Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway was a naval battle of the Pacific War fought from 4 to 7 June 1942 near Midway Atoll, about 2,100 kilometres north-west of Oahu in Hawaii. Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, aircraft of the United States Pacific Fleet and from Midway itself sank all four Japanese fleet carriers sent against the atoll, for the loss of one American carrier. Together with the Guadalcanal campaign that followed, it is widely seen as the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

In the first months of the war the Empire of Japan conquered Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines and the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. The American aircraft carriers, which had been absent from Pearl Harbor, remained the main threat to Japan, as the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in April 1942 showed. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet, planned to seize Midway and draw out the American carriers so that they could be destroyed. His forces were spread over a wide area, with a separate attack on the Aleutian Islands beginning a day earlier, which left them unable to support one another. The carrier striking force itself, four carriers with about 248 aircraft, was led by Vice-Admiral Chūichi Nagumo.

The Americans held a vital advantage. Cryptanalysts of Station HYPO under Commander Joseph Rochefort had partly broken the Japanese navy's code and knew an attack was coming on a target called "AF". To confirm that this was Midway, the base there was told to send an uncoded message saying its water-purification plant had broken down, and the Japanese were soon overheard reporting that AF was short of water. Admiral Chester Nimitz was able to send the carriers Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown, under Frank Jack Fletcher and Raymond Spruance, to lie in wait near Midway before the Japanese arrived.

Early on 4 June Japanese aircraft bombed Midway. Waves of bombers from the island attacked the Japanese carriers during the morning with little effect, and while Nagumo was preparing his reserve aircraft for a second strike on Midway, a scout plane reported American ships. American torpedo bombers attacked in waves from about 09:25 and were almost wiped out without scoring a hit, but they kept the Japanese off balance and pulled their fighter cover out of position. From about 10:20, dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrived almost together overhead. Within minutes Kaga, Akagi and Sōryū were set ablaze, their hangars full of fuelled and armed aircraft and loose bombs. The surviving carrier, Hiryū, struck back, and its aircraft disabled Yorktown with bombs and torpedoes. Late that afternoon American dive bombers found Hiryū and left it burning; it sank the next morning.

Yamamoto ordered a general withdrawal. In the following days American aircraft sank the heavy cruiser Mikuma. Yorktown was taken in tow, but on 6 June the Japanese submarine I-168 torpedoed it and the destroyer Hammann alongside. Hammann sank at once, and Yorktown went down on the morning of 7 June.

Japan lost four fleet carriers, a heavy cruiser, 248 aircraft and around 3,000 men, including many experienced pilots and aircrew who proved hard to replace. The United States lost one carrier, one destroyer, about 150 aircraft and roughly 300 men.

Midway ended Japan's run of offensive successes. Japanese industry and training could not replace its losses quickly, while American production steadily grew. The historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare", and Craig Symonds ranked it with Salamis and Trafalgar among the most consequential sea battles in history. It was a crucial moment for the United States in the Second World War.

Our 1938 map shows the Empire of Japan before its wartime expansion, and the 1945 map shows East Asia and the Pacific at the war's end.