Seventy-five years ago this week the U. S. Navy pulled off one of the all-time upsets in the history of military affairs when it defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway. Beginning on December 7,1941, with a surprise attack on…
Seventy-five years ago this week the U. S. Navy pulled off one of the all-time upsets in the history of military affairs when it defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway. Beginning on December 7,1941, with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that crippled the U. S. Pacific fleet as it lay at anchor, the Imperial Japanese Navy put together an incredible run of victories. Japanese naval forces decimated the Allied fleet at the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27,1942, while the Japanese army conquered British, Dutch, American, and Australian territories throughout the Southwest Pacific and Southeast Asia. The period culminated with the fall of the Philippines and the surrender of 12,000 American troops—the largest mass surrender to a foreign power in U. S. military history.
American forces were down but not out. On April 18,1942,16 B-25 Mitchell bombers led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle took off from the USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other cities in Japan. The bombers caused only minor damage, but Japanese military leaders, ashamed that they had allowed an attack on their homeland, resolved to expand Japan’s defense perimeter by taking U. S.-held Midway Island in the Central Pacific. The stage was set for one of the most dramatic naval battles in history.
The U. S. Pacific fleet had only three serviceable aircraft carriers along with a handful of cruisers and destroyers with which to defend Midway. One of the carriers, the USS Yorktown, had been badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, and only joined the task force steaming towards Midway after heroic repair work performed by workers at Pearl Harbor.
