Events Leading to the Battle of Midway

Events Leading to the Battle of Midway 

by Curt Smothers

Author's note: I am a retired Navy aircraft carrier sailor. My final service at sea was on board the USS Coral Sea, a carrier named for the battle that preceded Midway. Both Coral Sea and Midway were places where the Japanese naval onslaught was turned back. From those battles forward,  Japanese Admiral Yamamoto undoubtedly knew that Japan could not defeat the United States.

What follows is a chronology of events that marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

Japanese looked for a knockout punch at Midway

In May of 1942, just five months after their Pearl Harbor surprise attack, the Japanese launched what they hoped would be another coup in the Pacific: to take the island of Midway from its American defenders and establish a western base for further dominance of the Pacific. The Japanese hoped to lure the smaller American Pacific Fleet (still reeling from its Pacific losses) and deal the Americans a knockout punch.

American intelligence coup foiled Japanese plans

As with Pearl Harbor, the Japanese depended on surprise. Admiral Yamamoto, who planned an executed Pearl Harbor, was not so fortunate in the events leading up to the Battle of Midway. American Naval intelligence had intercepted and decoded sufficient Japanese message traffic to deduce what Yamamoto and his fleet of battleships and carriers were up to.

The Japanese plan was to feint towards and attack the Aleutian Islands in hopes of decoying the American fleet north away from Midway. The US fleet under the command of Admiral Nimitz refused to take the bait. Three US carriers, Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet, lurked undetected by the Japanese to the north and east of Midway. When the Japanese sent their bombers against Midway on the morning of June 4, they discovered American ships that were not included in the Japanese battle plans.

U.S. dive bombers found Japanese fleet

The previously undetected American forces launched costly low-level torpedo bombing attacks on the Japanese fleet. The Americans lost nearly all of the 42 torpedo bombers, and for a time it looked as if the Japanese would be victorious. Then the course of the war in the Pacific was changed. American carrier dive bombers breached the Japanese air defenses and in a matter of just a few minutes sunk four Japanese carriers, marking the beginning of the end of the Japanese sea offensive.

The dominance of battleships in naval warfare came to an end

The Battle of Midway was the second in a milestone series of sea battles fought by carrier-launched air planes. (The first was the Battle of the Coral Sea fought earlier that same month.) In both battles, surface ships did not exchange a single shot. Both these battles were an ironic outcome of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor where Japanese planes managed to destroy American battle ships, but American carriers at sea at the time, escaped destruction.

Again, intelligence was the tipping point

Events that led up to the Battle of Midway were largely influenced by superior intelligence capability that took away the Japanese advantage of tactical and strategic surprise. The Japanese commander Admiral Yamamoto’s superiority in numbers was lessened when he split his force and figured that the American commander would behave in a predictable way. 

American intelligence was Yamamoto’s undoing in this first naval defeat of Japan in history. Less than one year later, Admiral Yamamoto would again succumb (permanently) to U.S. naval intelligence when his plane was shot down by American P-38's whose pilots were up an waiting for him.