The collection

The battle that the codebreakers set up and the dive bombers finished

In the first days of June 1942 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sent almost the whole Combined Fleet across the Pacific to take Midway Atoll, 1,300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor, and to draw out and destroy what was left of the American carrier force. The Americans knew he was coming. Working from partly read Japanese naval messages, Commander Joseph Rochefort’s unit at Pearl Harbor identified the target, the forces and the approximate date, and Admiral Chester Nimitz placed three carriers northeast of Midway to wait.

On the morning of 4 June Japanese carrier planes bombed Midway while every American aircraft that could fly went after Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s four carriers. The land-based planes and the slow torpedo bombers were cut to pieces; of 41 carrier torpedo planes, four came back. Then, a little after 1020, dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrived over a fleet whose fighters were down low and whose hangar decks were full of fuel and ordnance. Within minutes Akagi, Kaga and Soryu were burning. Hiryu struck back twice and crippled Yorktown, and was herself set afire that evening. All four carriers were gone by the morning of 5 June. Yamamoto called off the invasion.

This collection tells the battle in nine illustrated chapters checked against the Japanese and American records, with an interactive atlas, a working demonstration of how the Japanese code was read, a minute-by-minute scrubber of the decisive half hour, decision explorers that put you in Nimitz’s, Waldron’s and Nagumo’s place, source-checked charts, the men and units who fought, and the wrecks found three miles down.

Atlas

The battle on the map

The battle plot is drawn like a wartime plotting sheet. Step through the phases, from the dawn launches to the wrecks found between 1998 and 2023, or press Play; tap any point for what happened there. Every position is approximate, compiled from the 1943 Combat Narrative, the Navy’s battle maps and Parshall and Tully’s reconstruction.

Nine chapters

Read the battle from start to finish

1

“AF Is Midway”: Rochefort, Station HYPO and the Codebreakers

How Station HYPO read JN-25, proved that “AF” meant Midway with the water ruse, estimated the date, and gave Nimitz his ambush, plus what the codebreakers did not know.

2

Plan MI: Yamamoto’s Gamble and Nimitz’s Answer

Why Japan went to Midway, how Plan MI spread the Combined Fleet across the Pacific, and how Nimitz, Spruance, Fletcher and a three-day Yorktown repair put three U.S. carriers at Point Luck.

3

The Unsinkable Carrier: Midway Atoll Under Attack, 3–4 June

Midway's PBYs found the enemy, its Marines met a 108-plane raid, and its bombers struck the Japanese carriers. Losses were heavy and no carrier was hit, yet the attacks shaped Nagumo's morning.

4

The Torpedo Squadrons: Waldron, Torpedo 8 and the Price of the Morning

Forty-one TBD Devastators attacked the Kido Butai on 4 June 1942 and four came back. Waldron's break-away, George Gay, VT-6, VT-3, Thach, and Hornet's disputed flight.

5

Six Minutes at 10:20: The Dive Bombers Strike Akagi, Kaga and Soryu

Nagumo’s rearming dilemma, McClusky’s search and the Arashi wake, and the six minutes from about 1022 that left Kaga, Akagi and Soryu burning, checked against the Japanese records.

6

Hiryu Strikes Back: Yorktown's Ordeal and the Fourth Carrier

How Hiryu, the last Japanese carrier afloat, hit Yorktown twice on the afternoon of 4 June 1942, and how Yorktown's own scouts and refugee bombers helped destroy her.

7

Pursuit and the Last Blows, 5–7 June: Spruance Turns East, Mikuma and the Loss of Yorktown

Spruance’s night withdrawal, Yamamoto’s cancellation of MI, the Mikuma–Mogami collision, Capt. Richard Fleming’s Medal of Honor, Mikuma sunk, and I-168’s attack on Yorktown and Hammann.

8

The Human Cost: The Dead, the Executed Airmen, the Rescued and the Hidden Defeat

Midway’s dead counted ship by ship, the three captured U.S. airmen killed by their captors, the PBY rescues and Hiryu’s castaways, and how Japan hid its defeat.

9

Turning Point? Memory, Myth, the Wrecks and Midway Today

What Midway changed and what it did not, the myths and how scholars corrected them, the finding of Yorktown, Kaga and Akagi, and Midway Atoll today: a refuge closed to visitors.

?

Midway 1942: 107 questions answered

Short, sourced answers to the questions readers ask most, from the codebreakers to the wrecks.

The cost

What the battle cost, and where the dead came from

Nearly three-quarters of the Japanese dead were aboard the four carriers, most of them sailors trapped below decks rather than the aviators the old stories say Japan lost. American losses fell heaviest on the aircrews: the torpedo squadrons, the Marines on Midway and the Army bomber crews.

Myth and record

What people get wrong about Midway

The myth: “Five minutes from victory.” When the American dive bombers struck at about 1020, Nagumo’s carriers had a fully armed and fueled counterstrike spotted on their flight decks and were about to launch. A few minutes more and the American carriers would have been hit first.

The record: This comes from Mitsuo Fuchida’s 1951 memoir. Parshall and Tully, using the Japanese official history and Japanese flight-deck practice, showed that the decks were in use for combat air patrol fighters all morning. The strike aircraft were still in the hangars being rearmed. A coordinated launch was not imminent. Fuchida’s account, written years later, is contradicted by the Japanese records compiled closer to the event.

The myth: Midway destroyed Japan’s veteran carrier pilots, and Japanese naval aviation never recovered.

The record: The NHHC’s H-Gram notes that more than 75 percent of Japanese aviators survived the battle. The irreplaceable losses were four carriers, 248 aircraft and many skilled hangar and maintenance crews. Most of the veteran pilots were killed later, in the attrition of the Solomons campaign.

The myth: Torpedo Eight’s sacrifice pulled the Japanese fighters down to sea level just as the dive bombers arrived, a deliberate trade that won the battle.

The record: VT-8 attacked about an hour before the dive bombers. The torpedo attacks did matter. Coming one after another, especially VT-3’s attack with Thach’s fighters shortly before 1020, they kept the Japanese combat air patrol low, scattered and short of ammunition. Without radar to direct it, the patrol was out of position when the SBDs arrived. But the timing was not planned. The attacks were uncoordinated, and they cost the torpedo squadrons dearly.

The myth: Pearl Harbor Navy Yard fully repaired Yorktown‘s Coral Sea damage in 72 hours.

The record: Yorktown arrived at Pearl Harbor on 27 May and sailed on 30 May, after an extraordinary round-the-clock effort in Dry Dock No. 1. But the work was emergency repair, not full restoration. It made her fit to fight, while some damage from the Coral Sea remained. The achievement was real. “Fully repaired” overstates it.

The myth: Midway was a “miracle,” an American victory won mainly by luck against a superior enemy.

The record: Luck played a part, in the clouds, in timing, and in Arashi‘s wake leading McClusky to the carriers. But Nimitz fought because Station HYPO had given him the Japanese plan, and he placed three carriers where they could ambush Nagumo. He told Fletcher and Spruance to avoid losing their carriers unless they could do greater damage in return. Modern historians stress the intelligence, the planning, the airfield on Midway and the skill of the crews as much as fortune.

Photographs

Midway in photographs

Most of these pictures were taken by Navy photographers in the battle itself, several of them by John Ford’s team on Sand Island and by the crews of the cruisers screening Yorktown. Tap any photograph to enlarge it.