Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

  The Battle of the Coral Sea was the point at which Japanese expansion in the Pacific was halted. The Allied force hardly distinguished itself, but enough was done to turn back the invasion of Port Moresby, and to blunt the assault on the islands. On 12 May an American submarine torpedoed the Okinoshima, flagship of the invasion force for Naura and Ocean Island. ‘A dream of great success has been shattered,’ wrote Ugaki in his diary, although in Japan the authorities announced yet another startling victory.31 Any attempt to renew the attack on the southern islands was shelved until later in the year. Every effort was made to prepare for the next operation, codenamed ‘MI’, the invasion of Midway. In planning it, Japanese commanders drew almost no lessons from the failures in the Coral Sea. Yet it was a conflict dictated by air power, a naval battle in which no ship fired its guns at another ship in anger, indeed no ship even sighted the enemy fleet. It showed as clearly as the sea war in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean that command of the sea also required command of the air.

  Midway Island was an unprepossessing target. A tiny atoll no more than 6 miles across, much of it under water, it formed the farthest point of the Hawaiian archipelago, and the most westerly point of United States territory. Claimed for America in 1867, it was not occupied until 1903 when the navy chased off its itinerant population of Japanese feather-hunters. Only in 1940 was a ship channel built to allow larger vessels to enter the harbour, and Midway became a full military base, with aircraft, flying boats and marines. Japan wanted Midway as a gateway to the shipping lanes of the Pacific, and as a base from which to threaten Hawaii itself. On 5 May preparations began. The Japanese forces were once again widely dispersed in five main groups: a carrier strike force under Admiral Nagumo consisting of four large carriers; an occupation force for Midway itself; the main fleet of seven battleships, including the flagship Yamato, intended as the instrument to destroy the remains of the American Pacific Fleet; a diversionary force to seize the two westerly islands of the Aleutians; and finally an advanced force of submarines to scout ahead and to shield the main fleets. Yamamoto’s plan was simple. Midway would be occupied, American ships would sail from Pearl Harbor to save the island, where they would be softened up by the carrier force before being annihilated by the main battleship fleet following in its wake. There was little flexibility in the plan, and Japanese commanders could see small reason to be flexible. They had scanty intelligence on the American position, but they were confident that the Lexington and Yorktown had been sunk in the Coral Sea. By skilful misinformation American radio intelligence persuaded the Japanese that the remaining two carriers of the American Pacific Fleet were in the south-west Pacific protecting Australia, too far away to interfere in time with the battle of Midway.32 The date was fixed for 5 June, Japanese time, 4 June in the United States.

  The American position was precarious. Reinforcement was slow, and the calls on American shipping in every marine theatre compromised efforts to supply Hawaii. American dockyards were turning out large numbers of new ships, but there were no new carriers or battleships to confront the current threat. American naval aircraft were sound, but the torpedoes were slow and inaccurate. Fighter protection for the dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers was still insufficient to cope with the numerous shipboard fighters of the Japanese carrier force. American ships had radar, which their enemy did not, but against mass air attack even radar warning was of limited value. All Nimitz had for Midway were two carriers and partial but accurate intelligence of Japanese intentions; that, and the knowledge that here was a battle he did not dare to lose.

  Two carriers were better than none. The Hornet and the Enterprise had sailed briefly for the Coral Sea, but returned when it was clear that they could not arrive in time. The pugnacious commander of the carriers, Admiral William Halsey, who rallied his men with the slogan ‘Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs’, had to be hospitalised with a serious skin disorder, and his place was taken by Rear-Admiral Raymond ‘Electric Brain’ Spruance.33 He earned his nickname because he could think on his feet in tough situations with a calm, remorseless logic. He was very different from Halsey, but was almost certainly the better man for the difficult task in hand. It was no mere chance that placed aircraft carriers at the centre of the American task force. Ever since General Billy Mitchell had demonstrated twenty years before that warships could be bombed successfully from the air, the US navy had been alive to the significance of naval aviation. In the 1920s the navy commissioned the carriers Lexington and Saratoga, the largest ships afloat until the war. Under Admiral King’s leadership in the 1930s naval aviation made great strides in tactics and training. King’s own career was linked with naval aviation. He taught himself to fly when he was well over forty, and was commander of the carrier forces in the late 1930s. He was not a big battleship sailor; certainly not the man to pick up Yamamoto’s challenge to a fleet duel.34

  The one solid advantage enjoyed by the American navy over its opponent was intelligence. The Japanese were able to intercept American radio traffic, but could not decode it. Fortunately for Nimitz a telegraph cable had been laid early in the century from Hawaii to Midway and a great deal of his communications could be sent down the line, entirely secure from the enemy. Japanese radio communications were leaky by comparison. The Fleet Radio Unit Pacific, stationed at Pearl Harbor, was able to read about one-third of the Japanese naval code, JN25. The task of decrypting it was doubly difficult, as each message was not only placed in code, but was also then enciphered on a table of 100,000 five-digit numbers mixed at random – the cipher had to be stripped away even before the task of decoding the message. The Unit, led by Joseph Rochefort, was based in a cramped, disorganised bunker. With a small staff, Rochefort worked day and night, sleeping for brief spells, living off sandwiches and coffee. The Unit was the very opposite of naval spick-and-span, but it did what Nimitz wanted by dint of exhausting effort. By early May he knew that a major operation was planned for the Hawaiian area. By mid-May the Unit identified Midway as the most likely target, with the Aleutians as a diversionary operation. The target code was the symbol ‘AF’, but the Unit needed to be sure that this was Midway, and not Hawaii itself. A radio trap was laid. A transmission was sent en clair from Midway to Pearl Harbor announcing that the freshwater distilling plant on the island had broken down. This was duly intercepted by Japanese intelligence and relayed in code back to Tokyo. The symbol they used for Midway was indeed ‘AF’.35

  This was 21 May. A few days later the Unit told Nimitz the exact date for the invasion: 3 June in the Aleutians, 4 June at Midway. The intelligence picture was vital for the Americans, for they knew that their forces were much smaller than those of the enemy. The only way this margin could be reduced was by deploying the carriers in exactly the right place for maximum effect. On 27 May Nimitz issued his battle plan. The two carriers and a small screen of cruisers and destroyers were to sortie from Pearl Harbor to a point north-east of Midway, out of range of Japanese search aircraft and beyond any submarine screen that the Japanese might establish around Hawaii. Here the carriers were to wait until land-based planes from Midway could tell them exactly where the Japanese carriers were, and then American aircraft were to wage a war of attrition against enemy vessels. On no account were Spruance and his fellow commander, Admiral Fletcher, to expose their small force to the full weight of Japanese fleet attack. On 28 May the American force sailed. Sitting in the harbour was the damaged carrier Yorktown, scheduled for a ninety-day refit after her exertions in the Coral Sea. Against all expectations an army of shipworkers, 1,400 strong, swarmed over the ship making good the damage in 48 hours, working round-the-clock, improvising where they had to. It was a triumph of American technical skill; on 31 May she was ready to sail back into combat. Against Yamamoto’s 4 fleet carriers, 7 battleships, 12 cruisers and 44 destroyers Nimitz now had 3 carriers, 8 cruisers and 15 destroyers.36

  On 29 May Yamamoto’s forces, a vast flotilla of warships, fuellers, supply ships, seaplane carriers and minesweepers,
sailed out of the main Japanese naval base at Hashira Jima, through the Bungo Strait between the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku and out into the Pacific. At the centre of the fleet was the giant battleship Yamato, a 62,000-ton monster launched two years before, bearing the sacred name of the Japanese race itself. From here Yamamoto directed the operation, surrounded by his staff. The whole fleet was under orders to maintain the strictest radio silence. Ships communicated by flag or morse code. The weather was foul, with high winds and heavy seas. North of the island of Iwo Jima the force split up, the covering fleet for the Midway invasion steering due east towards the island, the carrier task force and the main body of the fleet going north-east, with the carriers in front, waiting to pounce on any American forces sent out from Pearl Harbor. Japanese commanders could hear a heavy increase in American radio traffic but, believing their codes to be secure, assumed that this indicated routine precautionary measures in Hawaii. Throughout the seven-day voyage every effort was made to find out if the enemy had detected Japanese intentions. So poor was the weather that sighting from the air was unlikely. Heavy mist on 1 June and thick fog the next day shielded the force from detection by enemy submarines. But Japanese reconnaissance was equally hampered. Seaplanes sent to French Frigate Shoals, a small group of coral islands west of Hawaii which it was hoped would provide a base for air reconnaissance, found them already occupied by American forces. The submarine screen was late in arriving at its destination, and by the time it was in place Nimitz’s forces had long left Pearl Harbor and were well to the west. On 3 June the commander of the carrier force, Admiral Nagumo, recorded in his log that the enemy did not know of the Japanese plan, and that there was no evidence of an enemy task force anywhere in the vicinity. Confident of success, the carriers now veered south-east on a course for Midway, entirely ignorant of an American force 200 miles away, forewarned days before of their arrival.37

  The first sighting by either side came on 3 June when a Catalina flying boat from Midway spotted the small island invasion force approaching from the west. The pilot reported that he had seen the main body of the Japanese fleet, but the American carrier force knew from intelligence that the main Japanese fleet was farther north. Bombers were despatched to attack the invasion force, while Fletcher and Spruance moved their carriers to a point where they would lie exactly on Nagumo’s north flank, within easy striking distance of his carriers. The sun rose the following morning at four o’clock. Visibility was excellent, a mixed blessing for a force in hiding. The Japanese ships launched a limited reconnaissance. One aircraft even flew over the American task force but its negligent observer failed entirely to see it. A second was held up on deck with a faulty catapult. A third plane turned back with engine trouble. Confident that there was no enemy force to be found, Nagumo ordered his carrier aircraft to strike the island of Midway. Over a hundred aircraft were launched from the decks of Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu and at 4.45 a.m. they flew off south-eastwards.

  Half an hour later the first American aircraft sighted the carrier force and relayed its approximate position. By seven o’clock the first attack was made from aircraft based on Midway. For over an hour the carriers swerved and slewed about to avoid bombs and torpedoes; American aircraft scored not a single hit. But that hour was a decisive one. At 7.28 the one remaining Japanese reconnaissance aircraft at last sighted the American carrier force, though it reported only cruisers and destroyers. Nagumo dithered. He had ordered his remaining torpedo-bombers to be converted to carrying land bombs for a second attack on Midway; most were below decks in the process of rearming. In an hour he would need to land the first wave of aircraft returning from Midway. He asked the reconnaissance aircraft to be more precise, while he ordered the bombs to be replaced by torpedoes again. At 8.20 he learned that there might be one carrier with the enemy force. He became uncharacteristically hesitant. Rather than attack the enemy at once he decided to land and rearm his aircraft now arriving back from Midway and then reorganise his forces for an attack later in the morning. For the next hour his carriers were at their most vulnerable, full of refuelling and rearming aircraft, with only light fighter cover, their position known to the enemy.38

  4 Battle of Midway, 4–5 June 1942

  Fletcher and Spruance could not have planned things better. They held back their carrier attack aircraft so that they would hit the Japanese ships during the crucial changeover. The first wave of torpedo-bombers attacked at about 9.30, a second shortly after. Short of effective fighter cover, the slow planes were shot to pieces by the defending Zero fighters. Out of 41 torpedo-bombers, only six returned; not a single torpedo reached its target. But circling above the doomed torpedo-bombers were 54 Dauntless dive-bombers. Undetected by the Japanese fighters they dived out of the sun ‘like a beautiful silver waterfall’.39 Nagumo’s flagship Akagi, with forty refuelling aircraft on deck, was hit by three bombs and in minutes became a floating inferno, wracked by one devastating explosion after another. Nagumo stood disbelieving on the bridge amidst a sea of flames. His staff pleaded with him to abandon ship; finally he was physically dragged from the bridge, leaving by the only remaining exit, a rope over the side. All around him unmanned guns were firing as the flames licked at their ammunition. As Nagumo made his way to a waiting destroyer he could see the carriers Kaga and Soryu burning furiously. Kaga was hit by four bombs out of nine aimed at it, Soryu by three. On decks crowded with fuelled or refuelling aircraft, petrol tankers and bombs, the explosive effects were magnified. Kaga sank at 7.35 that evening, Soryu a few minutes earlier, after blazing fiercely all day. Akagi stayed afloat but was scuttled as beyond repair the following morning.

  Within ten minutes the heart of the Japanese navy’s strike force was destroyed by a mere ten bombs on target. Aboard the Yamato far to the rear of the carrier force, the mood of jubilation which had greeted news that an American fleet was near enough to engage, turned to utter dismay. When Yamamoto was handed the message that three carriers were lost, with all their aircraft, he stood groaning, too stunned to speak. His first reaction was to order all available warships to make full speed ahead towards the American force for a pitched battle. They sailed on through fog so thick it was impossible to see the next ship. Encouraging news reached Yamamoto during the course of the day. Aircraft from the remaining carrier, the Hiryu, had succeeded in damaging the recently repaired Yorktown (which was to be torpedoed by a Japanese submarine three days later). But then at 5.30 in the afternoon came news that American aircraft had destroyed the Hiryu too. Half an hour earlier, 24 dive-bombers from the Enterprise had dropped four bombs on to the carrier, causing such damage that she was to sink the following morning, with Admiral Yamaguchi, widely tipped to be Yamamoto’s successor, standing forlorn, sword in hand, on the bridge. That evening Japanese warships circled round preparing to search out the American force for a night engagement, but with the loss of all air cover Yamamoto bowed to reality and cancelled the entire operation at two o’clock in the morning. ‘How can we apologise to His Majesty for this defeat?’ asked one of his staff. ‘I am the only one who must apologise,’ was the reply.40

  The Battle of Midway was the closest the war at sea came to a Trafalgar. It was the most significant fleet engagement of the war. ‘After Midway’, recalled Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai, ‘I was certain there was no chance of success.’ All the Japanese naval officers interrogated by the United States navy at the end of the war picked Midway as the decisive turning-point, ‘the beginning of total failure’.41 It achieved the American objective of keeping the Pacific open to sea traffic, but more than that Midway saw the destruction of the outstanding instrument of Japanese success since Pearl Harbor. Nagumo’s force was the navy’s elite. The losses of ships and aircraft at Midway were hard enough to sustain, but the pilots were almost irreplaceable. The six hundred carrier officers were outstanding aviators, flying samurai, trained to the highest standard for arduous flight over water and pinpoint attacks on enemy ships. At Midway one-third lost their lives and 40
per cent sustained injury.42 Many of the rest were swallowed up in the wars of attrition fought in the autumn in the Solomons, where American air forces won local superiority. Little thought had been given by the Japanese commanders about what to do if the carriers and pilots were ever lost. During 1942 losses of Japanese carrier aircraft were almost double the numbers produced to replace them.43 In 1943 Japanese shipyards supplied only three more aircraft carriers, and four in 1944; the United States navy in these two years procured another ninety. Yamamoto’s ambition to destroy American power at one blow was frustrated once and for all at Midway. A few months later he was killed when his plane was shot down by American fighters, his flight details decoded by American cryptanalysts. In 1945 his flagship, Yamato, condemned to see out the war without a single naval engagement, made one desperate suicide run to relieve the Japanese garrison holed up on Okinawa and was battered into the sea by a swarm of American aircraft.44

  Midway did not end the war in the Pacific, but it threw Japan on to the defensive, and allowed the United States to divert men and materials to the German war. Over the next three years Nimitz and Macarthur wore down Japanese resistance island by island, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, against fierce, suicidal defence. Japan’s fleet was decimated, her merchant shipping obliterated. When bases near enough to Japan’s home islands could be secured, a relentless aerial bombardment of her cities eroded what economic strength remained. Without the Coral Sea and Midway this bitter erosion of Japanese fighting power would have been both longer and more costly. The United States might well have had to fall back on California as its front line in the Pacific. Midway was won by the narrowest of margins – ten bombs in ten minutes – but it was not an accidental victory. It was rooted in sound intelligence and the effective deployment of air power at sea for which the United States navy had prepared for twenty years. Victory in the mid-Pacific was the first leg in the long haul back to Allied command of the seas.