36 Replies to “The Battle of Midway”

  1. It’s not the brave soldiers that will fail, it’s pussyfied leaders, who are incompetent, that will lose the war.

  2. Something to consider is that the Americans had only deciphered about 10% of the Japanese Purple code when the USN deployed the fleet to Midway. Nimitz was willing to take the risk.
    Even to this day, much of the information and hardware about Purple, as well as the machines that were used for it, remains classified.

  3. Lautenberg was a filthy Lib (I should know – he was my Senator). Props to him though for his WWII service.

  4. I really don’t understand why we affix the moniker “Greatest Generation” to those who fought in WWII. Yes they went to war and some of those who survived went through hell surviving it but once the battles were over that same generation came home and helped themselves to the public purse in ways unimaginable to even the WWI combatants. WWII warrior’s great grand children will be paying for that generations self indulgence.

  6. Beautiful synopsis of the ACTUAL achievements in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. My own father was a Vet, of what became the US Air Force. I would guess that few citizens are even aware that the US had no separate branch of service … called the Air Force … during WWII. My father was very proud of his work in helping set up the Air Force. He was an aerial photographer and analyst at the Pentagon. He joined the service immediately after graduating HS in 1942. He was first to tell me about the superiority of the Japanese Zero. He said that we were scrambling to design and build competitive planes, such as the P-38 Lightning to equal the maneuverability of the Zero, and the P-51 to equal the power, speed, and range of the German Messerschmit. This knowledge led him to have a lifelong admiration of Japanese technology and precision. When everyone else was mocking Japanese post war junky trinkets in the 1950’s … my father knew the Japanese culture possessed the skill, technology and organization to produce the finest electronics and mechanics in the world. He even bought one of the first Toyotas available in America, a 1965 Toyota Crown Royal Deluxe. He thought that car was even better than his old 1957 Studebaker Champion (I thought that was the best car we ever had). I have had to teach my own children about the REAL events and truths of WWII. All they learned in school, was that America committed war crimes by firebombing Dresden, and dropping Nukes on Japan. I have had to help them UNLEARN all the misinformation they have been fed by a FAILED public education system.

  7. Wow! I’m floored by your ignorance. When the soldiers came home America’s economy had to transition from one supporting war to one supporting growing families. Families that needed homes to live in and soldiers who needed jobs. The result was an economy that grew at a tremendous rate. The consumers of the day needed everything from beds to appliances to furniture and vehicles. Schools, universities, hospitals and all other manner of services provided by local, state and federal governments sprang up.
    You, Joe, see this generation as a bunch of leaches living high off the public hog? I, and I have history on my side when I state that, tell you that this generation rolled up its collective sleeves and helped create an amazing America. That shining city on the hill. Your misguided assertion belongs much more to the generation of today. When 48,000,000 need food stamps to survive – when 90,000,000 fewer people are in the workforce than 10 years ago most of them because they have no hope of finding a job, when your federal governments lies to you every day about how good things are – you know that there are huge problems.
    Joe – you are either ignorant of history, uneducated or severely influenced by some ultra left wing university professor.

  8. Purple remains classified in part because of the fact that the Americans could not decipher the vast percentage of Japanese messages during the war.
    I suspect that it is still a viable code in some form, and the Americans have the keys to the coding courtesy of them winning the war.

  9. Bob L’Heureux I don’t think you know what I was referring to. Yes the soldiers coming home needed all kinds of material for their growing family and that was provided to them through the free market system. However they also came home and established the social safety net with underfunded programs like CPP, Medicare etc.

  10. ‘Helped themselves to the public purse in ways unimaginable”. I believe what you wrote speaks for itself.

  11. I hold those WW11 vets in high regard. When I was a small child I recall a double amputee (legs) who used to sit in front of Eaton’s selling pencils. He was perched on what today might be a furniture dolly. My mother to me he was a vet. I had no concept of what might have happened to him but I never forgot about him,so ingrained is that picture in a child’s mind.
    I guess since then we haven’t really had a generation that stepped up to the plate the way thay did. And we havent had the same reasons to.
    Maybe they wer’nt the greatest but they left a good account of themselves.

  12. RE: Battle of Midway.
    “Purple” was the Japanese diplomatic code. JN25 was the Japanese Naval military code. (There were other codes too but these 2 were most important). Purple gave hints of the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. JN25 told us of the planned attack at Midway. Without the information of Japanese intentions provided JN25, Midway might have turned out very differently.

  13. Where are you coming from, Joe? I really don’t understand you and in 1945 I was 17 yrs old and have an excellent memory.
    Run that one by me again, will you?
    These were men who had lived through the Great Depression and the Conservative party was hated so what are you saying?
    Do you personally know what it was like to live through those years? Do you know how many men joined up in 1939 because they knew they would have a regular wage, meals and uniforms (clothes), medical and dental care. As well, those who were married knew their wives would receive a regular cheque, and those who were single could give an allowance to a widowed mother.
    As I say, run it by me again as I don’t understand what you’re saying.

  14. The author is correct in that the warriors of today have the same mindset as the warriors of that generation. However, that is not enough to pass the torch. The leaders of today do not share those values. Unfortunately, neither does the general public. In WWII most of the country was pulling in the same direction – we intend to win, and we will make personal sacrifices to do so. Thanks to our education and media, though, “winning” at anything is considered evil. And personal sacrifice for a cause bigger than “I want…”? Phfft!
    The entire country will not be on that same page with the warriors again. And unfortunately, the warriors take their orders from the leaders, who base their policies on whatever is convenient, and whatever policy they hope will make them (the leaders) look good to an increasingly wussified populace, whose opinions are largely shaped by an increasingly marxist education system and media. And I know, there is still a huge inertia of Americans who believe (or say they believe) in the traditional values, but an ever increasing number of them do not, and many that say they do are simply giving lip service an image that they hope will help them score points in a country bar, as opposed to on a college campus.

  15. hear hear. it wasnt the vets that ‘helped themselves to the public purse’. it was them that filled it with cash in the first place, by applying the very same innovation, filling in the breach, bull by the horns approach that won the war.
    ‘joe’ needs to brush up on history. start by eschewing ANYTHING out of hollywood.
    anyway, I just cited last Monday in a meeting, this battle as a superb example of divine intervention. watch this for the details:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogByqeTGKVY 1 hr 54 minutes
    or if it gets yanked, just do a youtube search for ‘battle of midway’

  16. I stand corrected. Thanks.
    However, I did hear that it was the Purple machine that’s still under wraps, though, I assume that one for JN25, if one still exists, would likely be so as well.
    (The details for Enigma, on the other hand, are widely available. I often read about people building their own replicas of the different versions of the machine on sites such as Hackaday:
    http://www.hackaday.com )
    The fact that any of those codes were deciphered at all was amazing and often a result of luck and inspired guesses. The USN codebreakers eventually surmised that an attack was to occur and that a certain target mentioned in the Japanese traffic was indeed Midway. However, because a codename was used to refer to that location, there was some uncertainty.
    The base at Midway was ordered to send a message in the open that its desalinization plant had malfunctioned even though it was still operational. The idea was that the Japanese would receive it and retransmit the information with USN monitors listening in. In that second transmission, the aforementioned codename was used, confirming that Midway was to be the target.

  17. These men where our cops garbage colectors snow plow drivers business owners engineers farmers etc. do you remember party lines (telephone)6 volt batteries in cars horses on farms doing the work DONT BLAME THESE GUYS

  18. Well if it wasn’t the generation of WWII vets that brought in the underfunded CPP and Medicare then who did? Most of the baby boomers were too young to vote and those that were old enough didn’t care about things like CPP. I remember talking to a WWII vet who was giggling about how he never had as much money as when he retired and his CPP kicked in. I also remember other WWII vets worrying about how the CPP would be funded long term since there wasn’t enough money put into it to cover what would soon be taken out. The fact remains that every war brings changes to the society of those who fought and survived it. My 4 times great grandfather fought in the Napoleonic wars then became a pacifist and moved the Ukraine. His son in law fought in the Crimean war and thereafter left for America. On the other side of my family my great uncle fought in WWI and was gassed. He never recovered and neither did his culture. 3 of my uncles and my father in law were decorated for bravery in WWII and all came home changed men. Every one of those wars had a direct impact on our present society and the nihilistic anarchy we see in the youth of today.

  19. Shamrock: Your youtube video calls Spruance the commander at Midway when, in fact it was Admiral Frank Fletcher.

  20. So are you saying when these guys sighned up they had the demise of the north American economy in mind or did they do it for king and country . That is the question.The results of a bunch of farm boys going to war was not a plan but hijacked by you and your lefty buddies. Speaking from a family that came over with William Penn to Lancaster county and to Canada in 1795

  21. Joe you are an idiot . I knew many veterans from WW2 , none of them were lefties, they worked
    their buts off staring with nothing, asking for nothing in return. They raised their children with honour
    and their grandchildren and great grandchildren share their integrity.

  22. Call it OCD but why can’t they ever get the graphics right? A story on the Battle of Midway with a picture of an RAF Typhoon squadron.
    It’s like when I was watching the news as they were talking about the Battle of Britain while showing a picture of a P-38 Lightning.

  23. Ron: Our Windsor Spitfire team uses as their emblem the nose of a Flying Tiger. An American plane that was most famously used in the Pacific theatre and not even closely resembling the Spitfire other than being a single engine fighter. Getting the details right is somewhat of a lost skill.

  24. Maybe you didn’t get out enough nic. I knew a lot of WWII vets and they were pretty diverse in their political point of view. However except for the brief Diefenbaker interim the vets seemed to be mainly liberal since Canada has had almost continuous liberal governments.

  25. cliff hanger – a very dear friend of mine who served during WWII was almost killed when going in as part of the first wave on Juneau Beach. He got off the landing craft and took a German machine gun round to the chest. He was unconscious when he was fished out of the sea and the injury looked so bad he was put on deck and covered with a tarp. Half way back to England he woke up and proclaimed “I’m not dead yet”. He was immediately taken in for surgery and they saved his life with a steel plate to replace missing and mangled ribs. He finally recovered enough to serve in Korea. I once asked him about his service and he dismissed it as being simply doing his job. My father in law received a bravery medal for calling for artillery fire on his own position near Ortona. He described it as just doing his job.

  26. It would have been nice if the linked article had a photo of an actual Midway aircraft and personnel instead of a British Typhoon 🙂
    The sharkmouth as a squadron emblem was first used by the allies on Curtiss Tomahawks of 112 squadron RAF and they apparently got it from ZG76’s Bf110’s. It was later copied by the Flying Tigers and other units, and also appears on some Spitfires.

  28. My father was a different kind of Vet.
    He survived 4.5 yrs in a German Labour camp _ picked off the street in Haarlem, Holland in 1941.
    One day in mid 44 while he was delivering messages on a Bicycle a flight of P-47’s came down and attacked the airfield/manufacturing facility he was at…he was some 150m from a German 4 barrel anti aircraft battery firing furiously at the attackers…one of the fighters took offence and came around all guns blazing as he dropped likely a 500 lb bomb on the emplacement. My dad thought at the time the plane was coming right at him – peddled like a madman directly for a berm and as the bomb hit he dopnve into the dirt…significantly soiling his shorts. I cannot imagine what went through his mind at the time. ABJECT FEAR…no doubt.
    He lives today -92 yrs young. Back in 2003 he tried to get paid for the 4.5 yrs with KRUPP…but even though he had plenty of evidence in papers ja.? Just Not enough as far as those German Bastards were concerned and was basically SCREWED. He wrote a letter to Krupp expressing his dissatisfaction and also forwarded it to an organization of ex slave labourers as well….doesn’t he get a reply 6 months later from an actual bunk mate now living in Italy…wow.
    Goose bump material that.
    My father lived through the end result of totalitarianism…as did millions of others so enslaved and detained. when he spoke of those times and his experiences, I listened…Not so much of his wartime experience but in the days, months years preceding it.
    People wonder why I rail and rant at the likes of Obama (the second coming of Neville Chamberlain on Steroids & a Muslim Brotherhood MOLE), David Suzuki who would put me in a re-education camp….and the Islamics themselves who would lop off our heads & destroy our civilization simply for a difference in beliefs.
    Lock n Load boys n girls – there is a Battle coming and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

  29. I believe divine providence played the most pivotal role in the Battle for Midway. Lt. Cmdr Wade McClusky’s desperate faint sighting of a Japanese destroyer’s wake through an opening in the clouds after deciding courageously to push on in spite of low fuel – and then gambling further to see where that wake would lead to, ultimately resulting in the unbelievably opportune sinking of two carriers by his attack group. The outgunned Americans up to that point were getting mercilessly slaughtered. There would have been no road to victory if Midway was lost. The tide of the war and the start of the USS Missouri’s journey to Tokyo Harbour began when one pilot decided to put it all on the line and make his stand. History then followed the tail of his fuel starved Wildcat.

  30. cliff hanger are you saying that because someone went to war they are entitled to a pension plan so rich that they will bankrupt their great grand kids

  31. Yes, once Yorktown caught up with Fletcher’s task force, Spruance was under his command.
    While a pivotal and decisive battle, I disagree that some American commanders at the time believed this was a war winner. They were mindful of many dreadful battles ahead in the Pacific theatre. The presentism view is quite disagreeable.
    They went out, they fought, they died, they won against lethal opposition; they were our greatest generation because they were our parents.
    Truth be told they worked their butts’ off. I still think they’re special.
    Who knows maybe we’ll be our kids’ greatest generation; we are made of their “stuff” aren’t we?

  32. I read “Miracle at Midway” when I was 14 (great book…very detailed and engrossing) and was amazed at our grit, courage and determination to beat back the Jap navy. The story of the code breakers in Hawaii is one for the ages.
    Also, the story of getting the Yorktown repaired and battle-worthy is yet another prime example of good ol’ American know-how, backbone and resolution. The ship was so damaged the Navy brass was told by “experts” it wound take three to six months to repair. They said “screw that” and not only got Yorktown 75% repaired in THREE DAYS, a large group of boilermakers, welders, carpenters (remember, the flight decks were made of wood in those days) and others went to sea with the regular crew to finish up that 25% to make her seaworthy.
    My Dad was too young to see any action but he did serve on a minesweeper based out of Subic Bay in the Philippines. His ship primarily operated in the Sea of Japan. Since he didn’t see combat he told me many stories, but one stuck in my mind forever:
    He saw tens of thousands bloated bodies floating down the Yangzee River out to sea from Mao’s purges, the schools of sharks in a constant feeding frenzy for weeks on end…the horrible sights and stench of it all…
    We should have done what Patton and MacArthur wanted to do: continue the war by marching West and East respectively to destroy Communism, politics be damned.
    Yeah, John Lennon and all you Leftists, “Imagine” THAT world, free of Communism, you fools.
    Hell, just think what we could have done with resurgent Islam. We could have, without a second thought, crushed it like a bug decades ago.
    Imagine that.
    (Oh, and BTW, Joe, you are a Raving Asshole. Go back beneath whatever faux academic rock you slithered out from to teach bullshit to the “Bright Young Minds” of today. Remember, they too, need indoctrination.)

  33. Fuel Filter you do realize I am simply pointing out the falsity of the indoctrination we were fed regarding the vets of WWII. Yes those were heroic battles and fortunately our side came out on top. However the bravery of those men was no more and no less than the old tommies going over the top in the face of withering machine gun fire in WWI. The big difference is that the tommies often didn’t win the battle. The point I am making is simply that the men who fight wars are not somehow beyond criticism for things they did after the guns fell silent. While I can admire the valour displayed I can also recognize that those brave men then decided to put our nation on the road to socialist servitude when they failed to defend their children from socialism. Whether it was the WWI survivors who went to seminary so they could preach the social gospel or the WWII vets who decided they were entitled to the public purse both generations went abroad to fight overreaching governments and brought their enemies philosophy back with them if not intentionally in effect.

  35. Oops we’re both wrong apparently – Spruance was in operational command during the first carrier strike against the Japanese. Though Fletcher was certainly senior, he didn’t have the situational awareness of Spruance’s two aircraft carrier force:
    “US carrier forces, led by Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher was in overall command from Yorktown, but Spruance had better knowledge of the present operational situation), had the advantage of knowing, through decryption of Japanese Navy communications, the enemy plans and intentions. When the Japanese aircraft returned to their carriers, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo decided to re-arm them with bombs for a second strike at Midway. While the planes were being serviced, the waiting American ships were detected. Nagumo eventually decided to change the arms load for an attack against the American ships. With torpedoes and bombs stacked, and fuel hoses snaking across their decks, the Japanese carriers made vulnerable and highly flammable targets. Moreover, the Japanese aircraft had not managed to start against the US fleet, before they fell under attack themselves. As the ships turned into the wind to launch their attack, disaster befell them from the cloudy sky.”
    Spruance launched an attack from his carriers USS Enterprise and Hornet against the Japanese carriers. Anti-aircraft fire and fighters shot down 35 of 41 TBD Devastator torpedo bombers, including every plane of Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8 (see also George Gay). This, and other action, brought the defending Zeros down so low that American SBD Dauntless dive-bombers from Enterprise under Wade McClusky were able to attack almost without opposition. Five minutes later, three Japanese carriers, the Akagi, Kaga and Soryu, were ablaze, abandoned, or crippled.”
    I wondered how these well regarded historians could have gotten such a critical detail wrong. They didn’t. In any event, this is what they meant.
    http://www.molossia.org/milacademy/midway.html

  36. OK, Spruance was in command of the attack that sunk three carriers; then Fletcher took over as was in overall command of the attack that sank Hiryu. Now I feel better, since I originally had Fletcher and Spruance on the wrong aircraft carriers. You probably already knew this

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