Battle of Midway
The fading daylight of August 6, 1942, found the American heavy cruisers Astoria and Chicago as part of Task Force 61, under the command of Vice Admiral Jack Fletcher, steaming toward the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. Read more
Battle of Midway
Prologue: At the start of World War II, Midway Atoll was a key U.S. base in the central Pacific. Read more
Battle of Midway
BACKSTORY: After working in a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in Idaho, Ray Daves enlisted in the Navy in the spring of 1938 and reported for basic training the following year. Read more
Battle of Midway
Lieutenant (j.g.) John “Ted” Crosby banked his Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat around, observing the life-and-death drama that was unfolding below him. Read more
Battle of Midway
“Banzai! Banzai!” screamed the Japanese at the top of their lungs as they launched a ferocious night attack against Marines dug in on Guadalcanal. Read more
Battle of Midway
Shortly after 11 am on August 22, 1942, the roar of aircraft engines shattered the stillness over Henderson Field, Guadalcanal. Read more
Battle of Midway
With such award-winning films as Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home, and How Green Was My Valley behind him, John Ford was one of Hollywood’s most respected directors by the time World War II broke out in 1939. Read more
Battle of Midway
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, sought to extend Japan’s defensive perimeter in the central Pacific with the seizure of Midway atoll, about 1,300 miles west of Hawaii. Read more
Battle of Midway
“Japan cannot defeat America; therefore, Japan should not go to war with America.” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, spoke those words to a group of school children as his government contemplated just that. Read more
Battle of Midway
Rarely in the history of warfare had one nation absorbed such numbing losses in so rapid a time as did the United States in the Pacific War’s first five months. Read more
Battle of Midway
One of the most frequently discussed arguments to come out of World War II is which was the “better” bomber, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress or the Consolidated B-24 Liberator? Read more
Battle of Midway
By Christmas 1941, Robert Hunt, torpedoman on the submarine USS Tambor, had witnessed the Japanese bombing of Wake Island, had slept in the Tambor’s forward torpedo room on the way back to Pearl with a bomb-induced leak bubbling in the corner, and had stood on his sub’s bow and seen the devastation of Battleship Row as debris in the oil-slicked harbor bumped against the hull. Read more
Battle of Midway
Stanley Johnston, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune accredited to the Navy as a correspondent, had made two forays into the South Pacific aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington. Read more
Battle of Midway
The pilots of Bombing Squadron 6 could not believe what they were seeing on the morning of June 4, 1942. Read more
Battle of Midway
Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans. Read more
Battle of Midway
Lieutenant Tom Bronn glanced anxiously at the fuel gauge on his Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber. He had been aloft for almost four hours, engaged in a hectic combination of trying to locate Japanese ships he knew to be in the Philippine Sea, diving down to unleash his four bombs at a carrier as dusk enveloped his aircraft, and then embarking on a desperate search for his own carrier, the USS Lexington, in the darkness. Read more
Battle of Midway
Most military historians consider the Battle of Midway to be the turning point of World War II in the Pacific. Read more
Battle of Midway
Japan lacked the industrial strength needed to wage a war against the United States. Yet, Japanese military planners seldom considered the limitations to their nation’s construction capabilities. Read more
Battle of Midway
The Grumman F4F Wildcat is usually described as chunky, “square,” squat, or stubby—not exactly adjectives that suggest grace or elegance. Read more
Battle of Midway
Admiral Ernest King could not believe what he was reading. The graying 63-year-old chief of U.S. naval operations had been awoken from his sleep. Read more
