Who won the Battle of Midway?
The United States won a decisive victory at Midway between 4 and 7 June 1942, wrecking three Japanese aircraft carriers in a few minutes of dive-bombing near the atoll and crippling a fourth later the same day, all four lost. Coming six months after Pearl Harbor, it was the turning point of the Pacific war.2
Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan had conquered or controlled much of Asia and the Pacific islands, though at the Coral Sea in May its advance had been checked for the first time. Then, near a tiny atoll called Midway, four of its aircraft carriers went to the bottom, three of them wrecked in a few minutes over open ocean, and the war in the Pacific turned for good. Only a month earlier, on 6 May 1942, the American and Filipino garrison of Corregidor, the island fortress in Manila Bay, had surrendered.3
Part of The greatest battles of the Pacific War · Before: The Battle of the Coral Sea · Next: The Guadalcanal Campaign
The battle from both sides
Two perspectivesThe United States went into Midway forewarned: codebreakers had read enough Japanese traffic to know the target and timing, letting Nimitz set an ambush with his three carriers. Japanese aircraft struck the island while the US carriers waited undetected on the flank. In a few devastating minutes American dive-bombers wrecked three Japanese carriers caught with fueled and armed planes in their hangars, and they hit the fourth before the day was out: the heart of the enemy fleet, four fleet carriers, was lost for one American carrier. The victory halted Japan's Pacific expansion barely six months after Pearl Harbor and shifted the initiative to the United States for the rest of the war.4
Japan planned Midway to finish the work of Pearl Harbor: seize the atoll and lure the surviving American carriers into a decisive battle. But the plan was complex, the fleet divided, and American codebreakers had pierced its secrecy. Committing its carriers to pounding the island, the Japanese command was caught changing its aircraft between land and ship ordnance when the US dive-bombers fell on them. In minutes three irreplaceable fleet carriers, veterans of Pearl Harbor, were ablaze, and the fourth, Hiryu, followed before the day was out; with them Japan lost many aircrew and mechanics. It was a catastrophe from which the Imperial Navy never recovered, and the tide of the Pacific War turned against Japan.5
The trap the Americans knew about
Admiral Yamamoto planned to lure the remaining American carriers into a decisive battle at Midway and finish them off. What he did not know was that American codebreakers had cracked enough of the Japanese naval code to read his plan. The Americans knew where and roughly when the blow would fall, and set an ambush of their own.6
The carrier duel
Carriers fight at a distance, hurling aircraft at each other across miles of sea. On the morning of 4 June the two fleets groped for each other with scout planes and strikes. Wave after wave of American torpedo bombers attacked the Japanese carriers and were almost wiped out, seemingly for nothing.8
The five minutes
Their sacrifice had pulled the Japanese fighters down to sea level. High above, American dive bombers arrived unopposed over three Japanese carriers caught at their most vulnerable, their hangars full of fueled and armed aircraft. In roughly five minutes they turned three of them into blazing wrecks. A fourth, Hiryu, was hunted down and set ablaze before the day was out, and sank the next morning.10
The reckoning
Japan lost four fleet carriers, all of them crippled on 4 June, along with about 110 aircrew, just under a quarter of those embarked, and many of the carriers' trained mechanics; the ships and the skilled maintenance crews were what Japan could never fully replace. The United States lost one carrier, the Yorktown, and could build more. Three American carriers had sunk four. Midway is often counted among the great American victories against the odds, although Parshall and Tully argue that the forces actually engaged were more evenly matched than that legend suggests.12
The tide turns
Before Midway, Japan attacked where it pleased. After it, the initiative in the Pacific passed to the Americans and never came back. It is remembered as one of the most decisive naval battles in history, won by intelligence, courage, and a few minutes of perfect timing.
See where Midway stands among the greatest battles of World War II.
