Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [113]
Their main fleet was directed on Midway, a tiny sandspit a thousand miles from Hawaii—famous as the home of the gooney bird—of some small value as an advanced outpost for either side. To take this the Japanese used a fleet of six aircraft carriers, eleven battleships, thirteen cruisers, and forty-five destroyers, plus submarines, minesweepers, transports, and assorted other craft. The whole armada was under the direction of Admiral Yamamoto himself, though in practice the fleet was divided up into packets, at one time as many as ten, spread all over the central Pacific. The heart of it was Admiral Nagumo’s Mobile Force, with four carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu.
In Hawaii, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz mustered his forces to meet the onslaught. They were thin enough. He had the aircraft based on Midway itself, but afloat there were only three carriers, eight cruisers, and fourteen destroyers. Hornet and Enterprise were battle-ready; the third carrier was Yorktown, just back from the Coral Sea. Estimates were that she required three months in the dockyard to make her ready for sea. She staggered into Pearl on May 27. Three days later she put to sea again, patched rather than fixed, but ready to fight. Nimitz ordered his commanders afloat, Admirals Fletcher and Spruance, to be governed by the principle of the calculated risk, do as much damage as possible, suffer as little as possible. On June 4, the American carrier force, northeast of Midway, surprised the Japanese carrier force northwest of the island.
The battle was a series of air strikes, the Japanese hitting Midway, then being hit by a succession of American attack waves, from both Midway and the carriers, then striking back at the carriers. The climax came at mid-morning. The Japanese had been under attack by planes from Midway and by torpedo planes from the carriers. Virtually every one of the latter—slow, lumbering, obsolete—had been shot down with no damage to the enemy. But they served the purpose of drawing the Japanese fighter aircraft down low, and when the American dive-bombers appeared on the scene the sky was clear. Streaking down they dropped their bombs right in the midst of the Japanese flight decks, covered with planes busy refueling and rearming. Within a matter of minutes three of the big carriers, Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, were blazing infernos. The fourth was slightly out of position, and was untouched. She in turn launched a strike that put two torpedoes in Yorktown. Late in the afternoon the Americans came back and caught Hiryu and wrecked her too. The submarine Nautilus fired three torpedoes at the already sinking Kaga, with one dud hit, and the Americans almost saved Yorktown, but a Japanese sub got her in turn. The Japanese fleet pulled back, the Americans followed and caught a cruiser, Mikuma, before they gave it up and turned away, wary of an ambush.
In a war involving millions of men and thousands of ships and aircraft, the loss of four carriers on one side, and one on another, may not seem of immeasurable consequence. But it was. For the first time the Americans had emerged the clearcut victors in a battle with the Imperial Navy, and that victory was counted in the one indispensable currency: aircraft carriers. In one short day the balance in the Pacific was restored. Midway was the great crisis and the climax of the Pacific. The Americans were not going to give up, and the fundamental assumption of the Japanese war planners, that it would be a short war, was proved wrong. From now on it would be American expertise and productive capacity against Japanese staying power. The long road from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay had reached its turning point, just six months after December 7. For the first time the strategic initiative lay with the Americans. Now they had to decide what to do with it.
18. The Battles for North Africa
ERWIN ROMMEL HAD BEEN SENT to North Africa to mount a successful holding operation. He had managed to turn