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REVIEW BY MARK DeSANTIS
The Battle of Midway in early June 1942 is arguably the most significant naval encounter of the Second World War, and easily one of the most notable battles in all history. The three-day fight in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is still suffused with mythology: an outnumbered but lucky American fleet obtained a dramatic and decisive triumph over the superior Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Misconceptions about the battle are many, and the paucity of reliable English-language accounts from the Japanese has never helped matters.
In this new book, Mark E Stille, a retired US Navy intelligence officer, delivers a comprehensive picture of the engagement. This is no small task. Known to the Japanese as Operation MI, Midway was an enormous confrontation that played out over vast distances. Unlike naval battles of earlier wars, in which fleets had to come within sight of each other, the two sides duelling at Midway did not. Much of the damage was instead inflicted from the sky.
Stille highlights the many errors made by the Japanese in the lead-up to, and during, Operation MI. Though both participants made mistakes, those of the Japanese would prove much more damaging. For example, they assumed they had the advantage of surprise. But their codes had been cracked.
The Japanese also suffered from so-called ‘Victory Disease’ – this being a scorn for the Americans brought on by their prior, uninterrupted success. But, despite the drubbing inflicted at Pearl Harbor the previous December, the Americans were only down; they were not out.
The architect of that strike on the Hawaiian base was the IJN’s Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who was considered by his own side to be a top-notch strategic thinker. Stille differs strongly with this assessment, writing that the Pearl Harbor attack was actually a ‘strategic disaster of the first order for Japan’, since it left the US Pacific Fleet still very much capable of fighting.
Yamamoto also comes in for heavy criticism concerning his conception of Operation MI. The attack on Midway was intended to bring about a decisive battle, with the admiral thinking that the US Navy would move to defend itself. He also prepared an overly elaborate plan, and this led to an unnecessary dispersal of his strength. For instance, a concurrent operation sent a large force of warships, including two carriers, to strike the Aleutian Islands at the same time. Once the four carriers of the famously proficient Striking Force, under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s command at Midway, had been smashed, Yamamoto had no other aircraft to keep up the fighting.
Yamamoto also failed to concentrate the ships that were actually taking part in MI. The fleet elements under his own command at Midway, the Main Force, would not take part in the battle. A sizable naval force was also allocated to capture Midway Island, though the Japanese ability to hold it, even if it fell, against a later American counter-attack, was highly doubtful.
Superior American intelligence, supplied by astute codebreaking, allowed Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the USN’s Pacific Fleet, to plan an ambush against the coming Japanese attack on Midway on the basis of ‘calculated risk’. Nimitz entrusted his on-the-spot admirals, Frank Fletcher and Raymond Spruance, with the latitude to conduct the fighting as they saw fit, though he would remain in contact with them from his base in Pearl Harbor.
As Stille concludes, the reasons for the American victory were many, although luck did play its part. His book is an important addition to the growing corpus of new literature on this fascinating and complicated battle.
Midway: the Pacific War’s most famous battle
Mark E Stille
Osprey Publishing, hbk, 400pp (£25)
ISBN 978-1472862037
