Lord - Incredible Victory: the Battle of Midway

To William Rushton Calfee

BY ANY ORDINARY STANDARD, they were hopelessly outclassed.

They had no battleships, the enemy eleven. They had eight cruisers, the enemy twenty-three. They had three carriers (one of them crippled); the enemy had eight. Their shore defenses included guns from the turn of the century.

They knew little of war. None of the Navy pilots on one of their carriers had ever been in combat. Nor had any of the Army fliers. Of the Marines, 17 of 21 new pilots were just out of flight schoolsome with less than four hours flying time since then. Their enemy was brilliant, experienced and all-conquering.

They were tired, dead tired. The patrol plane crews, for instance, had been flying 15 hours a day, servicing their own planes, getting perhaps three hours sleep at night.

They had equipment problems. Some of their dive bombers couldnt divethe fabric came off the wings. Their torpedoes were slow and unreliable; the torpedo planes even worse. Yet they were up against the finest fighting plane in the world.

They took crushing losses15 out of 15 in one torpedo squadron 21 out of 27 in a group of fighters many, many more.

They had no right to win. Yet they did, and in doing so they changed the course of a war. More than that, they added a new nameMidwayto that small list that inspires men by shining example. Like Marathon, the Armada, the Marne, a few others, Midway showed that every once in a while what must be need not be at all. Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirita magic blend of skill, faith and valorthat can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.

PETTY OFFICER HEIJIRO OMI didnt have a word to say in excuse. As the Admirals chief steward, he was responsible for the food at this partyand that included the tai, a carefully selected sea bream cooked whole. It had been a happy inspiration, for tai broiled in salt meant good luck in Japan. But this time the chef had broiled it in bean pastemiso, to be exactand as every superstitious Japanese knew, that extra touch meant crowning good luck with bad.

Obviously it was just a slip. The chef hadnt been thinking, and Omi had been off attending to some other detail of the party. Still, even the smallest mistake was humiliating when one had the privilege of personally serving Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the universally worshiped Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Now Omi stood forlorn and silent as Commander Noboru Fukusaki, the Admirals flag secretary, dressed him down. The Admiral himself hovered in the background; a humorless half-smile flickered across his face.

Well, no time to brood about it. The guests were already swarming aboard the flagship Yamato, riding gracefully at her red buoy in the anchorage of Hashirajima. Some 200 officers soon packed the quarterdeckdark, scowling Admiral Nagumo of Pearl Harbor fame a dozen young destroyer skippers the enormously popular Captain Yanagimoto of the carrier Soryu promising staff officers like Commander Sasabe, whose Naval Academy Class of 23 seemed to be getting so many good jobs.

Admiral Yamamoto had invited them all this spring evening of May 25, 1942, to help celebrate a very auspicious occasion. A huge Japanese armada was about to set forth across the Pacific, and its goal was in keeping with its size: capture the American base at Midway, lure the U.S. fleet to destruction, and hopefully win the war for Japan at a single stroke.

Cheers and banzais echoed across the water, past the scores of ships that packed the quiet anchorage. If anyone noticed the tai served with miso, it was long since forgotten. Toasts to the nation; toasts to the fleet; toasts to past triumphs and future hopes. The warm sake stirred visions of limitless glory, and even the flowered cups seemed auspiciousthey had been presented to Admiral Yamamoto by the Emperor himself.

Victory was in the air not just at Hashirajima but throughout Japan. For six months she had enjoyed an unbroken string of triumphs beyond the wildest imaginationPearl Harbor the Repulse and the Prince of Wales Hong Kong Manila Singapore Bataan. By April Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumos big carriers were ravaging the Indian Ocean, smashing Colombo, sinking two British cruisers, plus the carrier Hermes off Trincomalee. Then Coral Sea and still more glory. Later, men would call it a strategic defeatit permanently blunted the Japanese thrust toward Australiabut who could see that now? A generously inflated communiqu ticked off a satisfying toll of smashed U.S. carriers, battleships and cruisers.

Heady stuff, making it easy to believe still more. The village radios crackled with bulletins of a demoralized America. Newspapers described U.S. cities ghostlike under a new blackout law. Reports told how unwilling American women are dragged from their homes into munitions factories. (Years later any American would recognize that this referred to the robust Rosie the Riveter.)

Best of all, the press described how the American people were beginning to waver. One article told how Cordell Hull was desperately trying to rally a war-weary people, but it is like trying to drive an unwilling horse into a bull fight arena. Another report said that a San Francisco radio announcer stammered when he tried to defend democracy. DISSATISFACTION WITHIN CAMP OF ALLIES CONTINUES TO MOUNT, happily announced the Japan Times and Advertiser, quoting Father Charles E. Coughlin, the brave and well-known Catholic missionary in America.

One Japanese who did not buy all this was Admiral Yamamoto. Born in 1884 during the great awakening of the Meiji Restoration, blooded at Tsushima under the heroic Admiral Togo, and now the leading apostle of naval air power, Yamamoto stood perfectly for all the greatness of new Japan. But he also knew his America. He had studied at Harvard, served as naval attach in Washington, traveled around the country. Dont take taxis, take the bus, he used to tell new Japanese arrivals.

He knew Americas resilience and optimism too. His enemies would later make much of a boast that hed sign peace in the White House. Actually, he said that Japan could never win short of signing peace in the White House.

Above all, he understood American production. He may not have known that in 1940 the United States turned out 4,500,000 automobiles, while Japan made only 48,000; but he wouldnt have been surprised. He knew all too well that Japan was overmatched, and that it was only a matter of time before American production would begin to tell. If I am told to fight regardless of the consequences, he confided to Premier Konoye in 1941, I shall run wild for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years of the fighting.

To Yamamoto there was only one solution: a quick, decisive victory before America got rolling. If he could crush the weakened U.S. fleetespecially those carriers missed at Pearl Harborhed control the whole Pacific. Then just possibly Washington might settle for a peace favorable to Japan, rather than face the agony of the long road back.

Admittedly it was a long shot, but what was so wrong with that? He had always been a gambler. In his American days two of his favorite diversions were bridge and poker. Do you like to gamble? he once asked an apprentice secretary at the Embassy in Washington. When the young man hesitantly said he hadnt yet tried, Yamamoto shut him off: People who dont gamble arent worth talking to.