Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway was a naval battle during the Pacific War in World War II. From June 4 to 7, 1942, large formations of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Navy fought at the Midway Islands. The battle, which ended with the sinking of four Japanese aircraft carriers with only one U.S. carrier sunk, is considered the turning point of the Pacific War. From then on, Japanese forces found themselves on the defensive.

Triggering factors

Since Japan had attacked the Western Allies in December 1941, its forces had conducted a highly successful campaign to conquer the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. Therefore, as the operations to conquer the resource-rich areas of Malaysia and the Dutch Indies neared their end in the spring of 1942, the Japanese high command began to discuss how to proceed. One faction of the Japanese military wanted to push further west toward India and Suez and eventually link up with the German Afrika Korps there. Another faction, on the other hand, favored an advance toward Fiji-Samoa in order to disrupt the Allied lines of communication between Australia and the United States.

However, with the American air raid on Tokyo (Doolittle Raid) on April 18, 1942, Japanese plans changed. By this time, the U.S. Pacific Fleet, weakened after the raid on Pearl Harbor, had not appeared to be a serious threat, and since there were no targets in the Central Pacific worth conquering, the Japanese had not advanced further into this area since the conquests of Wake and Guam. After the attack on Tokyo, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku declared the destruction of the remaining U.S. fleet-especially its aircraft carriers-a top priority. This should not only make further attacks against Japan impossible, but also rule out any conceivable threat from the Americans in the near future and perhaps even lead to a negotiated peace between Japan and the US.

The Midway Islands are the westernmost of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands after the small Kure Atoll, and at the time were the farthest west US outpost in the Central Pacific. The strategic value of the islands themselves was low; their small size made them suitable only as a reconnaissance base, but not as a major base. As a refueling station for the submarines operating out of Pearl Harbor against Japan, however, they proved to be quite useful - the boats could stay in the area of operations considerably longer, since the outward and return journey between Pearl Harbor and Midway together add up to over 3500 kilometers. Plans to conquer Midway had existed on the Japanese side since the beginning of the war, but they had never been carried out, because the effort to supply the conquered islands was considered greater than their usefulness as a reconnaissance base.

However, because of its relative proximity to Pearl Harbor, the only port usable as a major fleet base available to U.S. forces away from U.S. West Coast ports in the Pacific, the Americans could not afford to lose the island easily. An invasion of Midway offered the opportunity to force the U.S. Pacific Fleet into a decisive battle despite its weakness.

The Japanese strategy

The plan was to capture the two small atoll islands (Sand Island and Eastern Island) and establish their own air base there. This should cause the Americans to put their carrier fleet to Midway in march. The battle-hardened Japanese superiority wanted to attack them there and destroy all enemy carriers if possible. As an ultimately unsuccessful diversionary maneuver, a strike against the Aleutian Islands in the northern Pacific was planned at the same time (see Battle of the Aleutian Islands).

After a victory, Japanese superiority in the Pacific would have become so great that, the Japanese hoped, they might have been able to negotiate a peace treaty that fixed the current boundaries-as was the Japanese final victory strategy.