A Chapter of History

More than a month had passed since Midway, and the pattern of the greatest and probably the most decisive naval battle since Jutland still lay in the public mind like an ill-matched jigsaw puzzle, confused and without fit. At last the Navy issued its official report, and the pieces dropped into their places.

The Navy's communique was a model of frankness, a relatively complete and orderly account. It was also proof that the Navy's crack COMINCH, Admiral Ernest Joseph King, had determined to make an honest effort to give the people the facts of battle. The Navy told the bad (or most of it) with the good. But there was more good than bad.

Midway had been a great victory, the second naval victory scored against the Jap. In the first, the Battle of the Coral Sea (TIME, May 18), the enemy had been scattered and turned back as he tried to cut the communications lines of the South Pacific. At Midway the threat had been greater. Apparently Midway was to have been a way station. Pearl Harbor was the goal, and disastrous defeat of the U.S. in the Pacific was inevitable if Pearl Harbor was taken.

Like the Battle of the Coral Sea, Midway was a triumph of air power. Land-based aircraft from the island struck the first blow and gave the Jap enough to make him turn back. But carrier-based craft, launched as the Jap retired, did even greater damage. The carrier planes (plus Army Flying Fortresses) drove the Jap back into the shelter of the Mandates and the cover of thick weather with only the remnants of his mighty invasion fleet.

The victory was the result of superb teamwork among Army, Navy and Marine Corps flyers, under the centralized command of Admiral Chester William Nimitz.*

Odds Evener. Japan's losses definitely ended Japan's terrifying naval superiority in the Pacific. Now the enemy was a cut below the U.S. Pacific Fleet in sea-air power, but it was not yet time for the U.S. to crow. Its newly won superiority was still too thin for broad-scale offensive action, and it was offset by the Jap's formidable holding of island bases (stationary aircraft carriers) in the western ocean.

At Midway the Japanese lost four first-line aircraft carriers, two heavy cruisers and three destroyers. Three Jap battleships, a light cruiser, at least three transports and several destroyers were crippled before they drew out of range of U.S. aircraft. Estimated Jap losses in aircraft: 275; in men: 4,800.

Biggest U.S. loss was the carrier Yorktown, bombed, torpedoed and forced out of action. The destroyer Hammann was plain sunk. Other U.S. losses: 92 officers, 215 enlisted men.

The Battle Opens. Navy patrol planes picked up the first enemy column west of Midway on June 3. This was the landing force: cruisers, transports, cargo ships, many escort vessels. Far to the north a U.S. carrier force ranged. But it would be a full day before it could get within range.

Another Jap column (four carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers) was steaming down from the northwest. It was to make the heavy attack.

The U.S. carrier force swung south toward Midway, then lanced west, between the Jap attack force and the Jap invasion force (see map*). Meanwhile, Midway's land-based aircraft had whipped into action.

Against the Japanese invasion force went nine Army Flying Fortresses. Bombing from the flat, the Boeings got hits on a transport and a cruiser, left them burning. Night fell. By moonlight, four Consolidated Catalinas lumbered into the fleet, let drive with torpedoes, hit two big ships. The Japs still plowed on.

To Death & Glory. The Japanese attack force coming from the northwest had swept perilously close to Midway. Marines and Army men from the crowded little atoll went out to meet it. On-percentage (but not in over-all numbers), losses in U.S. aircraft and men were appallingly high from that time on. Of six Marine torpedo planes that went out, only one returned; of four Army torpedo planes, two came back. A flight of 16 Marine dive-bombers went after a carrier believed to be the Soryu (Blue Dragon). Only eight returned. A battleship was bombed, left smoking and listing.

The Marines upheld the honor of the Corps. Easygoing, hands.ome Major Loften R. Henderson stuck to his flaming bomber, crashed on a carrier deck. Captain Richard E. Fleming, hit by anti-aircraft fire, went on to drop his bombs, flew to his death in the sea.

From the north the Jap launched an air armada against Midway. Not a plane was on the ground when he got there. The Marines, in stubby Grumman Wildcats, met him over the shore. With the help of anti-aircraft they knocked down 40 planes in the most concentrated dogfight U.S. airmen had ever seen.

Now the U.S. carrier force was within range. Its hornets buzzed out to the north and west, joining Midway land-based craft, to strike the Jap again & again. For all planes the range was still too great for flyers to have much hope of getting back to base. They flew their planes until the gas was out, went down in the sea.

Turn of the Tide. But the battle had been won; the Jap was retiring. High overhead the Fortresses patrolled his fleeing fleet, nudging it along with bombs. The carriers took up the pursuit--all but one. The Yorktown was out of action. Against that 19,900-ton beauty the Jap had sent 18 dive-bombers. The fighters knocked down eleven. But three Jap planes got direct hits on the carrier. Torpedo planes followed, slammed her hard. The Yorktown heeled over into a list. Her flyers went to other carriers.

By now the Jap was drawing within range of his own land bases, and the U.S. Navy was not going to make the mistake he had made. Three days after the first Jap columns had been sighted, the enemy was out of action.

The Meaning of Victory. Before and at Midway the Jap had certainly lost six carriers, almost surely had lost a seventh. Two more had been damaged. In return he could count one U.S. carrier (Lexington) sunk, another gravely damaged.

The enemy had been badly hurt, and he was ill-equipped to replace his losses at the rate the U.S. could. Sea power in the Pacific had been leveled in the Coral Sea; at Midway the balance--slight as it was--had gone to the U.S. Now the Jap, looking at new carriers coming off U.S. ways, at aircraft production he could not hope to approach, could worry.

* In his June communiques Admiral Nimitz mentioned the Army first. This did not mean that the Army bombers had done the most: it was simply good Navy manners. Subsequently Lieut. General Henry Harley ("Hap") Arnold's air force seemed to be a little over-grabby for credit.

* The Navy's map shows the occupation force in retreat after savage attacks by Army, Navy and Marine land-based craft. Carrier planes catch up and destructively exploit the Jap retirement. The Jap carrier force, assaulted by land-based craft, has turned north when carrier-based planes hit, sink three carriers, fire a battleship, sink a destroyer. Laste phases are a carrier-dive-bomber attack in which a fourth carrier is sunk, two battleships and a cruiser hit, and a high-level attack by Army bombers, which get hits on a carrier, battleship and cruiser.

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