My Capstone Paper

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What is a capstone you ask, why it is the large paper every college student at this school has to write for their major.  In this case, I wrote a historiography about the Battle of Midway.  What's a historiography you ask, why it is a study of what others have said about a certain topic.  As opposed to coming up with my own conclusions, I analyzed those of others.  In this case, I took a look at books from each decade since the battle.  So if you're in the mood to read, here you go.  I got an A on this paper so I figured why not share it.  Afterall, it took a while to put together.
 
The Battle of Midway: Lucky Break to Nation Defining by Evan Bell, Southern Oregon University, Fall Term 2006


The Battle of Midway, fought in early June of 1942, was intended by Japan to be the knockout punch on the United States Pacific Fleet.  What would be discovered in any high school history class is that the engagement was instead a devastating and unrecoverable blow to the Japanese war effort.  But conclusions take time to develop and an event’s full impact can sometimes not be realized for months, years, or even decades.  After analyzing books written in the 60 years after the battle, a picture starts to develop.  Recognition of the battle as the turning point against the Japanese came during the war but the significance the American victory had on the world was not known, or even theorized, until many years later.  What will be explored here is how long it took for the victory at Midway to be labeled the turning point and whether that remained the only conclusion about the battle in the ensuing decades.
      The After Action Report (AAR),  written June 28, 1942 by Admiral Chester Nimitz, offers one of the first comprehensive reports of the battle.  Commanding officers of various ships and task groups filed earlier reports but seeing as how Nimitz was the commanding Admiral for the Pacific Fleet, his AAR garners analysis.  Nimitz, in pure military fashion, gives a lengthy walkthrough of how the battle was prepared for and fought.  For the amount of detail he goes into with regard to other aspects of the engagement, he provides little speculation as to what possible significance the victory may hold in favor of the Americans.  The only hint he gives to recognizing a larger picture is when in his opening remarks he says, “In numerous and widespread engagements lasting from the 3rd to 6th of June, with carrier based planes as the spearhead of the attack, combined forces of the Navy, Marine Corps and Army in the Hawaiian Area defeated a large part of the Japanese fleet and frustrated the enemy's powerful move against Midway that was undoubtedly the keystone of larger plans.”#  
      Even though Nimitz recognized that Japan had lost a good chunk of their fleet, he did not view it as a possible turning point.  Or if he did, he certainly did not wish to speculate in his report.  Nimitz does however, believe that holding back the Japanese at Midway also put a stop to future plans against other American holdings, most likely Hawaii.  Nimitz cannot be faulted for his conclusions, far from it.  At the time of the report, only three weeks had past since the battle and the whole concept of carrier based warfare was still a new one.  A group that perhaps knew better about Japan’s chances after the battle were the Admirals of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), and their voices are not lost to us.
      In June 1947, the Office of Naval Intelligence released a translated version of the official Japanese action report originally written June 17, 1942 by Admiral Nagumo.  In the opening remarks made by a U.S. Navy Admiral, it is pointed out that it is believed that nothing is left out of the Japanese report and that it was written honestly and to the point.  This uncensored report makes for a perfect comparison to the AAR of Admiral Nimitz.  In this 69 page document, Admiral Nagumo provides a greatly detailed account of the battle.  With transcripts of radio transmissions, navigational charts, as well as diagrams of bomb hits on IJN ships, one can really get a sense of how the battle was fought.  Like his American counterpart though, Nagumo provides little in respect to his assessment of the engagement.  He gives credit to all the men and ships that fought in the battle and that their efforts inflicted severe damage on the enemy.  He points out that the U.S. had lost two of her carriers and would be unable to undertake any large scale operation for some time.  Nagumo would be made to eat his words here as the U.S. would invade Guadalcanal within two months.  Nagumo concludes with lessons that were learned from the battle.  One of the lessons was to be able to quickly get aircraft launched off the deck when enemy aircraft were spotted.#  It is no surprise that he mentions this as the reason that all four Japanese carriers were lost in the battle. This was because all their planes were caught refueling on the flight deck and were unable to fight back.  
      Both commanding Admirals have now been heard from.  Nimitz and Nagumo both praise their own successes and acknowledge any defeats.  However, even Nagumo only seems to view the loss of four of Japan’s large carriers as nothing more than a setback and actually gives more attention to America’s loss of two carriers.  Like Nimitz though, Nagumo cannot be faulted for not being able to realize the full scope of the Japanese defeat at Midway.  This then begs the question of when was the realization made that the tide had been turned against Japan.  
      The precise moment, and who it first dawned on, cannot be known.  However, a book written in 1944 does show that by at least that time, Midway was recognized as the turning point against Japan.  Written by a Lieutenant Commander Griffith Coale of the United States Naval Reserve, Victory at Midway was the earliest book written about the battle that could be found.  Coale describes, with the help of artist illustrations, how the battle took place from start to finish.  This does not read like a scholarly work however.  While he gives an accurate telling of the events, he gives a lot of hype towards the Americans.  For example, when discussing an American attack on the first day of the battle, Coale says, “Meanwhile the Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8, led by a gallant Lieutenant Commander, finds the enemy and without hesitation, at 0920, conducts a most amazingly heroic attack entirely unsupported.”#
      Really the decision of the Lt. Commander to attack unsupported was a crazy one, but in battle the crazy decisions are the ones labeled as heroic.  There are some possible explanations for why Coale would be writing the way he is.  First, he was in the service when the war was still raging.  Being in that position, it is fully understandable, and to certain point expected, he would actively praise American acts of bravery.  Another, and perhaps more important, insight into Coale is what he wrote before even the forward of the book.  It is labeled that all royalty earnings from the book would go to the Navy Relief Fund.  Anyone making donations like that is obviously very patriotic and would be highly unlikely to write from any other point of view.  
      More rests in the book though than examples of how publications during the war would have been highly pro-American.  Following Coale’s run through of the battle, he claims that if Japan had succeeded in capturing Midway and destroying the American fleet there, that Hawaii, Panama, and the West Coast of the U.S. would have been on Japan’s target list for conquest.  Coale also shows that the victory at Midway was being viewed as the turning point of the war against Japan when he says, “The great victory thus won was the turning point of the Pacific War.”#
      So the first question is answered.  Midway was accepted as the turning point against Japan before the war was even over.  With that now established, it is time to launch into the main portion of this endeavor which is exploring what opinions have held up about the battle and what new ones may have arisen over the decades.  The war years and the 1940s will now be left behind to move into the 1950s and the Cold War.  To start things off, Japan will be heard from one more time.
      Published in 1955, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan tells the story of the Japanese Navy during the battle.  The book is written by two former Imperial Japanese Navy officers who were present at the battle, Captain Mitsuo Fuchida and Commander Masatake Okumiya.  First published in Japan in 1951, the book was the first time the Japanese public learned the details of the disastrous  battle.  The book is given further credit in the forward written by Admiral Raymond Spruance who was the commander of Task Force 16 during the Battle of Midway.  Spruance leaves no room for doubt when he says, “The present volume is a most valuable historical contribution to our knowledge of Japanese naval planning and operations, from the months leading up to the outbreak of war through the first six months of the war itself.”#
      The book goes into great detail about the run-up to the battle.  Not just specific information such as the disposition of fleets, but also giving an insight into the Japanese High Command’s strategic thinking and the rationalization for pressing the attack against the United States.  An entire chapter is dedicated to the Doolittle raid which apparently convinced the Japanese to finish off the American carriers instead of moving hard against Australia and Southeast Asia as was the strategy at the time.  As much as they have to say about Doolittle, they have more to say about the battle and what went wrong.

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In the moments leading up to the American attack, everything was going smoothly for the Japanese according to Fuchida.  The Japanese task force had been made aware of the American carriers upon being attacked by numerous carrier-based torpedo planes.  The American torpedo planes were nearly all shot down by Japanese Zero fighters before even having a chance of releasing their payload.  These Zero fighters, now low on fuel and ammo, began landing on their carriers to be rearmed.  It is here where the lynch pin lies for so many books and arguments about why the Japanese lost the Battle of Midway.  During a five minute window of vulnerability, as said by Fuchida, American dive bombers swooped in from above the clouds.  Fuchida explains, “The attackers had gotten in unimpeded because our fighters, which had engaged the preceding wave of torpedo planes only a few  moments earlier, had not yet had time to regain altitude. Consequently, it may be said that the American dive bombers’ success was made possible by the earlier martyrdom of their torpedo planes.  Also, our carriers had no time to evade because clouds hid the enemy’s approach until he dove down to the attack.  We had been caught flatfooted in the most vulnerable condition possible, decks loaded with planes armed and fueled for an attack.”#
      This attack described by Fuchida was performed on the Akagi, with the Soryu and Kaga also being hit at the same time.  The fourth carrier, Hiryu, would be attacked and sunk later.  It was this decisive moment in the battle that is normally pointed to as the turning point.  This five minute period was nothing short of an almost perfect confluence of unplanned events which resulted in one of the most staggering change of fortunes in history.  The American success at Midway is normally just called simple dumb luck in a battle that the Japanese had planned out perfectly.  While the Americans may have gotten lucky, Fuchida claims a lot more factors than luck in Japan’s defeat.  These factors also drift much more in the direction of how Japan failed as opposed to how the Americans succeeded.  
      A primary element contributed to Japan’s defeat was the failure of their intelligence network, both in not being able to keep track of American fleet movements and that the plan to attack Midway got out in the first place.  To quote the authors,”…for it is beyond the slightest possibility of doubt that the advance discovery of the Japanese plan to attack was the foremost single and immediate cause of Japan’s defeat.  Viewed from the Japanese side, this success of the enemy’s intelligence translates itself into a failure on our own part, a failure to take adequate precautions for guarding the secrecy of our plans.”#
      While intelligence was a large issue, the authors do not stop there.  They point a finger at the fact their fleet was dispersed which made it weaker than if it was concentrated.  Japan also did not retire their veteran pilots to flight schools but rather kept them on the front line.  The authors point out that at Midway, the IJN had not yet recovered from the losses of experienced pilots at the Battle of the Coral Sea.  They claim that if Japan had been moving some veteran pilots to be instructors that the brand new pilots at Midway would have been more readily able to deal with the enemy.  The next item on the list is what the authors call a “technological backwardness“.  This basically coming down to the use and availability of radar on Japanese ships.  At the time of the battle, there were only two radar sets available, both of them being of an experimental status and neither of them installed on the Japanese carriers at Midway.  Not just with radar, but an overall technological deficiency hampered Japan throughout the war.  The final nail in the coffin was simple arrogance.  For years Japan had seen nothing but victories and the authors claim that many in the IJN simply expected victory at Midway.#  A most fine example is presented by the authors with this, “No more vivid example of thoughtless and stupid arrogance can be conceived than the attitude which pervaded the war games in preparation for the Midway operation.  When, following the established rules of the games, nine enemy hits were scored and two Japanese carriers sunk thereby, these results were arbitrarily reduced, first, to only three hits scored, sinking one carrier and damaging another, and finally to no carriers lost at all.  The same flexible system of calculation was employed to establish plane losses, highly favorable of course to the Japanese.”#
      All this culminates in a final judgment of the Japanese people and their character.  The authors view their society as irrational and impulsive.  This results in actions that are not well thought out and hypocritical.  They also judge themselves as being narrow-minded and dogmatic, which made them reluctant to adopt new ideas.  The authors say that rational thought only tends to take place after a failure and that excuses tend to be made for why the failure took place.  They end with, “In short, as a nation, we lack maturity of mind and the necessary conditioning to enable us to know when and what to sacrifice for the sake of our main goals.”#
      All these things simply  try and answer the question of why the battle went the way it did.  It is interesting to see Fuchida and Okumiya pass such harsh judgment of almost every level and element of the Japanese plan.  For it to go all the way to examining the national character of Japan shows how much the authors were really reflecting on the battle and their own lives.  If only Midway had gone in Japan’s favor, the authors would be singing the virtues of the Japanese spirit.  Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan had a lot to contribute to the exploration of this topic which is why so much time was spent on it, but it is now time to move on to representatives from the 1960s.
      This next book will be the last one which was written with the help of a former officer who had something to do with Midway.  Co-edited by Admiral Chester Nimitz, Triumph in the Pacific: The Navy’s Struggle Against Japan gives a rundown of every battle worthy of note during the Pacific campaign.  This includes Midway which the book devotes a whole five pages to.  Very quickly, the moment so often called the turning point is reached where two squadrons of American dive bombers fatally wound three of the four Japanese carriers.  The author also refers to this event as the moment that changed the coarse of the war.#  However, the reason this moment was the turning point is slightly different from common arguments and harkens back to a point made by Fuchida and Okumiya.  To quote the author’s conclusion, “The main effect of the Battle of Midway cannot be measured by Japan’s loss of four carriers and a heavy cruiser, of 322 aircraft, or 3,500 lives; as compared to the United States’ loss of a carrier and a destroyer, 150 planes, and 307 lives.  The severest blow to Japan’s war-making potential was her loss of a hundred first-line pilots, continuing the heavy attrition begun in the raids on Ceylon and in the Battle of the Coral Sea.  Pilot attrition was in fact one of the chief causes of Japan’s ultimate defeat.  Shortage of oil, which had to be brought to Japan from the East Indies through submarine-infested waters, crippled Japanese pilot training programs.  The Imperial Army and Navy were obliged to employ aviators increasingly less well prepared to engage their well-trained opponents”#
      Perhaps if Japan had been sending their veteran pilots to serve as instructors in flight schools as Fuchida suggested, Japan would have been able to put up more of an effective fight despite the loss of four carriers.  So the changes now being seen in the development of opinions about the battle have moved from simply being a victory over material and equipment.  The issue of the loss of experienced manpower has reared its head twice in short order and the arguments behind those conclusions have merit.  A fighting force is only as good as its members and the loss of these highly experienced pilots showed itself to be too difficult to overcome.
      Moving onto another book also written in the 1960s, Twenty-Five Centuries of Sea Warfare is the first book to be looked at here that was not written or edited by a member of any nation’s military.  In a format similar to the previous book edited by Chester Nimitz, this work by Jacques Mordal, sets out to examine dozens of naval battles throughout history.  Starting with the Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. and ending with Midway in 1942, Mordal devotes a good 20 pages to every event in what makes for an engaging read.  Like all the works presented here though, this book carries on with some established conclusions while presenting new ones as well.  
      An item that really sticks out again is the issue of the Japanese intelligence services.  Both in regards to keeping secrets and being able to keep track of the American fleet.#  It is no wonder that Mordal has this opinion when he shows that he has read the Fuchida book, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan.  This is fully demonstrated when Mordal quotes directly from Fuchida’s account of the Japanese carriers being dive bombed.#  So it is now at least known that Mordal is using a very direct source for information about the Japanese side of the battle.  Although the same cannot be said for where specific ship information was being found as a picture of the U.S.S. Saratoga was listed as the Japanese carrier Kaga, but that is a minor point as ship identification is not for the novice.#

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Moving to the meat of Mordal’s conclusion, he does not shift from the idea that the Americans got very lucky at Midway.  Luck or not, he still calls the day a crushing defeat for Japan.  While the Americans did all they could to deserve a victory, Mordal points out that they were greatly helped by the mistakes of the Japanese.  To quote the author, “The Japanese had been too sure of themselves, had under-estimated the enemy and spread their forces over too wide an area; their adversaries had never despaired, but had fought on with determination, inexperienced yet persevering, and extremely well informed, this was the best card in their hand, and in the end were favored by fortune.”#
      A point worth noting though is that Mordal does not so much emphasize Midway as being the turning point, while he does suggest that.  Instead, he distinguishes himself from his predecessors by saying that Midway was the battle which set the tone for the rest of the war by locking in the aircraft carrier as the center of any future strategy.  He also makes the point that, even though the aircraft carrier had found a new precedence, the battleship still had a place.  In the case of Midway, they served as strong anti-aircraft platforms for the Americans.  They were unable to serve the same purpose for the Japanese as most of the battleships trailed the carrier force.  Mordal points out that even with the heavy losses at Midway, the Japanese still had a numerical superiority over the Americans.  The key point though is that the Japanese offensive had stalled and the Americans were able to keep them on their toes until new ships came off the production line for the U.S.#
      Mordal caps everything off by giving a quick two page description of the rest of the war ending with the dropping of the atomic bombs.  He also makes his point again that Midway was the proving ground of the aircraft carrier.  Even with this supposed preference for the big flat tops, Mordal says that the battleship was not quite dead yet as the U.S. used them in Korea.  Also the Navy had cancelled orders for three new super carriers only to change their mind three years later.  He also throws in the new advent of the nuclear submarine which has possibly changed naval doctrine again.#  His point to all this was that strategies always change.  For the carrier, Midway was where it proved its worth but there was nothing stopping some new technology or incident from changing that supremacy.  So far that has not happened, but in 1966 there was no way to know for sure.
      Next on the list of books is Miracle at Midway by Charles Mercer, written in 1977.  If the title does not give it away, Mercer thinks the American victory was nothing short of a miracle.  Now the writing of this book is during the time immediately after the conclusion of the Vietnam War where a lot of American entertainment regarding the military was not so bright.  Whether this had anything to do with the choice of using the word miracle in the title is unknown.  Although, it does suggest that the only way the U.S. would of ever been able to win that battle was through an act of God no matter the amount of preparation.  
      Like many of the authors before him, Mercer is also of the school of thought which says that Midway was the turning point.  Like Nimitz and Fuchida, Mercer’s main reason for why Midway was the turning point was that Japan lost so many of her experienced air crews.  Perhaps a main reason he has this view is because he was reading Nimitz’ book Triumph in the Pacific: The Navy’s Struggle Against Japan.  Like Mordal quoting Fuchida, Mercer quotes a passage from Nimitz’ book about the victory of the American intelligence service.  Mercer really does present a very straight forward conclusion presenting nothing which had not been heard already.  He concludes with, “Midway tipped the scale of the Pacific war in favor of the United States.  While there were years of bitter fighting ahead, Japan never recovered its initial advantage.”#
      Getting ever closer to modern times, it is now time to move to look at thoughts from the 1980s.  Published in 1982 by University of Maryland History Professor Gordon Prange, Miracle at Midway has more to offer than the previous Mercer book of the same title.  Such is the preponderance of information that it is difficult to select just what to mention here as Prange devotes ten chapters to the battle alone.  In the section where the first three Japanese carriers are hit, Prange paints a vivid picture of what was taking place onboard each ship.  He also mentions Captain Fuchida aboard the Akagi and how he barely escaped death.  All the information presented about Fuchida was without question gathered from Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan as Prange uses much of the same language to describe the attack.  While being detailed to the point of describing every bomb hit, what he does not say is anything about how lucky the Americans were to attack during the most vulnerable time for the Japanese.  Prange mentions how all of the Japanese aircraft were loaded full of fuel and ordnance when the American bombs fell making the attack all the more devastating, but he passes no judgment on the timing of the attack.#        As for what went wrong, Prange has a lot to say about the Japanese.  He says that, in researching for the book, nearly all those he consulted puts the root cause of the defeat in what Fuchida and Okumiya called the “victory disease.”#  That being the long string of victories the Japanese had enjoyed to that point made them expect to win and therefore under prepare.  Although, it has yet to be noted by any of the authors so far that this condition should already of been taken care of with the Japanese defeat at the Battle of the Coral Sea a month prior to Midway.  Perhaps because it was simply viewed as more of a setback than a defeat and they just put it in the backs of their minds.  Either way, the Japanese were still riding high with confidence leading into the Battle of Midway as said by numerous authors, which include accounts from officers who were there, so this conclusion is pretty much set in stone.
      Prange also breaks down the Japanese failures in an easy to follow nine part list.  This list being inspired by a formula for victory spawned by the U.S. Naval War College.  Some of these items include the Japanese losing sight of any clear objective.  That the Midway operation was a monster with two heads that were doing nothing but fighting against each other.  Another large knock made against the Japanese by Prange is that they dispersed their force, making them less effective, this being a point that has been heard before.  Another large snafu was the issue of achieving surprise.  Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Americans knew the attack was coming the whole time and were able to prepare for it.  Admiral Nimitz pointed out earlier that Midway was a victory of intelligence and Prange would appear to agree.  The final item on the list is that because Admiral Yamamoto, the commander of the whole Japanese fleet, decided to tag along in the battleship Yamato, he was unable to exercise an as effective command as he would have had he remained in the naval headquarters in Tokyo.  Him being on a ship caused there to be a delay in information so Yamamoto was always two steps behind the action while Admiral Nimitz in Pearl Harbor was able to stay on top of events.#
      Prange decides to toss in a little speculation about what may of happened if Japan had succeeded in taking Midway and destroying the American carrier force.  Most likely, the Japanese would of turned back towards Australia, and with no American carriers, there would have been little to stop them.  The Japanese would have had a secure grip on Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.  They would have been able to threaten Hawaii and harass the West Coast of the United States.  This pressing Japanese threat may have driven America away from the Europe first policy having strong affects on the war in Europe.  While Prange admits this is nothing but speculation, he is highly suggesting that a Japanese victory at Midway would have led to a much longer war.#  He concludes with, “At Midway, the United States laid aside the shield and picked up the sword, and through all the engagements to follow, never again yielded the strategic offensive.”#
      Moving past the Cold War era, the book Great Campaigns: The Midway Campaign by Jack Greene is found.  Published in 1995, the book offers a fairly generic walkthrough of the events leading up to and through the Battle of Midway.  The book is detailed and seemingly well researched, it just does not bring anything new to the table.  This would perhaps be something to read as a starting point for further understanding, sort of like something on the History Channel.  After talking through the action of Midway, Greene concludes by saying that the loss of so many experienced airmen was a blow that Japan could not recover from.  So like the issue of failed Japanese intelligence for why the battle was lost, the point of lost airmen displays itself again as to why Midway was the turning point of the war.  
      One of the more interesting things Greene presents is a reminder of the large sacrifice made by the torpedo planes which took very heavy losses.  Greene quotes a Gary North in saying, “It is here that Midway’s supreme lesson appears in all its harshness: some men die without seeing their dreams achieved, yet their supreme sacrifice makes possible the fulfillment of those dreams.  American torpedo bombers from Midway and from the carriers saw their best efforts fail.  Most of them did not live to tell about it.  Their planes were poor; their torpedoes missed their mark; and it looked as though all was in vain.  But within 30 minutes, their sacrifice was to pay enormous dividends.”#

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The point being made here is that while the timing of the American dive bomber’s arrival over the Japanese fleet may have been luck, that luck was not so random.  The reason the Japanese flight decks were packed with fully loaded aircraft was because of those torpedo planes as was also the reason the dive bombers were able to approach without being engaged by fighters.  So in presenting this quote, Greene does distinguish himself a little bit from the crowd and the book benefits for it.
      The final book to be looked at here is entitled Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History.  This book being written by Craig Symonds and was published in 2005 by Oxford University Press.  To start, this work provides a most satisfying read.  Even though the story is not new, Symonds writes in a style which truly keeps it interesting.  On top of being very well written, a lot of new information is presented.  One such item ties into the issue of poor Japanese intelligence.  
      When the Japanese Midway strike force, called the Kido Butai, left Japan, it could have had two additional carriers.  Those which could have been included were the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, both ships veterans of the Battle of the Coral Sea.  The Shokaku had had her flight deck severely damaged while the Zuikaku lost most of her air wing.  Symonds compares these two ships to the U.S.S. Yorktown, a ship which had also been heavily damaged at the Coral Sea and lost much of her air wing.  Unlike the Japanese though, the Americans decided to patch the Yorktown back together, making it combat ready in 48 hours.  The reason this has to do with military intelligence is that the Japanese believed the Yorktown to be either sunk or so severely damaged that it would be out of action for months.  Assuming this, they felt no need to rush the Shokaku and Zuikaku back into service to deal with an American force they believed to only consist of two carriers.  They also believed to still have the element of surprise, both assumptions proving to be false.#
      Once the battle ensues, Symonds creates a very dramatic portryal.  This is especially true for the doomed American torpedo planes as Symonds uses many personal accounts and radio transcripts to tell the story.  It is the section that follows which is where Symonds really distinguishes himself from all authors before him.  Most authors will stop at saying that Midway was the turning point of the war, regardless of what made it the turning point.  Symonds goes one step further by saying this was a turning point in history which had a ripple effect far beyond the Pacific.  He says, “It is seldom possible to pick a precise moment when the course of history changes, but this was one such moment.  At 10:20 A.M. on June 4, 1942, the Japanese were not only winning the Battle of Midway, they were winning the war.  The carriers of the Kito Butai had survived seven separate air attacks without a scratch.  Their superior attack planes were armed and ready on the flight deck, victory lay before them.”#
      What followed was described by an observing American pilot as a “beautiful silver waterfall” coming down on the Japanese carriers.  Symonds says that in less time it takes to read about it, three Japanese carriers were wrecked and on their way to sinking.  The fourth carrier would shortly meet the same fate.  Once the description of the battle is over, Symonds has some interesting thoughts in his conclusion.  First, that the battle ended the period of Japanese expansion and put them on the defensive till the end of the war.  The victory at Midway allowed for the U.S. to maintain a Europe first policy, something also heard in Miracle at Midway by Harold Prange.  The victory at Midway allowed America to commit troops to the invasion of North Africa and forces to the Battle of the Atlantic.  Symonds describes Midway as a battle that not only allowed the allies to carry the war forward in the Pacific but indeed all around the world.#
      Symonds largest point follows.  Midway may of turned the tide against Japan, but America was not able to go on the offensive immediately.  It was not until December 1942 that the first new carrier, the U.S.S. Essex, joined the fleet of the four surviving U.S. carriers.  Ten Essex-class ships were followed by ten Ticonderoga-class ships which were in turn followed by five of the Independence-class.  Each new class of ship was larger than the last.  By V-J day in September 1945, the U.S. Navy had 100 carriers of all sizes, a number unimaginable at the time of Midway.  Just six months after the end of the war, Winston Churchill declared that an “iron curtain” has descended over Europe.  This speech bringing to light that a post-war competition had arose between the Soviet Union and the West.  Symonds concludes by saying, “In that conflict the United States assumed a global leadership position dramatically different from its traditional aloofness.  This time it was not a false dawn: American industrial capacity and American leadership in World War II made the United States a global power, and there would be no retreat from either the burdens or the responsibilities of the status.”#
      Thus concludes this look into 60 years of books, all having something to say about the Battle of Midway.  Thoughts about the battle have gone from not knowing what would happen, as seen in the After Action Reports, to defining the role of the United States for the rest of the 20th century.  The battle also showed itself to cause great reflection on the part of the Japanese.  Since the conclusion of the war was brought by the use of the most destructive weapons ever created, it is no wonder that the moment, which can be so clearly seen as the turning point, is deeply looked upon.  With World War II playing such an important part in the role the United States played throughout the Cold War till today, it will come as no surprise if books are written 100 years from now which trace the international standing of America all the way back to that little atoll in the middle of the Pacific.
 
Bibliography
 
“Battle of Midway: 4-7 June 1942, Online Action Reports: Commander in Chief, Pacific       Fleet, Serial 01849 of 28 June 1942.” Department of the Navy: Naval Historical       Center. http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/mid1.htm  
 
Coale, Griffith. Victory at Midway. New York: Ferris Printing Company, 1944.
 
Cook, Theodore. “Our Midway Disaster.” What If? 311-340.  New York: Berkley       Publishing Group, 1999.
 
Fuchida, Mitsuo and Masatake Okumiya. Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan.       Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1955.
 
Greene, Jack. Great Campaigns: The Midway Campaign. Conshohocken, PA: Combined       Books, 1995.
 
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[rpm]

Wow, quite a read but very entertaining. No wonder you got an A.

[Rolex]

Well written synopsis of the material, Sullie.

[Shaky]

Well written...one minor, nit-picking gripe:

Ten Essex-class ships were followed by ten Ticonderoga-class ships which were in turn followed by five of the Independence-class. Each new class of ship was larger than the last.

The Independence class was CVE's, right?

[sullie363]

Originally posted by Shaky
Well written...one minor, nit-picking gripe:



The Independence class was CVE's, right?

Yup.  In this case the gripe will have to be forwarded to the book I was discussing at the time.  In this case, that section is a direct paraphrase from the book.