Terri Wangard

 1942: Crux of War by Jonathan Parshall, 2026

I picked up some "light" reading from the library! 1942: Crux of War is 1,248 pages. I don't plan on reading the whole thing; just what interests me. That starts with the Battle of Midway.

I learned some interesting points:

·       Far from facing the overwhelming odds that have been the stuff of legend for decades regarding this battle, the Americans matched up well with their opponent. Nagumo brought four carriers, 248 carrier aircraft, and twenty total warships to the battle, facing three American flattops, 231 carrier aircraft, and 25 warships, as well as 120-odd aircraft on Midway’s unsinkable airfield. The Japanese had the edge in experience, surface firepower, and quality of planes, while the odds favored the Americans numerically, particularly in scouting.

·       A Japanese scout plane should have detected the American task force early on, but either flew its route incorrectly, or above the overcast, or simply wasn’t paying attention, or some combination of all three.

·       During the rearming process on the Japanese carriers, they were under intermittent air attack from the Midway-based planes. While the planes did no damage, the high-speed evasive maneuvers Nagumo was constantly making made the rearming process more difficult.

·       Unlike the movies, the Americans did not catch the Japanese about to launch their own counterstrike. The flight decks were clear. The reserve strike aircraft were down in the hangars where they’d been all morning, where the fueling systems were a pyrotechnic disaster waiting to happen.

·       Much of the blame for the loss of Yorktown goes to Hornet’s commander, Captain Marc Mitscher. Had he not disobeyed orders regarding the route his air group was to take on the morning of June 4 and searched for a mythical second group of enemy carriers. The “Flight to Nowhere” was a complete fiasco. Aside from VT-8, no Hornet planes took part in the action that day. It is likely that Hornet’s dive-bombers would have attacked the Japanese fleet at the same time as Torpedo Squadron 8. The battle could have concluded by noon with all four enemy carriers sunk. Instead, Yorktown paid the price for Hornet being poorly skippered. It is something of a marvel that Mitscher survived the Battle of Midway with his career intact.

·       Midway was not a decisive battle in winning or losing the war for either side. Had the US been defeated, it had the naval assets and willpower to continue fighting. America’s shipbuilding programs could not be halted or delayed by Japan. Japan’s “Decisive Battle” would not have broken American morale and driven them to the bargaining table.