The United States won a decisive victory at Midway between 4 and 7 June 19421, sinking three Japanese aircraft carriers in a few minutes of dive-bombing near the atoll, and a fourth later the same day. Coming six months after Pearl Harbor, it was the turning point of the Pacific war.
Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan's navy ruled the Pacific and had not lost a major fleet battle, though at the Coral Sea in May its advance had been checked for the first time. Then, in a few minutes over open ocean near a tiny atoll called Midway, four of its aircraft carriers went to the bottom, and the war in the Pacific turned for good.
Part of The greatest battles of the Pacific War · Before: The Battle of the Coral Sea · Next: The Guadalcanal Campaign
The battle from both sides
Two perspectivesThe United States went into Midway forewarned: codebreakers had read enough Japanese traffic to know the target and timing, letting Nimitz set an ambush with his three carriers.1 Japanese aircraft struck the island while the US carriers waited undetected on the flank. In a few devastating minutes American dive-bombers caught the Japanese carriers with fuelled and armed planes in their hangars and sank the heart of the enemy fleet, four fleet carriers, for the loss of one of their own.1 The victory halted Japan's Pacific expansion barely six months after Pearl Harbor and shifted the initiative to the United States for the rest of the war.
Japan planned Midway to finish the work of Pearl Harbor: seize the atoll and lure the surviving American carriers into a decisive battle. But the plan was complex, the fleet divided, and American codebreakers had pierced its secrecy. Committing its carriers to pounding the island, the Japanese command was caught changing its aircraft between land and ship ordnance when the US dive-bombers fell on them. In minutes four irreplaceable fleet carriers, veterans of Pearl Harbor, were ablaze, along with their aircrews and mechanics. It was a catastrophe from which the Imperial Navy never recovered, and the tide of the Pacific War turned against Japan.
The trap the Americans knew about
Admiral Yamamoto planned to lure the remaining American carriers into a decisive battle1 at Midway and finish them off. What he did not know was that American codebreakers had cracked enough of the Japanese naval code to read his plan.2 The Americans knew where and roughly when the blow would fall, and set an ambush of their own.
The carrier duel
Carriers fight at a distance, hurling aircraft at each other across miles of sea. On the morning of 4 June the two fleets groped for each other with scout planes and strikes. Wave after wave of American torpedo bombers attacked the Japanese carriers3 and were almost wiped out, seemingly for nothing.
The five minutes
Their sacrifice had pulled the Japanese fighters down to sea level. High above, American dive bombers arrived unopposed over three Japanese carriers caught at their most vulnerable, their hangars full of fuelled and armed aircraft. In roughly five minutes they turned three of them into blazing wrecks.4 A fourth was hunted down and sunk later that day.4
The reckoning
Japan lost four fleet carriers and many veteran aircrew and skilled mechanics in a single day, losses it could never fully replace. The United States lost one carrier, the Yorktown, and could build more.2
The tide turns
Before Midway, Japan attacked where it pleased. After it, the initiative in the Pacific passed to the Americans and never came back. It is remembered as one of the most decisive naval battles in history, won by intelligence, courage, and a few minutes of perfect timing.