. land-based bombers were not at home. Between 0700 and 0830, ineffectively but heavily attacked by Midway's land-based bombers, Nagumo took a fatal decision: instead of keeping his second-wave carrier planes ready for any U.S. ships that might turn up, he would launch them on a second attack on the island. This decision meant rearming torpedo planes with bombs, a good hour's backbreaking work, and Nagumo was right in the middle of it when he got chilling word from his search planes: "Ten ships--apparently enemy-- sighted." Soon reports chattered in from his screening ships and search planes that U.S. planes (100-plus aircraft launched at precisely the right time by Admirals Spruance and Fletcher from about 200 miles to the northeast) were bearing in hard for the Japanese carriers. "A bolt from the blue!" cried an aviator aboard Akagi. "Ambush! The entire picture is changed!" Desperately Nagumo's Zero fighter patrols roared off to provide air cover.

35 Out of 41. For the next hour of the battle, it seemed that it was the U.S. attack that was fouled up. Waves of low-level Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers lumbered in through flailing anti-aircraft screens and deadly Zeros toward the wildly veering and evasive carriers. There was almost no U.S. coordination, only spotty fighter escort. From Hornet, 35 scout bombers with fighter cover missed the Japanese fleet and the whole battle; the 41 Devastators that did find it lost an appalling 35 of their strength, rang up not a single torpedo hit. But the low-flying, vulnerable torpedo bombers had made a sacrifice more valiant than they knew. In the clutch of the battle they drew the deadly Zeros down to the deck, leaving the carriers wide open to attack from higher altitudes.

In the apparent victory of the Zeros, Nagumo now saw a chance to save his carriers and to save Yamamoto's master campaign. During the U.S. torpedo runs, he put his men to work frantically rearming the planes for a counterstrike against the U.S. carriers. The flight decks were packed with armed, fueled planes as the big ships began turning into the wind. At 1024 the order to start launching came down from Akagi's bridge by voice tube, and the air officer flapped a white flag. At that instant, slanting and howling down at 70DEG out of light clouds, the SBD Dauntless dive bombers of Enterprise and Yorktown bore down undetected and unopposed. "Helldivers!" screamed a lookout on Akagi. Within minutes the dive bombers scored a fabulous nine hits and mortally wounded three of the Japanese carriers. Within hours, Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were on the bottom.

Go Get Hiryu! With only 18 dive bombers and six Zeros, Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi of the sole surviving carrier, Hiryu, put in a sudden, sharp attack against Yorktown, losing almost all of his aircraft but scoring three hits and starting fires. At 1245 Yamaguchi threw in his last ten torpedo bombers and six fighters, remnant of Nagumo's force of 250 plus, led by a lieutenant who knew he had only enough fuel for a one-way trip. The result: slaughter for the Japanese planes by U.S. fighters and antiaircraft, but two torpedo hits on Yorktown, enough to cripple her and leave her a mark, two days later, for a Japanese submarine.

At 1530 Admiral Spruance on Enterprise sent off 24 dive bombers to get Hiryu. "Enemy dive bombers directly overhead" was about all Hiryu's lookout had time to report before Hiryu, swerving in an attempted evasion, was smothered by four direct hits. And when word of the disaster dinned back into the ears of Commander in Chief Isoroku Yamamoto, as he sat amid his battleships several-hundred useless miles to the northwest, the master planner could only groan. "The game was up," a Japanese yeoman recalled. "The members of the staff looked at one another, their mouths tight shut. Indescribable emptiness, cheerlessness and chagrin."

Thus ended the decisive phase of the decisive Battle of Midway. For two more days Yamamoto planned samurai slashes with his battleships against the U.S. carriers, but he had lost his air power and he could not connect. Raymond Spruance, with Enterprise and Hornet, badgered Japanese surface vessels, sank a cruiser, but he dared not get too close to the outsize guns of the Japanese battle force or the land-based Japanese bombers on Wake Island (a trap Yamamoto hoped to the end that Spruance would fall into). The central fact was that without naval air power Yamamoto had lost the battle, and as early as 0255 on June 5 he put out the famous order--"The Midway Operation is canceled"--that reversed a tide of war that would now roll back through Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa to Tokyo Bay.

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