By the end of the war, the USA had over 100 carriers of different types and sizes which is why he said it was inevitable that the Japanese were going to lose the war. There is a single battle where the USA showed up with 12 carriers!
@@conservativedemocracyenjoyer To be fair, the Yamato was considered as a super ship and had the firepower to hit a ship from extreme range, but the Japanese still didn't fully learn that bigger doesn't mean better.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of those Carriers were small support carriers. Not meant for major surface action. The US had 26 Fleet Carriers, 9 Light Carriers and 78 Escort Carriers. 4 Fleet Carriers(Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, and Hornet) were sunk before the Essex Class came out in force. 14 of which saw service during the war. Japan had 13 Fleet Carriers, 8 Light Carriers, and 13 Escort Carriers. The big issue for Japan is that most of these Carriers weren't operational at the same time. The most Fleet carriers Japan fielded at one time was 6 and 4 were sunk at Midway. I think the next one they built Taiho was sunk during it's first battle along with Shoakaku. Zuikaku was sunk as bait during Leyte Gulf along with a bunch of light carriers. The rest worked solo protecting shipping lanes(many sunk by subs doing so), or were never launched. Shinano, a carrier conversion of a Yamato Battleship was simply being moved during construction when an American Submarine sank her. To compound the problem for Japan they lacked planes and experienced pilots after Midway and Guadalcanal. The Battle of Philippine Sea has been called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot because the Americans had an easy time shooting down the fresh Japanese pilots. Some men became instant aces(6 confirmed kill) in one sortie. This is why the remnants of Japan's Carrier Fleet was used as bait during Leyte Gulf. Japan just didn't have the men and planes to effectively use them.
I don't believe it was mentioned in the first four episodes, but the US wasn't completely sure that the target was Midway. The Japanese, in their coded messages, referred to their target as "AF". The Americans needed confirmation so they put out a news bulletin that the water distillation equipment was not functioning properly at Midway, knowing that the Japanese would almost certainly intercept the message and perhaps make mention of it. Sure enough, the Japanese sent out a coded message that informed their commanders that "AF" had a problem with the water distillation equipment, which confirmed that Midway was indeed the target to the Americans. Also, it is a military axiom that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
By news you mean that the code breakers had covertly sent a message to the island using the undersea telegraph cable they knew the Japanese hadn’t tapped and then instructed Midway to send a message in plain English that their distilling plants had broken down. They then wait for the enemy to send a coded message about the issue.
This story is not entirely true. While the code breakers did have the fake message was used. It was done to show off. They were absolutely convinced AF was Midway. They put the message in to simplify that they knew for the top brass.
_Now_ you have seen the curtain drawn back ... the poor Imperial Japanese Navy never knew it, but the Americans had been expecting them for weeks and laid a trap for them. There were still plenty of mistaken decisions and equipment shortcomings on both sides, but the IJN carriers turned out to have no real defense aside from their poorly coordinated fighters, almost no effective anti-aircraft fire, almost no damage control. For the first six months of the war, they had avoided being really hit-but once they were, they were done for.
As far as damage control goes, the problem for the Japanese wasn’t the design of the ships, though the shortcoming didn’t help, but with the culture and structure of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Generally, if you weren’t part of a damage control team, crew wasn’t trained in firefighting or how to use the equipment. Worse because of how the hierarchy of the personnel manning the ships is treated lower ranks are not encouraged to take action without orders to do so, seeing such things could get you caned, meaning crew would stay at their posts until the fire forces them to leave. The IJN also had only specific officers in charge of damage control so if a hit happened to take out their station then the crew under them were not trained to act without instruction some not even knowing how to activate fire suppression systems. At Midway there was no saving Kaga and Soryu but Akagi’s hit not only cooked off the fueled and armed aircraft but also took out the damage control center plus bursting the fire suppression pipes which were made of brittle cast iron. Even if the pipes were fine the systems had their power knocked out so the crew left who did know how they worked couldn’t activate them until the hanger was a inferno so it was already too late.
I will also add that the Japanese way is thinking was that you hit the enemy and don’t get hit back. Also, no one had great command and control of fighters. At the time of Midway, Radar was still not reliable enough to vector fighters and so the best you could do was tell them generally where to go. Lastly, the Japanese over specialized and over reliance on the elite meant that they could not move people up from one skill to another or replace losses. It was because they still were modernizing.
You gotta watch some stuff on the Guadalcanal campaign. There is a lot of drama that happens there, not just for the Marines on the island, but also the Navy gets a big chunk of the action as well. Even though it was the US first offensive in the Pacific, it was not guaranteed. For a while at least it was really teetering on the knife’s edge of disaster.
To my knowledge, ww2 has some of the only carrier vs carrier battles ever fought. There were basically none before and haven't been many, if any, since.
My cousin, by marriage, father was on the USS Yorktown. The Yorktown fought the Japanese in a battle off the coast New Guinea, the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942 and was damaged along with the USS Lexington. The Lexington had to be scuttled, but the Yorktown made it back to Pearl Harbor. She was supposed to be in dry dock for 2 weeks for repairs, but Admiral Nimitz gave them 72 hours to get her back in the water for the Battle of Midway. The Yorktown was a crucial player in the sinking of two Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway, but also took heavy damage. So much so it had to be towed by the USS Vireo back to Hawaii. Unfortunately a Japanese sub spotted the Yorktown and hit her with two torpedoes and she sank. Almost all of the Yorktown crew was rescued though and in 1998 the wreck was found by Robert Ballard.
Ah, yes! My favorite couple. My father was navy and there and involved in many other battles at sea. He and his 4 brothers fought in WWII, five all together and all in different branches of the military (because of the Sullivan Brothers). I miss them all, they all survived the war but have now since all passed away. They each had the best tales to tell. 😢 So weather played a big roll here as well as with the defeat of the Spanish Armada for Britain.
Weather helped, but radio signals intelligence was the key difference, and Nimitz's willingness to take a big roll of the dice based on that intelligence. There ought to be a statue of Joseph Rochefort in Washington for all he contributed to the war in 1942.
Years ago there was a documentary that interviewed some of the few surviving veterans of the battle. One had been at Pearl Harbor shortly after the Japanese attack and got the chance to fly against them at Midway. During his interview he said: "This time we knew they were coming and were waiting behind the garden gate with a hatchet." I don't know if I've ever seen a look of such glee,
I hope they see the whole Battle 360 series since it is now available on RUclips. It's an American perspective on the Pacific war from the point of view of one ship. And wow what a ship!
Yea, thats one of my favorite episodes and stories from WW2 in the Pacific. that, for a time, the USS Enterprise was, quite LITERALLY the ONLY operational carrier in the pacific.
Just like the British in breaking the German enigma code, the major advantage of the Americans was breaking the Japanese naval code. But in both cases these were followed up by resolve and bravery.
you know what those japanese carries were made of? US steel. you know what they ran om ?US oil. no way they ever win. thier rock in the pacific is limited in natural resources 😬
The Japanese did not get Enigma until much later. But it is fair to say that Japan's cryptography was downright incompetent - they didn't quite seem to gasp that the Allies actually had people who could fluently speak and read the Japanese language. The biggest problem the Allies had was the sheer volume of messages to decode.
My father, Perry Walker Sparks was in the First Infantry. He fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and then became permanently disabled on Omaha Beach.. I know this has nothing to do with Midway, but I’m proud of him. He was, and always will be my hero. Love Grandma Debbie
Well, it's possible that your father and my grandfather fought together. I remember his stories of N. Africa and meeting Arabs, and still have a black and white photo of Mt. Vesuvius that he took while in Italy. The "Big Red One" was truly special. Thank you and your family for your father's service! ❤🙏🇺🇸
Both the US and Japanese navies were writing the carrier operations manual as they went in 1942. The British used carriers, but carrier vs. carrier battles were pretty much limited to the Pacific. The US had advantages in damage control, and radar. Japan had advantages chiefly in experience and the qualities of the crew. As the war went on, Japanese aircrew losses couldn't be replaced, and while Japan did develop radar eventually, the technology lagged behind the Americans. The US had broader training programs, and many of the early war veterans (like Thach), went on to become air group commanders and trainers. The US built a new generation of aircraft, and total of 24 aircraft carriers of the same class (Essex-Class) that took advantage of the experiences with the Yorktown-Class Carriers (Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet), and by 1944 they were launching carrier air strikes in numbers that even Japanese land-based air couldn't cope with.. By 1944, as a learning organization, the US Pacific Fleet had no equal.
If you’re ever in San Diego be sure to visit the USS Midway! One of three carriers built near the end of WWII named after the battle (her sister was the USS Coral Sea). This ship was operational until the 1980s where it was the only US carrier based outside of the USA. It was based in Yokosuka, Japan.
Rochefort was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1898 and enlisted in the Navy in 1918 with the intention of becoming a naval aviator. In these early days, however, Rochefort’s facility with puzzles and riddles caught the attention of his supervisors, who recruited Rochefort into the Code and Signal Section of the Office of Naval Communications, the Navy’s burgeoning cryptologic force. In 1926, Rochefort became the officer-in-charge, whereupon he showed an uncommon thoroughness and attention to detail. With the war in the Pacific gearing up in the 1930s, Rochefort went to Tokyo to perfect his Japanese. During the trip, he met Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton. Their good rapport would prove critical in the intelligence war against Japan after 1941. Rochefort used his cryptologic and linguistic skills to help crack the top Japanese Naval Code (JN-25) with his team of code-breakers, linguists, and radio traffic analysts-all located at the heart of the Navy’s cryptologic efforts, at Pearl Harbor’s “Station Hypo,” in the spring of 1941. In late May 1942, Rochefort, with the help of Layton, now stationed at Pearl Harbor, made another major breakthrough by decoding Japanese radio transmissions that revealed the time, date, and place of the planned invasion of Midway Island. Most significantly, Rochefort’s findings actually contradicted and thereby corrected the erroneous assessments of intelligence officials back in Washington, DC, who had discounted the possibility of a Japanese strike on Midway. Fortunately for the U.S. war effort in the Pacific and the U.S. naval personnel in harm’s way, Fleet Admiral Chester A. Nimitz favored Rochefort and Layton’s analysis and conclusions. The result was a U.S. victory at the Battle of Midway and the beginning of the end of Japanese efforts to control the Pacific.
The battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific war. From that point on, the Japanese were constantly on the defense, and the United States not only recovered fully from the Pearl Harbor attack, but over the next 4 years, built the greatest Navy the world has ever seen. After the battle, Admiral Yamamoto, the Supreme Imperial Japanese Naval Commander, famously remarked "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.".
Midway was not the true turning point of the war, that took place at Guadalcanal months later. Even after Midway, the Japanese still had a bigger fleet in the Pacific than America did. At the time, Midway was not regarded as the turning point but rather a good step forward. It only looks decisive from our view 80 years later. Don't get me wrong, it was still an important milestone, but the real battle that turned the tide was the grinding six months long fight to control Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific.
@stefanlaskowski6660 midway changed the tone of the war thou. Starting with Guadalcanal the Japanese were on the defense not the offense. That is how midway changed the war. It changed who had initiative.
I recommend you follow this up with the movie "Midway" (1976 film) The USA was only in the War for 6 months. The USA took more care in building their Aircraft Carriers. The Yorktown was hit, but they were able to repair it before the second attack, so when the second Japanese attack got there, they though it was second carrier, so they didn't look for more carriers.
I love his videos. I know you guys do movie reactions. You might want to add Midway (2019) to your list. It is a great movie that is based on the real life heroes and their real life actions leading up to and during the battle. The story centers around the man who made the Akagi, Lt. Richard Best. It tells you the story of gathering the intelligence. Also, there is a program called Battle 360: Enterprise that tells the entire story of the most decorated battleship of WWII from the men who served on it including men who served in the Battle of Midway.
Guadalcanal was a big slugfest that lasted for months. It was inch by inch just trying to get to the mountain fortress at the end. The enterprise was lost for a solid two weeks due to repairs. Laffy 3 had to fight an entire fleet of enemy ships and they were just a minor battleship group with weaker guns that were like peashooters yet they drove the enemy off. It was just insane. The marines were so tired at the end. It was just explosions and bullets whizzing by constantly. It became a jungle hell though we won but many of the veterans have PTSD from that place. Heck there are stories of a man destroying a huge bonzai charge with a machine gun by himself just holding it up like Rambo from Guadalcanal.
Actually during the flight to nowhere a plane is still missing. It was a dive bomber. It’s still unknown what happened to it as it never encountered the enemy, never ditched, never had radio contact, and basically did nothing. Just it disappeared off the face of the earth. Efforts are still under way to find this plane. The navy, explorers, salvage crews, even the National Geographic guys did searches yet still this plane is just gone. We have no idea where it even is. Even searching the known area where they would have run out of fuel yields nothing. The two crew members are still considered MIA. They officially cannot be KIA unless the bodies are found. It’s one of the strangest mysteries from WW2 that is still unsolved.
You also have to keep in mind, the battle of Midway was only the 1st time in all of history that aircraft carriers had EVER fought against each other in the open ocean, a month earlier, when the Yorktown was badly damaged and we lost the Lexington, was the battle of the Coral Sea, which was the very first time that aircraft carriers had ever squared off against other carriers, but in the Coral Sea, both the Japanese and American ships had to contend with island landmasses, which had both advantages and disadvantages, a smart commander can use them for cover and concealment, BUT this will also partially blind you, at Midway, they were both on the open ocean, and considering the different weather from the Coral Sea, which is hundreds of miles south of the Jet Stream, and Midway which is right in the middle of it, at Coral Sea, it was nearly a dead even draw between the 2 sides, both the Americans and the Japanese lost one fleet carrier, and had a second one badly damaged, it was as close to a point for point, plane for plane, ship for ship, casualty for casualty fight as I think has ever happened, neither side can claim it as a victory, but I do believe the Americans did come out of it slightly less hurt than the Japanese did, the U.S. Navy DID sink 3 Japanese Minesweepers that the Japanese didn't, and the Japanese had about 200 additional casualties over the Americans, but other than that, the ONLY way it could be considered an American victory, is it stopped the Japanese movements through the Coral sea which for all intensive purposes ended the Japanese threat to Australia, anyway back to Midway, when Yorktown limped back to Pearl Harbor after Coral Sea, she was very badly damaged, and it was estimated that she needed MAJOR repairs in Seattle for about 6 months, but since we lost Lexington at Coral sea, Admiral Nimitz told the shipyard superintendent that he needed her back in the water in 72 hours, it was the superintendent who put a hold on ALL shipyard work throughout Pearl Harbor for 72 hours and ordered EVERYONE to repair the Yorktown, a literal ARMY of ship workers descended on Yorktown and worked around the clock for 72 hours and send her out to sea at nearly 100% ready for combat, about 500 civilians (Ship yard repair personnel from Pearl Harbor) were still on the Yorktown repairing what was left to be repaired when they went into combat with the crew, this is likely WHY after the first attack on the Yorktown, it only took them 90 minutes to get the fires out, control the flooding, relight the boilers and have her underway, repair the flight deck, and other things damaged in the attack, so it appeared that the Yorktown was not injured to the 2nd Japanese strike on her, was probably because of the civilian ship yard workers that were still onboard her during the battle. and how that turned into a tactical and strategic advantage was just something that was fortuitous for the U.S. Navy, and there was no way the Japanese could possibly have known this was something that could have even been part of the playing deck, and it is one of those facts and "THE FOG OF WAR" that very few people ever talk about. one of the other things about this battle was that the intelligence community in Washington D.C. and the Intelligence people in Hawaii were greatly separate on what the target that the Japanese called AF was, and it was these unsung hero's that came up with a plan to get an definitive answer, they wrote a note and flew it out to Midway and handed it to the stations communication people with instructions to broadcast it word for word, with no encryption, back to Pearl Harbor, and then they listened, when the Japanese sent out a message that we intercepted and mentioned that message, they finally KNEW that AF meant Midway, a lot of very small pieces had to fall in the right place for this battle to be as big of a turning point as it turned out to be, so to your point, about the training and how the Japanese did carrier operations so well and we did not, well since 1936, the Japanese carriers had been launching air attacks against ground targets in China for years before we ever squared off against them, and even then, they had never taken on another aircraft carrier at sea before, but launching strikes inland or on an Island such as midway, they had PLENTY of experience doing that, so it was not really surprising that they got their first launch against Midway as quickly as they did, but Admiral Nagumo WAS NOT at the battle of the Coral sea, Admiral Fletcher WAS, It might only be 1 fights worth of a difference, but it is still MORE experience, I think he learned valuable Knowledge at Coral Sea, went in very evenly matched, came out pretty evenly damaged, but 1 month later went into Midway, outclassed, outgunned, outnumbered, but came out with a MASSIVE win, MAYBE, just MAYBE, his experience at Coral Sea helped tip the balance, I do not know if that is true, but I do not think it is something that be ignored either. and keep in mind this battle happened in June of 1942, we went into that battle with 3 carriers, a couple of weeks after Midway, the U.S.S. Wasp would arrive at Pearl Harbor, and by the end of 1942, 4 more brand new Carriers would also join the pacific fleet, and for the first time, the United States would outnumber Japans Aircraft numbers, by 1944 the Pacific fleet had nearly 100 aircraft carriers, many of them were escort carriers, but 25 of them were fleet aircraft carriers, just for clarification escort carriers are very small aircraft carries with limited planes, usually just fighter planes, and they only carried about 30, these were to defend against air attacks from the enemy, the fleet carriers were the offensive carriers.
Midway battle much vaunted but naval Battle of the Coral Sea between Queensland Australia and New Guinea in May 1942 when combined British American fleet under Admiral Chester Nimitz crucially beat Japanese invasion fleet bound for Australia causing extensive damage on some larger vessels returning them to Singapore for repairs thus delaying their appearance at Midway lessening Japanese fleet boosting American chances so Coral Sea was a notable but unrecognised battle
One part of this battle that is understated is the pilot loss. What is missed is the amount of pilots trained per year. Japan only graduated around 100 fully trained pilots per year. At Coral Sea, Japan lost just about 1 years worth of pilots. Then Midway where over 100 were lost. For the rest of 1942 another years worth of pilots lost. It was not until 1943 that Japan tried training pilots in greater number. So 3 to 4 years worth of pilots lost in 1 year. That was numbers they could not replace. On the American side, by 1945 and the close of hostilities the US had fully trained almost 16,000 carrier qualified pilots.
The main reason the US had a lot of problems launching in the morning was because their usually commander, Adm. Halsey, has been sidelined due to illness. Spruance wasn't a carrier man at that point, he was a cruiser/battleship commander.
I think if you want more context on the battle of Coral Sea Montemayor has a video on it called "The Battle of the Coral Sea 1942: The First Aircraft Carrier Battle in History." Alternatively if you want to continue in chronological order you should watch "Battle of Savo Island 1942: America's Worst Naval Defeat," although I must add it is by far Montemayor's longest video at 1 hour long, just something I think you should know.
There's an interesting book, "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Tameichi Hara, that clearly demonstrates how often luck, good and bad, was involved in the outcome of battles during the Pacific naval war. Especially at the beginning and middle stages.
One main factor is left off in the summary, beyond talking about US production capacity, no examples were given. As it was Essex class carriers were starting to come off the slipways, along with the Independence class light carriers. Of the Essex class 24 were built, Independence class 9 were completed, now if you add in the Escort carriers (all class) the US built 124....Japan during the war had a total (not at one time) of 18 carriers and some were lost without firing a shot (Shinano (1944)) or on their first mission (Taihō 1944, three months after commissioning).
Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp all sunk during the first year of the War in the Pacific. Then the Essex class carriers came into service. Second Yorktown, second Hornet, second Lexington, and the second Wasp. One of the effects of naming these new ships after the recently sunk ships is that it confused the Japanese. "Wait a minute, I thought we sunk the Yorktown." They had that same problem with the Enterprise. It kept showing up not sunk! When the Enterprise was relaunched as a dedicated night operations carrier, the Japanese probably thought it was yet another Essex class named after one of the original carriers.
Great 5 part series! Your comments are so right on during these videos. It would be great if you did more videos like this one. I would recommend the Battle of Guadalcanal, which was indeed the turning point of the war on the Pacific, and it lasted on for 6 months (Aug '42-Feb '43), the longest battle in the Pacific, and it essentially broke the military back of Japan, all the while the US was building the US Navy to an astronomical size. When the war ended, the US had 100 aircraft carriers, of which 24 were full sized fleet carriers. Compare this with the 11 fleet carriers today and 3 or 4 'escort' carriers (helicopters, and VTAL planes). Also, I watched your reaction the the American Revolutionary War, and I would suggest doing the same with the US Civil War.
WW2 has always fascinated me, and watching the different videos you have been sharing helped me realize some of the things my dad participated in during the War (Normandy for one). Been a subscriber for several months, and enjoy watching your channel.
So in the US, our navy includes the model number of each of our ships on the hull, as well as sometimes referring to them as their hull number. USS Yorktown was CV-5, USS Enterprise was CV-6, and USS Hornet was CV-8, meaning the newest carrier in that whole fleet was only the 8th aircraft carrier the US had ever made. Since all of these carriers were Yorktown class, that means that it was only the 3rd or 4th carrier design ever thought up by the US. The carriers themselves were designed well, the only issue is that carrier warfare was a new thing. American torpedo bombers were untested, and the Americans hadn't put in the time to thoroughly drill their men on launching aircraft efficiently. Meanwhile the Japanese were practicing for months beforehand as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had foreseen that carriers were the most important vessels in Naval Warfare. You can see the difference in skills in the 2 nations by comparing the efficiency in which the Japanese launched their aircraft compared to the US, and the efficiency of the US damage control compared to the Japanese. The Americans were more practiced when it comes to Naval warfare, so they did better tan the Japanese in most regards, but when it came to how to operate a carrier, the Japanese were more practiced.
It's always incredible to look back and see just how much of a role luck had to play in some of these clashes. Yes, tactics and intelligence went a long way to making sure people were in the right place at the right time, but luck can still be a make-or-break factor. As we just saw with the US air groups happening to converge over the Japanese fleet at the same time due to individual initiative and gut instinct, and with just *three* dive bombers managing to take out a Japanese fleet carrier with only a single bomb strike. Which is why it's also kind of maddening to see people discount theories about why certain things went down in that war the way they did just because it sounds too improbable. It's sort of a blind spot to look at something with one-in-a-million odds and write it off entirely, forgetting that it's *one*-in-a-million rather than *zero*-in-a-million.
To understand the scale of the US buildup - despite the fact that the 2 new carriers (Wasp and Hornet) that joined the Pacific Fleet in 1942 were both sunk before the end of the year, by the end of June 1943, the US would have 6 Fleet Carriers and 5 Light Carriers in commission and heading to the Pacific. By the end of December 1943, those numbers were 9 Fleet Carriers and 9 Light Carriers Between December 7th, 1941 and August 15th, 1945 - the day Japan Surrendered US shipyards launched: 18 Fleet Carriers 9 Light Carriers 129 Escort Carriers (12 were conversions - not purpose built) During the war most of these fleet Carriers, and all of the light carriers were in the Pacific. The Escort carriers served virtually everywhere - and many were commissioned as Royal Navy Vessels
My favorite thing about that was that the Yorktown, Hornet, and Lexington names all returned to the Pacific with the new carriers and confused the ever loving crap out of the Japanese lol.
LCDR Waldron knew the Japanese carriers were reported to be to the SW so when they were briefed and told they were flying west he knew that was not right. After the brief Waldron told his pilots to follow him in flight. Before leaving the USS Hornet attack group Waldron radio'd that they were going the wrong direction. He was ordered to continue west but he disobeyed that order and turned SW and flew directly towards the Japanese carriers. When Waldron saw the Japanese carriers he radio'd to tell the Hornet aircraft where the Japanese carriers were but they continued west anyway because that was the direction they were briefed to fly. Also, the Japanese plan was to form a line of submarines to the east of Midway to warn/attack any incoming US ships but they were late getting into position. The US carriers had already sailed through that area, so, we got very lucky.
I absolutely love being a black american, watching a reaction of two british people(i would say jersey but i dont want to confuse any americans haha) from a mexican american(?) Narrator. The connectivity of the world is just so amazing.
Midway was the second carrier vs carrier battle in history when nether fleets ever seen each other it was a turning point for a sea battle but without midway guadalcanal wouldint of been even a thought two months after midway
Though japan had converted a uncompleted Yamato class battleship into a Carrier. The Shinano was the biggest carrier put to sea. But was uncompleted when a lone American submarine sank it
I went to high school in the mid 70s our school's name was Nimitz highschool and I had a history teacher who served in the Navy in the Pacific theater on the Enterprise
Some 50+ years ago I worked with a therapist who had been in the Marines. He was in the South Pacific and took part in the battles there, as well as helping to remove our dead from the water. Its wasn't pretty. He said you could tell which bodies were US and which were Japanese by the smell, probably in part from the diets of the individual countries. It is what he said and I believed him. Also, not something to do with this video, but check out the us submarine that blew up a train on Japan nearing the later part of the war. The SS Barb a submarine actually landed a team on Japan soil, who laid a homemade explosive device that would activate when a train ran over the rail, blowing the train and the rails up. They were the only submarine to be able to add the image of a train onto the ships flag. The Commander wrote a book later called "Thunder Below" that pretty much details his time on the Barb. I also believe they were also the first submarine to be armed with 5 in (130 mm) rocket launchers that they used on on-shore targets and the Japanese thought it must have been some sort of cruiser that had attacked.
The US had such an industrial advantage that by 1945, just 2.5 years after Midway, they had 99 aircraft carriers (28 fleet carriers 71 escort carriers) in the Pacific to 4 carriers for the Japanese. They also had vastly improved the quality of the aircraft launching from those carriers while the Japanese were still flying mostly the same aircraft types they had fielded in 1941.
Since you guys are doing Movie reactions now, there's actually a recent movie about the battle of Midway called... Midway from 2019. It's not the best movie ever and I find the first 10 minutes to be a little rough but I've grown to really like it.
It was a very risky decision - basically the Japanese planned a trap for the US carriers. The US knew that it was a trap, but took the bait thinking that they could turn it into a trap for the Japanese. But a lot depended on which side spotted the other one first, and that could easily have gone the other way. If you really like this subject, the Kings and Generals channel is doing a week-by-week history of the entire Pacific War including the China-Burma-India theater.
Midway was the first taste of battle for many young men. They either ran or fought their hardest. In effect it proved that America was willing to fight. The midway campaign taught us a lot about what we need to do and figure out strategies we could use. The enterprise would actually be damaged at Guadalcanal just months later but be repaired quickly although she lost an elevator. Once that campaign was finished the Enterprise would receive a full retrofit of every gun by replacing them with new ones that were nicknamed Chicago pianos due to their shape which worked much more efficiently and were more accurate. She also had her entire aircraft platform replaced but added extra length as the new zero killer, hellcat plane was being introduced. Every carrier new and old received upgrades and were launched quickly. Every ship got some type of upgrade even under battle conditions.
Japanese strategy was to simply cripple the U.S. pacific fleet enough to buy them time to take over the pacific without U.S. interference. The war in the pacific was the first time we fought with the carrier as the center of our naval power because we were forced to after Pearl Harbor so everything was kind of learned on the fly. The carrier was initially seen as simply a support piece for the U.S. Between the U.S. and Japan WWII changed naval doctrine around the world forever.
Actually there was a debate between "black shoe" commanders (surface warfare) and "brown shoe" commanders (aviators). The former saw carriers as scouts. The latter believed carriers would become the primary striking force, replacing battleships. There were a series of war games conducted by the Navy in the 30s that supported that belief. One of the unanswered questions was how many carriers should be in a task force? The Americans started out with only one or two at first, while the IJN almost accidentally landed upon the optimal number, 4-6.
There's a small chain of events here for the Pacific Theater. 1: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. 2: as retaliation the American did the Doolittle Raid where the American lauched B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet to bomb Japan itself. They only did minimum damage but it boosted the American morale. 3: due to the Doolittle Raid bombers landing in china the Japanese got furious and done unthinkable things to the chinese people and cities. 4: the Japanese attacking midway was also part of a retaliation against the Americans for the Doolittle Raid. 5: due to Shokaku and Zuikaku being out of commission the Japanese pulls 2 of his Kido Butai carriers from the South Pacific (forgot which ones) for the battle of midway. Weaking the Japanese forces in the South Pacific. 6: due to the Japanese losing all 4 carriers at the Battle of Midway the Japanese started to converting the 3 Yamato-Class Battleship (Shinano) into a super carrier. 7: before the Shinano was fully completed she was sent to another naval yard to protect her from air raids in the Tokyo Bay area and to be completed. 8: While on her way to the other naval yard she was sunk by 4 torpedoes from the submarine USS Archerfish about 185miles (about 300km) Southeast from the Tokyo Bay.
The craziest thing about this whole battle is a junior Japanese officer managed to wargame out some carriers being sunk by Americans and the ref's of the war game said he violated the rules of the war game because there was no way the Americans would know they were coming.
For a David vs Goliath naval battle, review the Battle off Samar. The most powerful fleet in the Japanese navy, which includes the largest battleship ever put to sea, faces an American force whose combined tonnage is less than that of the battleship. And they're caught off-guard. "A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
Comparing raw numbers of aircraft can be deceptive. Many of the aircraft on Midway were obsolete, like the Brewster Buffalo, or brand new (hence inexperienced) like the B-26. Also, most histories seems to ignore the preferred methods of training. The Japanese preferred a quality over quantity approach, which produced excellent crew but at a very slow pace. The Americans, on the other hand, went for the mass produced approach. In fact, during the first part of the war, literally half of a graduating class was assigned to help train the next class, with the other half going on to advanced combat training. The IJN didn't just lose 4 carriers that day, or even the pilots shot down or sunk. All the experienced plane crews and maintenance were lost, and now Japan no longer had the luxury of slowly training replacements. ...A lot of folks thought FDR was nuts when he called for 50,000 planes built, but it was that kind of thinking that allowed the USAAF grow from a few thousand to over two million in just a couple years, and allowed the US Navy to grow equally large.
👍from Hawaii like the shirt👍 I lived most of my life a short 5 minute drive from Pearl Harbor. December 7 every year fewer and fewer survivors are left at the ceremonies. This is a good explanation of Midway.good reaction.
The Pacific fleet would later have another carrier, aptly named the Lexington in place of its lost sister, they ship was panted with similar numbers to the other Lexington, confused and afraid, the Japanese named her "The Blue Ghost" as Tokyo Rose reported it had been destroyed again, but was at the next naval engagement. The USS lexington now sits in the waters of Corpus Christi, Texas watching over the lone star state with the Battleship Texas. (Yes, the same Texas currently in dry dock)
@Beesleys In response to your intro comments about what people want to see, it's not just that I enjoy reaction videos, but I enjoy when people (you) are learning things (instead of reacting to something funny or artistic) and I can learn with you or see someone else's perspective if I already was familiar with the original video's subject.
Made that comment only halfway through...its exactly why Yamamoto did not want to attack america...he'd spent time here and knew they couldn't produce like we could
As bloody and awful as the fighting in Europe was. The fighting in the pacific islands like Guadalcanal was far bloodier and more brutal. The US and Japanese slaughtered each other island to island to island for the next three years. Every tiny little island cost thousands of troops their lives. The reason we dropped the atomic bomb was simply that President Truman couldn’t justify the number of soldiers lives that would have been lost (over 1 million projected) in a traditional Normandy style invasion of Japan all the way to Tokyo when he had a tool that would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians but end the war quickly. While his decision has been second guessed for decades I personally think he did the right thing. It ended the war by ripping off the scab in a painful ugly way.
Since you are so interested in knowing more about WWII try these movies: Note these movies are black and white. They came out in the 40s. Pride of the Marines (1945-true story). The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, won multiple Oscars-about 4 service men adjusting to life after the war). Battleground (1949-about a group of American soldiers trying to survive the Battle of the Bulge. Realistic in portraying the feelings of the average American soldier). Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944-About the Doolittle Raid). They Were Expendable (1945- About a group of navy personnel fighting in the Philippines. The title refers to a conversation that Lt Brinkley has with the army colonel. It always makes me cry.). Air Force (1943-semi true. About a group of B-17s flying into the Hawaiian Islands on Dec. 7, 1941). The Flying Tigers (1942-this group was an American volunteer group flying for China before the US entered in the war. Their planes (P-40 Warhawks) were famous for having the shark teeth painted on the front of their planes. Also the Flying Tiger insignia was created by The Walt Disney Company. Books: A Higher Call by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander And If I Perish: Frontline US Nurses in World War II by Evelyn Monahan & Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches by Ernie Pyle Citizen Soldier by Stephen Ambrose (who also wrote Band of Brothers) Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Mission by Hampton Sides Of the 4 American aircraft carriers that were in service before and during WWII, only 1 survived: CVN6 USS Enterprise. She was also the most decorated of all vessels in WWII. She participated in every major action except 2. By the end of the first year of the war, she was the only one that hadn’t been hit by an enemy torpedo, plus she was the only battle ready carrier in the US fleet. She had 2 nicknames: The Big E which not only stood for Enterprise, but also for excellence. She also won the coveted Efficiency Award that all ships compete for annually. Her other nickname was The Gray Ghost because 3 times the Japanese announced that they had sunk her in battle. But as we know, that never happened. The Enterprise was the first to strike a full-size warship after war was declared. On Dec. 10, 1941 her aircraft sunk the Japanese submarine I-70. To learn more about the Pacific War check out Battle 360. All episodes are on RUclips. A couple of them are about the Enterprise.
It was really hard to watch the first few parts with you knowing what had happened. I was Military Intelligence, signals, and this battle is like the gold standard for the information that intelligence can gather once we've broken codes. And how important that work is. I just wanted to say the Japanese were more or less setup. Although, we did take a beating. This battle was crucial not only in the damage it inflicted on the Japanese navy, but for moral at home. American leadership with the pilots was just as important as Major Dick Winter's type of leadership in Europe. The ability to assess the situation and act independently, was everything in WWII.
It was almost an even battle for Midway, yes the Japanese had 1 more carrier, the US had an Island with planes used in Battle. So it was a 4 v 4. I strongly recommended watching Midway. It was an excellent movie( both of them). Dont bother watching Pearl Harbor ( there is no movie in Ba Sing Se)
The US had at least 100 planes more than IJN (albeit land-based ones). The US carriers also carried more planes than IJN's, 80 and 60 respectively. The IJN should have transferred Shokaku's air group to Zuikaku plus 2 light carriers to make up for the lost of a carrier.
So now that you have that history, it is a PERFECT time to watch the series "The Pacific" which follows the Marines in their battles against the Japanese. Some very tough fighting on many of the campaigns. Same writers/producers as in Band of Brothers. It is grittier than BOB and hard to watch some parts, but from a historical perspective it's worth watching. As for Midway, I'll add one thing: It wasn't luck, it was FATE.
Midway was the set up. Guadalcanal was the heavy punch. Don't be confused, the Japanese didn't get knocked out right away and they got some really good knocks in, a place is called Iron Bottom Sound for a reason, but the US eventually managed to cripple the Japanese military by the end of the campaign. On a side note, never mess with the Enterprise!
The Pacific theater in WW-2 never got the attention that the European theater did and I feel that with the world's attention on the atrocities that took place in the concentration camps that Japan got off easy for all their evil actions
Well, I don't think you'll read this, because I've never seen you respond to a comment, ever, and I've been watching for a damn long time now, but, even if the US didn't break the code, and had lost at Midway, the outcome of the war would have been the same, it simply would have taken longer. Japan could not compete with the industrial building capacity of the US. Here's were the rubber meets the road. Japan vs. USA by the numbers. Most of these stats are taken from Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and John Ellis' "World War II: A Statistical Survey." At the beginning of the war, America had: Nearly twice the population of Japan. Seventeen time's Japan's national income. Five times more steel production. Seven times more coal production. Eighty (80) times the automobile production. America had some hidden advantages that didn't show up directly in production figures. For one, U.S. factories were, on average, more modern and automated than those in Europe or in Japan. Additionally, American managerial practice at that time was the best in the world. Taken in combination, the per capita productivity of the American worker was the highest in the world. Furthermore, the United States was more than willing to utilize American women in the war effort: a tremendous advantage for us, and a concept which the Axis Powers seem not to have grasped until very late in the conflict. The net effect of all these factors meant that even in the Depression, American war-making potential was still around seven times larger than Japan's, and had the 'slack' been taken out in 1939, it was closer to nine or ten times as great! In fact, accroding to Kennedy, a breakdown of total global warmaking potential in 1937 looks something like this: Country % of Total Warmaking Potential United States 41.7% Germany 14.4% USSR 14.0% UK 10.2% France 4.2% Japan 3.5% Italy 2.5% Seven Powers (total) (90.5%) War production from 1941 to 1945 (this doesn't include any ships or planes built before these dates) was: Fleet aircraft carrier/Light carriers/escort carriers USA 141 Japan 17 Battleships USA 10 Japan 2 Cruisers, both heavy and light USA 48 Japan 9 Destroyers USA 349 Japan 63 Destroyer Escorts USA 498 Japan ? perhaps none Submarines USA 203 Japan 167 A couple of points need to made here. First, the majority of the carriers listed in the U.S. totals were 'Jeep' carriers, CVEs carrying a couple dozen aircraft and suitable mostly for escort duties rather than front-line combat (which didn't subtract a whit from their effectiveness as antisubmarine or ground-support platforms). But it should also be noted that the American CVs (fleet carriers) on average operated substantially larger air wings than their Japanese counterparts (80-90 vs. 60-70 aircraft). The net result; by 1944, when Task Force 38 or 58 (depending on whether Halsey or Spruance was in charge of the main American carrier force at the moment) came to play, they could be counted upon to bring nearly a thousand combat aircraft with them. Mercant shipping production from 1939 to 1945(in tons): USA 33,993,230 Japan 4,152,361 *The United States built more merchant shipping in the first four and a half months of 1943 than Japan put in the water in seven years. Aircraft production 1939 to 1945: USA 324,750 Japan 76,320 They were never going to win.
Although losing the Battle of Midway would have greatly demoralized the US leadership and public, it probably wouldn't have changed the course of the war. At most, the US would have lost its last 3 Pacific carriers. But during WW II, the US built 122 carriers including 29 larger fleet carriers. And the Japanese basically built no more than those they had at the start of the war. So by about 1943, the US would still have massively outnumbered the Japanese naval air forces.
And by the end of the war America had stopped building carriers already under construction because they has so many. Several carriers were canceled and others were left not fully built for years until they were needed as replacements for older carriers, or modified to modern designs.
to add some more facts in. Yorktoiwns fighter group wre made up of Saratoga's group since that ship was be out of action for longer to a quick transfer to get Yorktown have the needed strength to assit in battle. The japanese could have done the same thing. the last cv division one carrier was out of action due to damage the other lost it's flight group at coral sea. they could have transfered the nearly intact flight group from the damaged carrier to the intact one so they could of had 5 cvs for midway.
For Japan, it must be said that the pre-war naval buildup has almost bankrupted their nation multiple times, whereas the Americans run on civilian economy. So Japan could not build more ships any faster, whereas US just had to wake up. Japan had around 6 big carriers before the battle, and about the same number of small carriers, US had around 5, and about half the number of small carriers. But it was just a matter of time before US started producing numerous carriers each year. So in the end, the US had not just the biggest carriers in the world (with the exception of Shinano), but they also had tons of them. So when they went to kill Yamato, they launched planes from 8 big carriers just against that one ship and some small escorts.
Just a word of American industrial power. By late 1943 the US Pacific fleet, by itself, was larger than any other navy in the world. By the end of the war. 70% of all tonnage of the worlds Navy was the US Navy. Japan had no chance in a prolonged war.
Realize: America entered the war yes, but we had to fight the Japanese long before we entered Europe. We comparatively spend a very short time in Europe.
If US hadn't broke the code midway would of been lost allowing Japan to fortify it and operate with Japanese airplanes. More the entire midway operation was designed to be a ambush for the American carriers.which might of had worked
Yeah, to better illustrate his point about it being inevitable that Japan would lose, just compare the populations at the time. Japan had about 72 million people. The US had over 130 million. Japan had very limited natural resources. The US has a ridiculous amount of natural resources. Sure, it took us longer to ramp up than it should have, but it was never a question of if, only when.
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The battle of Midway is a case study of "Fortune Favors the Bold".
Hence the Enterprise being there.
By the end of the war, the USA had over 100 carriers of different types and sizes which is why he said it was inevitable that the Japanese were going to lose the war. There is a single battle where the USA showed up with 12 carriers!
Leyte Gulf?
If 1 will do....send 12 just to be sure. :P
@thatkristiandude4048 could be battle of Okinawa as well, 12 us carrier's (over 300 aircraft) attacked and sunk Yamato
@@conservativedemocracyenjoyer To be fair, the Yamato was considered as a super ship and had the firepower to hit a ship from extreme range, but the Japanese still didn't fully learn that bigger doesn't mean better.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of those Carriers were small support carriers. Not meant for major surface action.
The US had 26 Fleet Carriers, 9 Light Carriers and 78 Escort Carriers. 4 Fleet Carriers(Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, and Hornet) were sunk before the Essex Class came out in force. 14 of which saw service during the war.
Japan had 13 Fleet Carriers, 8 Light Carriers, and 13 Escort Carriers. The big issue for Japan is that most of these Carriers weren't operational at the same time. The most Fleet carriers Japan fielded at one time was 6 and 4 were sunk at Midway. I think the next one they built Taiho was sunk during it's first battle along with Shoakaku. Zuikaku was sunk as bait during Leyte Gulf along with a bunch of light carriers. The rest worked solo protecting shipping lanes(many sunk by subs doing so), or were never launched. Shinano, a carrier conversion of a Yamato Battleship was simply being moved during construction when an American Submarine sank her. To compound the problem for Japan they lacked planes and experienced pilots after Midway and Guadalcanal. The Battle of Philippine Sea has been called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot because the Americans had an easy time shooting down the fresh Japanese pilots. Some men became instant aces(6 confirmed kill) in one sortie. This is why the remnants of Japan's Carrier Fleet was used as bait during Leyte Gulf. Japan just didn't have the men and planes to effectively use them.
I don't believe it was mentioned in the first four episodes, but the US wasn't completely sure that the target was Midway. The Japanese, in their coded messages, referred to their target as "AF". The Americans needed confirmation so they put out a news bulletin that the water distillation equipment was not functioning properly at Midway, knowing that the Japanese would almost certainly intercept the message and perhaps make mention of it. Sure enough, the Japanese sent out a coded message that informed their commanders that "AF" had a problem with the water distillation equipment, which confirmed that Midway was indeed the target to the Americans. Also, it is a military axiom that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
By news you mean that the code breakers had covertly sent a message to the island using the undersea telegraph cable they knew the Japanese hadn’t tapped and then instructed Midway to send a message in plain English that their distilling plants had broken down.
They then wait for the enemy to send a coded message about the issue.
This story is not entirely true. While the code breakers did have the fake message was used. It was done to show off. They were absolutely convinced AF was Midway. They put the message in to simplify that they knew for the top brass.
@@shanepatrick6836 It was more for Washington and Adm King than for anything else.
_Now_ you have seen the curtain drawn back ... the poor Imperial Japanese Navy never knew it, but the Americans had been expecting them for weeks and laid a trap for them. There were still plenty of mistaken decisions and equipment shortcomings on both sides, but the IJN carriers turned out to have no real defense aside from their poorly coordinated fighters, almost no effective anti-aircraft fire, almost no damage control. For the first six months of the war, they had avoided being really hit-but once they were, they were done for.
@Dupont1966even if they were. Would have only prolonged the inevitable.
As far as damage control goes, the problem for the Japanese wasn’t the design of the ships, though the shortcoming didn’t help, but with the culture and structure of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Generally, if you weren’t part of a damage control team, crew wasn’t trained in firefighting or how to use the equipment. Worse because of how the hierarchy of the personnel manning the ships is treated lower ranks are not encouraged to take action without orders to do so, seeing such things could get you caned, meaning crew would stay at their posts until the fire forces them to leave. The IJN also had only specific officers in charge of damage control so if a hit happened to take out their station then the crew under them were not trained to act without instruction some not even knowing how to activate fire suppression systems.
At Midway there was no saving Kaga and Soryu but Akagi’s hit not only cooked off the fueled and armed aircraft but also took out the damage control center plus bursting the fire suppression pipes which were made of brittle cast iron. Even if the pipes were fine the systems had their power knocked out so the crew left who did know how they worked couldn’t activate them until the hanger was a inferno so it was already too late.
@@Isolder74 All very good points, and highly accurate according to the most recent scholarship...well written.
I will also add that the Japanese way is thinking was that you hit the enemy and don’t get hit back. Also, no one had great command and control of fighters. At the time of Midway, Radar was still not reliable enough to vector fighters and so the best you could do was tell them generally where to go. Lastly, the Japanese over specialized and over reliance on the elite meant that they could not move people up from one skill to another or replace losses. It was because they still were modernizing.
You gotta watch some stuff on the Guadalcanal campaign. There is a lot of drama that happens there, not just for the Marines on the island, but also the Navy gets a big chunk of the action as well. Even though it was the US first offensive in the Pacific, it was not guaranteed. For a while at least it was really teetering on the knife’s edge of disaster.
Drachinifel has a good series on it. Warning it is long but seeing the battle that’s a given.
To my knowledge, ww2 has some of the only carrier vs carrier battles ever fought. There were basically none before and haven't been many, if any, since.
My cousin, by marriage, father was on the USS Yorktown. The Yorktown fought the Japanese in a battle off the coast New Guinea, the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942 and was damaged along with the USS Lexington. The Lexington had to be scuttled, but the Yorktown made it back to Pearl Harbor. She was supposed to be in dry dock for 2 weeks for repairs, but Admiral Nimitz gave them 72 hours to get her back in the water for the Battle of Midway. The Yorktown was a crucial player in the sinking of two Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway, but also took heavy damage. So much so it had to be towed by the USS Vireo back to Hawaii. Unfortunately a Japanese sub spotted the Yorktown and hit her with two torpedoes and she sank. Almost all of the Yorktown crew was rescued though and in 1998 the wreck was found by Robert Ballard.
Hmm...
Ballard also found the Titanic.
Ah, yes! My favorite couple. My father was navy and there and involved in many other battles at sea. He and his 4 brothers fought in WWII, five all together and all in different branches of the military (because of the Sullivan Brothers). I miss them all, they all survived the war but have now since all passed away. They each had the best tales to tell. 😢 So weather played a big roll here as well as with the defeat of the Spanish Armada for Britain.
Weather helped, but radio signals intelligence was the key difference, and Nimitz's willingness to take a big roll of the dice based on that intelligence. There ought to be a statue of Joseph Rochefort in Washington for all he contributed to the war in 1942.
@@stuartdollar9912 Agreed.
From my experience, Europeans tend to overlook the war in the Pacific since it was mostly an American and Japanese conflict. It's a fascinating study.
Years ago there was a documentary that interviewed some of the few surviving veterans of the battle. One had been at Pearl Harbor shortly after the Japanese attack and got the chance to fly against them at Midway. During his interview he said: "This time we knew they were coming and were waiting behind the garden gate with a hatchet." I don't know if I've ever seen a look of such glee,
You might try Battle 360: Enterprise vs Japan, how it came to just one USN Carrier to hold the tide.
I hope they see the whole Battle 360 series since it is now available on RUclips. It's an American perspective on the Pacific war from the point of view of one ship. And wow what a ship!
Yea, thats one of my favorite episodes and stories from WW2 in the Pacific.
that, for a time, the USS Enterprise was, quite LITERALLY the ONLY operational carrier in the pacific.
@@jexonox8964 I can't wait for Ford Class CVN-80 to be commissioned, because there must always be a USS Enterprise.
Just like the British in breaking the German enigma code, the major advantage of the Americans was breaking the Japanese naval code. But in both cases these were followed up by resolve and bravery.
you know what those japanese carries were made of? US steel. you know what they ran om ?US oil. no way they ever win. thier rock in the pacific is limited in natural resources 😬
Actually the Poles first cracked Enigma. They passed their knowledge to Britain, who sped the process up.
The Japanese did not get Enigma until much later. But it is fair to say that Japan's cryptography was downright incompetent - they didn't quite seem to gasp that the Allies actually had people who could fluently speak and read the Japanese language. The biggest problem the Allies had was the sheer volume of messages to decode.
My father, Perry Walker Sparks was in the First Infantry. He fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and then became permanently disabled on Omaha Beach.. I know this has nothing to do with Midway, but I’m proud of him. He was, and always will be my hero. Love Grandma Debbie
Well, it's possible that your father and my grandfather fought together. I remember his stories of N. Africa and meeting Arabs, and still have a black and white photo of Mt. Vesuvius that he took while in Italy. The "Big Red One" was truly special. Thank you and your family for your father's service! ❤🙏🇺🇸
Both the US and Japanese navies were writing the carrier operations manual as they went in 1942. The British used carriers, but carrier vs. carrier battles were pretty much limited to the Pacific. The US had advantages in damage control, and radar. Japan had advantages chiefly in experience and the qualities of the crew. As the war went on, Japanese aircrew losses couldn't be replaced, and while Japan did develop radar eventually, the technology lagged behind the Americans. The US had broader training programs, and many of the early war veterans (like Thach), went on to become air group commanders and trainers. The US built a new generation of aircraft, and total of 24 aircraft carriers of the same class (Essex-Class) that took advantage of the experiences with the Yorktown-Class Carriers (Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet), and by 1944 they were launching carrier air strikes in numbers that even Japanese land-based air couldn't cope with.. By 1944, as a learning organization, the US Pacific Fleet had no equal.
If you’re ever in San Diego be sure to visit the USS Midway! One of three carriers built near the end of WWII named after the battle (her sister was the USS Coral Sea). This ship was operational until the 1980s where it was the only US carrier based outside of the USA. It was based in Yokosuka, Japan.
Rochefort was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1898 and enlisted in the Navy in 1918 with the intention of becoming a naval aviator. In these early days, however, Rochefort’s facility with puzzles and riddles caught the attention of his supervisors, who recruited Rochefort into the Code and Signal Section of the Office of Naval Communications, the Navy’s burgeoning cryptologic force. In 1926, Rochefort became the officer-in-charge, whereupon he showed an uncommon thoroughness and attention to detail.
With the war in the Pacific gearing up in the 1930s, Rochefort went to Tokyo to perfect his Japanese. During the trip, he met Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton. Their good rapport would prove critical in the intelligence war against Japan after 1941.
Rochefort used his cryptologic and linguistic skills to help crack the top Japanese Naval Code (JN-25) with his team of code-breakers, linguists, and radio traffic analysts-all located at the heart of the Navy’s cryptologic efforts, at Pearl Harbor’s “Station Hypo,” in the spring of 1941.
In late May 1942, Rochefort, with the help of Layton, now stationed at Pearl Harbor, made another major breakthrough by decoding Japanese radio transmissions that revealed the time, date, and place of the planned invasion of Midway Island. Most significantly, Rochefort’s findings actually contradicted and thereby corrected the erroneous assessments of intelligence officials back in Washington, DC, who had discounted the possibility of a Japanese strike on Midway. Fortunately for the U.S. war effort in the Pacific and the U.S. naval personnel in harm’s way, Fleet Admiral Chester A. Nimitz favored Rochefort and Layton’s analysis and conclusions. The result was a U.S. victory at the Battle of Midway and the beginning of the end of Japanese efforts to control the Pacific.
The battle of Midway was a turning point in the Pacific war. From that point on, the Japanese were constantly on the defense, and the United States not only recovered fully from the Pearl Harbor attack, but over the next 4 years, built the greatest Navy the world has ever seen. After the battle, Admiral Yamamoto, the Supreme Imperial Japanese Naval Commander, famously remarked "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.".
That was after the Midway battle? I thought people attributed that quote to him in regards to the Pearl Harbor attack.
Yes the quote is from after pearl harbor midway only confirmed his suspension
Midway was not the true turning point of the war, that took place at Guadalcanal months later. Even after Midway, the Japanese still had a bigger fleet in the Pacific than America did. At the time, Midway was not regarded as the turning point but rather a good step forward. It only looks decisive from our view 80 years later. Don't get me wrong, it was still an important milestone, but the real battle that turned the tide was the grinding six months long fight to control Guadalcanal in the southwest Pacific.
@stefanlaskowski6660 midway changed the tone of the war thou. Starting with Guadalcanal the Japanese were on the defense not the offense. That is how midway changed the war. It changed who had initiative.
That quote is likely apocryphal.
I recommend you follow this up with the movie "Midway" (1976 film) The USA was only in the War for 6 months. The USA took more care in building their Aircraft Carriers. The Yorktown was hit, but they were able to repair it before the second attack, so when the second Japanese attack got there, they though it was second carrier, so they didn't look for more carriers.
I love his videos. I know you guys do movie reactions. You might want to add Midway (2019) to your list. It is a great movie that is based on the real life heroes and their real life actions leading up to and during the battle. The story centers around the man who made the Akagi, Lt. Richard Best. It tells you the story of gathering the intelligence. Also, there is a program called Battle 360: Enterprise that tells the entire story of the most decorated battleship of WWII from the men who served on it including men who served in the Battle of Midway.
Guadalcanal was a big slugfest that lasted for months. It was inch by inch just trying to get to the mountain fortress at the end. The enterprise was lost for a solid two weeks due to repairs. Laffy 3 had to fight an entire fleet of enemy ships and they were just a minor battleship group with weaker guns that were like peashooters yet they drove the enemy off. It was just insane. The marines were so tired at the end. It was just explosions and bullets whizzing by constantly. It became a jungle hell though we won but many of the veterans have PTSD from that place. Heck there are stories of a man destroying a huge bonzai charge with a machine gun by himself just holding it up like Rambo from Guadalcanal.
Actually during the flight to nowhere a plane is still missing. It was a dive bomber. It’s still unknown what happened to it as it never encountered the enemy, never ditched, never had radio contact, and basically did nothing. Just it disappeared off the face of the earth. Efforts are still under way to find this plane. The navy, explorers, salvage crews, even the National Geographic guys did searches yet still this plane is just gone. We have no idea where it even is. Even searching the known area where they would have run out of fuel yields nothing. The two crew members are still considered MIA. They officially cannot be KIA unless the bodies are found. It’s one of the strangest mysteries from WW2 that is still unsolved.
You also have to keep in mind, the battle of Midway was only the 1st time in all of history that aircraft carriers had EVER fought against each other in the open ocean, a month earlier, when the Yorktown was badly damaged and we lost the Lexington, was the battle of the Coral Sea, which was the very first time that aircraft carriers had ever squared off against other carriers, but in the Coral Sea, both the Japanese and American ships had to contend with island landmasses, which had both advantages and disadvantages, a smart commander can use them for cover and concealment, BUT this will also partially blind you, at Midway, they were both on the open ocean, and considering the different weather from the Coral Sea, which is hundreds of miles south of the Jet Stream, and Midway which is right in the middle of it, at Coral Sea, it was nearly a dead even draw between the 2 sides, both the Americans and the Japanese lost one fleet carrier, and had a second one badly damaged, it was as close to a point for point, plane for plane, ship for ship, casualty for casualty fight as I think has ever happened, neither side can claim it as a victory, but I do believe the Americans did come out of it slightly less hurt than the Japanese did, the U.S. Navy DID sink 3 Japanese Minesweepers that the Japanese didn't, and the Japanese had about 200 additional casualties over the Americans, but other than that, the ONLY way it could be considered an American victory, is it stopped the Japanese movements through the Coral sea which for all intensive purposes ended the Japanese threat to Australia, anyway back to Midway, when Yorktown limped back to Pearl Harbor after Coral Sea, she was very badly damaged, and it was estimated that she needed MAJOR repairs in Seattle for about 6 months, but since we lost Lexington at Coral sea, Admiral Nimitz told the shipyard superintendent that he needed her back in the water in 72 hours, it was the superintendent who put a hold on ALL shipyard work throughout Pearl Harbor for 72 hours and ordered EVERYONE to repair the Yorktown, a literal ARMY of ship workers descended on Yorktown and worked around the clock for 72 hours and send her out to sea at nearly 100% ready for combat, about 500 civilians (Ship yard repair personnel from Pearl Harbor) were still on the Yorktown repairing what was left to be repaired when they went into combat with the crew, this is likely WHY after the first attack on the Yorktown, it only took them 90 minutes to get the fires out, control the flooding, relight the boilers and have her underway, repair the flight deck, and other things damaged in the attack, so it appeared that the Yorktown was not injured to the 2nd Japanese strike on her, was probably because of the civilian ship yard workers that were still onboard her during the battle. and how that turned into a tactical and strategic advantage was just something that was fortuitous for the U.S. Navy, and there was no way the Japanese could possibly have known this was something that could have even been part of the playing deck, and it is one of those facts and "THE FOG OF WAR" that very few people ever talk about. one of the other things about this battle was that the intelligence community in Washington D.C. and the Intelligence people in Hawaii were greatly separate on what the target that the Japanese called AF was, and it was these unsung hero's that came up with a plan to get an definitive answer, they wrote a note and flew it out to Midway and handed it to the stations communication people with instructions to broadcast it word for word, with no encryption, back to Pearl Harbor, and then they listened, when the Japanese sent out a message that we intercepted and mentioned that message, they finally KNEW that AF meant Midway, a lot of very small pieces had to fall in the right place for this battle to be as big of a turning point as it turned out to be, so to your point, about the training and how the Japanese did carrier operations so well and we did not, well since 1936, the Japanese carriers had been launching air attacks against ground targets in China for years before we ever squared off against them, and even then, they had never taken on another aircraft carrier at sea before, but launching strikes inland or on an Island such as midway, they had PLENTY of experience doing that, so it was not really surprising that they got their first launch against Midway as quickly as they did, but Admiral Nagumo WAS NOT at the battle of the Coral sea, Admiral Fletcher WAS, It might only be 1 fights worth of a difference, but it is still MORE experience, I think he learned valuable Knowledge at Coral Sea, went in very evenly matched, came out pretty evenly damaged, but 1 month later went into Midway, outclassed, outgunned, outnumbered, but came out with a MASSIVE win, MAYBE, just MAYBE, his experience at Coral Sea helped tip the balance, I do not know if that is true, but I do not think it is something that be ignored either. and keep in mind this battle happened in June of 1942, we went into that battle with 3 carriers, a couple of weeks after Midway, the U.S.S. Wasp would arrive at Pearl Harbor, and by the end of 1942, 4 more brand new Carriers would also join the pacific fleet, and for the first time, the United States would outnumber Japans Aircraft numbers, by 1944 the Pacific fleet had nearly 100 aircraft carriers, many of them were escort carriers, but 25 of them were fleet aircraft carriers, just for clarification escort carriers are very small aircraft carries with limited planes, usually just fighter planes, and they only carried about 30, these were to defend against air attacks from the enemy, the fleet carriers were the offensive carriers.
Midway battle much vaunted but naval Battle of the Coral Sea between Queensland Australia and New Guinea in May 1942 when combined British American fleet under Admiral Chester Nimitz crucially beat Japanese invasion fleet bound for Australia causing extensive damage on some larger vessels returning them to Singapore for repairs thus delaying their appearance at Midway lessening Japanese fleet boosting American chances so Coral Sea was a notable but unrecognised battle
One part of this battle that is understated is the pilot loss. What is missed is the amount of pilots trained per year. Japan only graduated around 100 fully trained pilots per year. At Coral Sea, Japan lost just about 1 years worth of pilots. Then Midway where over 100 were lost. For the rest of 1942 another years worth of pilots lost. It was not until 1943 that Japan tried training pilots in greater number. So 3 to 4 years worth of pilots lost in 1 year. That was numbers they could not replace. On the American side, by 1945 and the close of hostilities the US had fully trained almost 16,000 carrier qualified pilots.
my grandfather was there😊. never spoke on it much. he was at a lot of the pacific battles.
The main reason the US had a lot of problems launching in the morning was because their usually commander, Adm. Halsey, has been sidelined due to illness. Spruance wasn't a carrier man at that point, he was a cruiser/battleship commander.
but was chosen by halsey since Sprunance usually guardded his carriers. meanwhile Nagumo would never be Yammamoto's choice to lead Kido Butai.
I think if you want more context on the battle of Coral Sea Montemayor has a video on it called "The Battle of the Coral Sea 1942: The First Aircraft Carrier Battle in History." Alternatively if you want to continue in chronological order you should watch "Battle of Savo Island 1942: America's Worst Naval Defeat," although I must add it is by far Montemayor's longest video at 1 hour long, just something I think you should know.
There's an interesting book, "Japanese Destroyer Captain" by Tameichi Hara, that clearly demonstrates how often luck, good and bad, was involved in the outcome of battles during the Pacific naval war. Especially at the beginning and middle stages.
I love how Millie busted out, we are trying to get 200k subscribers by the end of the year!
One main factor is left off in the summary, beyond talking about US production capacity, no examples were given. As it was Essex class carriers were starting to come off the slipways, along with the Independence class light carriers. Of the Essex class 24 were built, Independence class 9 were completed, now if you add in the Escort carriers (all class) the US built 124....Japan during the war had a total (not at one time) of 18 carriers and some were lost without firing a shot (Shinano (1944)) or on their first mission (Taihō 1944, three months after commissioning).
Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp all sunk during the first year of the War in the Pacific. Then the Essex class carriers came into service. Second Yorktown, second Hornet, second Lexington, and the second Wasp. One of the effects of naming these new ships after the recently sunk ships is that it confused the Japanese. "Wait a minute, I thought we sunk the Yorktown."
They had that same problem with the Enterprise. It kept showing up not sunk! When the Enterprise was relaunched as a dedicated night operations carrier, the Japanese probably thought it was yet another Essex class named after one of the original carriers.
Great 5 part series! Your comments are so right on during these videos. It would be great if you did more videos like this one. I would recommend the Battle of Guadalcanal, which was indeed the turning point of the war on the Pacific, and it lasted on for 6 months (Aug '42-Feb '43), the longest battle in the Pacific, and it essentially broke the military back of Japan, all the while the US was building the US Navy to an astronomical size. When the war ended, the US had 100 aircraft carriers, of which 24 were full sized fleet carriers. Compare this with the 11 fleet carriers today and 3 or 4 'escort' carriers (helicopters, and VTAL planes). Also, I watched your reaction the the American Revolutionary War, and I would suggest doing the same with the US Civil War.
The battle for Iwo Jima would be a good one.
WW2 has always fascinated me, and watching the different videos you have been sharing helped me realize some of the things my dad participated in during the War (Normandy for one). Been a subscriber for several months, and enjoy watching your channel.
World War 2 Navy Comparison - Fleets Evolution 1939-1946 next please!🙂.You will know how may ships in every country in World War 2
Thanks for doing these you guys! Much appreciated as well as the effort that goes into pumping these vids out every month.
So in the US, our navy includes the model number of each of our ships on the hull, as well as sometimes referring to them as their hull number. USS Yorktown was CV-5, USS Enterprise was CV-6, and USS Hornet was CV-8, meaning the newest carrier in that whole fleet was only the 8th aircraft carrier the US had ever made. Since all of these carriers were Yorktown class, that means that it was only the 3rd or 4th carrier design ever thought up by the US. The carriers themselves were designed well, the only issue is that carrier warfare was a new thing. American torpedo bombers were untested, and the Americans hadn't put in the time to thoroughly drill their men on launching aircraft efficiently. Meanwhile the Japanese were practicing for months beforehand as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had foreseen that carriers were the most important vessels in Naval Warfare. You can see the difference in skills in the 2 nations by comparing the efficiency in which the Japanese launched their aircraft compared to the US, and the efficiency of the US damage control compared to the Japanese. The Americans were more practiced when it comes to Naval warfare, so they did better tan the Japanese in most regards, but when it came to how to operate a carrier, the Japanese were more practiced.
11:30 that’s one reason why the modern American military takes things so seriously. Because good men died when things weren’t figured out.
literally the best series you guys have done.
It's always incredible to look back and see just how much of a role luck had to play in some of these clashes. Yes, tactics and intelligence went a long way to making sure people were in the right place at the right time, but luck can still be a make-or-break factor. As we just saw with the US air groups happening to converge over the Japanese fleet at the same time due to individual initiative and gut instinct, and with just *three* dive bombers managing to take out a Japanese fleet carrier with only a single bomb strike.
Which is why it's also kind of maddening to see people discount theories about why certain things went down in that war the way they did just because it sounds too improbable. It's sort of a blind spot to look at something with one-in-a-million odds and write it off entirely, forgetting that it's *one*-in-a-million rather than *zero*-in-a-million.
To understand the scale of the US buildup -
despite the fact that the 2 new carriers (Wasp and Hornet) that joined the Pacific Fleet in 1942 were both sunk before the end of the year,
by the end of June 1943, the US would have 6 Fleet Carriers and 5 Light Carriers in commission and heading to the Pacific.
By the end of December 1943, those numbers were 9 Fleet Carriers and 9 Light Carriers
Between December 7th, 1941 and August 15th, 1945 - the day Japan Surrendered US shipyards launched:
18 Fleet Carriers
9 Light Carriers
129 Escort Carriers (12 were conversions - not purpose built)
During the war most of these fleet Carriers, and all of the light carriers were in the Pacific.
The Escort carriers served virtually everywhere - and many were commissioned as Royal Navy Vessels
My favorite thing about that was that the Yorktown, Hornet, and Lexington names all returned to the Pacific with the new carriers and confused the ever loving crap out of the Japanese lol.
LCDR Waldron knew the Japanese carriers were reported to be to the SW so when they were briefed and told they were flying west he knew that was not right. After the brief Waldron told his pilots to follow him in flight. Before leaving the USS Hornet attack group Waldron radio'd that they were going the wrong direction. He was ordered to continue west but he disobeyed that order and turned SW and flew directly towards the Japanese carriers. When Waldron saw the Japanese carriers he radio'd to tell the Hornet aircraft where the Japanese carriers were but they continued west anyway because that was the direction they were briefed to fly.
Also, the Japanese plan was to form a line of submarines to the east of Midway to warn/attack any incoming US ships but they were late getting into position. The US carriers had already sailed through that area, so, we got very lucky.
I absolutely love being a black american, watching a reaction of two british people(i would say jersey but i dont want to confuse any americans haha) from a mexican american(?) Narrator. The connectivity of the world is just so amazing.
Still praying you get to 200k subscribers- who wouldn’t?! Love you guys!
Midway was the second carrier vs carrier battle in history when nether fleets ever seen each other it was a turning point for a sea battle but without midway guadalcanal wouldint of been even a thought two months after midway
Though japan had converted a uncompleted Yamato class battleship into a Carrier. The Shinano was the biggest carrier put to sea. But was uncompleted when a lone American submarine sank it
I went to high school in the mid 70s our school's name was Nimitz highschool and I had a history teacher who served in the Navy in the Pacific theater on the Enterprise
Physics teacher in HS was "back seater" in the Pacific USN.
The place that the US carriers met before Midway was actually come named “Point Luck”.
Some 50+ years ago I worked with a therapist who had been in the Marines. He was in the South Pacific and took part in the battles there, as well as helping to remove our dead from the water. Its wasn't pretty. He said you could tell which bodies were US and which were Japanese by the smell, probably in part from the diets of the individual countries. It is what he said and I believed him.
Also, not something to do with this video, but check out the us submarine that blew up a train on Japan nearing the later part of the war. The SS Barb a submarine actually landed a team on Japan soil, who laid a homemade explosive device that would activate when a train ran over the rail, blowing the train and the rails up. They were the only submarine to be able to add the image of a train onto the ships flag. The Commander wrote a book later called "Thunder Below" that pretty much details his time on the Barb. I also believe they were also the first submarine to be armed with 5 in (130 mm) rocket launchers that they used on on-shore targets and the Japanese thought it must have been some sort of cruiser that had attacked.
The US had such an industrial advantage that by 1945, just 2.5 years after Midway, they had 99 aircraft carriers (28 fleet carriers 71 escort carriers) in the Pacific to 4 carriers for the Japanese. They also had vastly improved the quality of the aircraft launching from those carriers while the Japanese were still flying mostly the same aircraft types they had fielded in 1941.
Nimitz personified the "sleeping giant" Admiral Yamamoto referred to after Pearl Harbor.
Since you guys are doing Movie reactions now, there's actually a recent movie about the battle of Midway called... Midway from 2019.
It's not the best movie ever and I find the first 10 minutes to be a little rough but I've grown to really like it.
Basically the victory at the battle of midway was pretty much out smarting the enemy but also a bit of dumb luck.
It was a very risky decision - basically the Japanese planned a trap for the US carriers. The US knew that it was a trap, but took the bait thinking that they could turn it into a trap for the Japanese. But a lot depended on which side spotted the other one first, and that could easily have gone the other way.
If you really like this subject, the Kings and Generals channel is doing a week-by-week history of the entire Pacific War including the China-Burma-India theater.
Hi guys! Looks like you two really got into the particulars of this engagement. Well done!
Midway was the first taste of battle for many young men. They either ran or fought their hardest. In effect it proved that America was willing to fight. The midway campaign taught us a lot about what we need to do and figure out strategies we could use. The enterprise would actually be damaged at Guadalcanal just months later but be repaired quickly although she lost an elevator. Once that campaign was finished the Enterprise would receive a full retrofit of every gun by replacing them with new ones that were nicknamed Chicago pianos due to their shape which worked much more efficiently and were more accurate. She also had her entire aircraft platform replaced but added extra length as the new zero killer, hellcat plane was being introduced. Every carrier new and old received upgrades and were launched quickly. Every ship got some type of upgrade even under battle conditions.
Japanese strategy was to simply cripple the U.S. pacific fleet enough to buy them time to take over the pacific without U.S. interference. The war in the pacific was the first time we fought with the carrier as the center of our naval power because we were forced to after Pearl Harbor so everything was kind of learned on the fly. The carrier was initially seen as simply a support piece for the U.S. Between the U.S. and Japan WWII changed naval doctrine around the world forever.
Roosevelt knew of the coming attack.
Actually there was a debate between "black shoe" commanders (surface warfare) and "brown shoe" commanders (aviators). The former saw carriers as scouts. The latter believed carriers would become the primary striking force, replacing battleships. There were a series of war games conducted by the Navy in the 30s that supported that belief. One of the unanswered questions was how many carriers should be in a task force? The Americans started out with only one or two at first, while the IJN almost accidentally landed upon the optimal number, 4-6.
The US Navy had broken the Japanese Naval Code fairly early in the war ,which combined with radar ,gave the US a huge advantage
There's a small chain of events here for the Pacific Theater.
1: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.
2: as retaliation the American did the Doolittle Raid where the American lauched B-25 bombers from the USS Hornet to bomb Japan itself. They only did minimum damage but it boosted the American morale.
3: due to the Doolittle Raid bombers landing in china the Japanese got furious and done unthinkable things to the chinese people and cities.
4: the Japanese attacking midway was also part of a retaliation against the Americans for the Doolittle Raid.
5: due to Shokaku and Zuikaku being out of commission the Japanese pulls 2 of his Kido Butai carriers from the South Pacific (forgot which ones) for the battle of midway. Weaking the Japanese forces in the South Pacific.
6: due to the Japanese losing all 4 carriers at the Battle of Midway the Japanese started to converting the 3 Yamato-Class Battleship (Shinano) into a super carrier.
7: before the Shinano was fully completed she was sent to another naval yard to protect her from air raids in the Tokyo Bay area and to be completed.
8: While on her way to the other naval yard she was sunk by 4 torpedoes from the submarine USS Archerfish about 185miles (about 300km) Southeast from the Tokyo Bay.
The craziest thing about this whole battle is a junior Japanese officer managed to wargame out some carriers being sunk by Americans and the ref's of the war game said he violated the rules of the war game because there was no way the Americans would know they were coming.
For a David vs Goliath naval battle, review the Battle off Samar. The most powerful fleet in the Japanese navy, which includes the largest battleship ever put to sea, faces an American force whose combined tonnage is less than that of the battleship. And they're caught off-guard.
"A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
Comparing raw numbers of aircraft can be deceptive. Many of the aircraft on Midway were obsolete, like the Brewster Buffalo, or brand new (hence inexperienced) like the B-26.
Also, most histories seems to ignore the preferred methods of training. The Japanese preferred a quality over quantity approach, which produced excellent crew but at a very slow pace. The Americans, on the other hand, went for the mass produced approach. In fact, during the first part of the war, literally half of a graduating class was assigned to help train the next class, with the other half going on to advanced combat training.
The IJN didn't just lose 4 carriers that day, or even the pilots shot down or sunk. All the experienced plane crews and maintenance were lost, and now Japan no longer had the luxury of slowly training replacements.
...A lot of folks thought FDR was nuts when he called for 50,000 planes built, but it was that kind of thinking that allowed the USAAF grow from a few thousand to over two million in just a couple years, and allowed the US Navy to grow equally large.
👍from Hawaii like the shirt👍 I lived most of my life a short 5 minute drive from Pearl Harbor. December 7 every year fewer and fewer survivors are left at the ceremonies. This is a good explanation of Midway.good reaction.
The Pacific fleet would later have another carrier, aptly named the Lexington in place of its lost sister, they ship was panted with similar numbers to the other Lexington, confused and afraid, the Japanese named her "The Blue Ghost" as Tokyo Rose reported it had been destroyed again, but was at the next naval engagement.
The USS lexington now sits in the waters of Corpus Christi, Texas watching over the lone star state with the Battleship Texas. (Yes, the same Texas currently in dry dock)
@Beesleys In response to your intro comments about what people want to see, it's not just that I enjoy reaction videos, but I enjoy when people (you) are learning things (instead of reacting to something funny or artistic) and I can learn with you or see someone else's perspective if I already was familiar with the original video's subject.
Made that comment only halfway through...its exactly why Yamamoto did not want to attack america...he'd spent time here and knew they couldn't produce like we could
What is amazing about history is how much of it now determined by luck.
Those videos are great.
His Coral Sea videos are too.
As bloody and awful as the fighting in Europe was. The fighting in the pacific islands like Guadalcanal was far bloodier and more brutal. The US and Japanese slaughtered each other island to island to island for the next three years. Every tiny little island cost thousands of troops their lives. The reason we dropped the atomic bomb was simply that President Truman couldn’t justify the number of soldiers lives that would have been lost (over 1 million projected) in a traditional Normandy style invasion of Japan all the way to Tokyo when he had a tool that would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians but end the war quickly. While his decision has been second guessed for decades I personally think he did the right thing. It ended the war by ripping off the scab in a painful ugly way.
in this map each square is 500k or mile Bye 500k or mile
Since you are so interested in knowing more about WWII try these movies: Note these movies are black and white. They came out in the 40s.
Pride of the Marines (1945-true story).
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, won multiple Oscars-about 4 service men adjusting to life after the war).
Battleground (1949-about a group of American soldiers trying to survive the Battle of the Bulge. Realistic in portraying the feelings of the average American soldier).
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944-About the Doolittle Raid).
They Were Expendable (1945- About a group of navy personnel fighting in the Philippines. The title refers to a conversation that Lt Brinkley has with the army colonel. It always makes me cry.).
Air Force (1943-semi true. About a group of B-17s flying into the Hawaiian Islands on Dec. 7, 1941).
The Flying Tigers (1942-this group was an American volunteer group flying for China before the US entered in the war. Their planes (P-40 Warhawks) were famous for having the shark teeth painted on the front of their planes. Also the Flying Tiger insignia was created by The Walt Disney Company.
Books:
A Higher Call by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander
And If I Perish: Frontline US Nurses in World War II by Evelyn Monahan & Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee
Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches by Ernie Pyle
Citizen Soldier by Stephen Ambrose (who also wrote Band of Brothers)
Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Mission by Hampton Sides
Of the 4 American aircraft carriers that were in service before and during WWII, only 1 survived: CVN6 USS Enterprise. She was also the most decorated of all vessels in WWII. She participated in every major action except 2.
By the end of the first year of the war, she was the only one that hadn’t been hit by an enemy torpedo, plus she was the only battle ready carrier in the US fleet.
She had 2 nicknames:
The Big E which not only stood for Enterprise, but also for excellence. She also won the coveted Efficiency Award that all ships compete for annually.
Her other nickname was The Gray Ghost because 3 times the Japanese announced that they had sunk her in battle. But as we know, that never happened.
The Enterprise was the first to strike a full-size warship after war was declared. On Dec. 10, 1941 her aircraft sunk the Japanese submarine I-70.
To learn more about the Pacific War check out Battle 360. All episodes are on RUclips. A couple of them are about the Enterprise.
It was really hard to watch the first few parts with you knowing what had happened. I was Military Intelligence, signals, and this battle is like the gold standard for the information that intelligence can gather once we've broken codes. And how important that work is. I just wanted to say the Japanese were more or less setup. Although, we did take a beating. This battle was crucial not only in the damage it inflicted on the Japanese navy, but for moral at home. American leadership with the pilots was just as important as Major Dick Winter's type of leadership in Europe. The ability to assess the situation and act independently, was everything in WWII.
Had they not broken the code . Midway would have fell. Because the carriers probably would have been north by the Aleutian islands .
It was almost an even battle for Midway, yes the Japanese had 1 more carrier, the US had an Island with planes used in Battle. So it was a 4 v 4.
I strongly recommended watching Midway. It was an excellent movie( both of them). Dont bother watching Pearl Harbor ( there is no movie in Ba Sing Se)
The US had at least 100 planes more than IJN (albeit land-based ones). The US carriers also carried more planes than IJN's, 80 and 60 respectively.
The IJN should have transferred Shokaku's air group to Zuikaku plus 2 light carriers to make up for the lost of a carrier.
So now that you have that history, it is a PERFECT time to watch the series "The Pacific" which follows the Marines in their battles against the Japanese. Some very tough fighting on many of the campaigns. Same writers/producers as in Band of Brothers. It is grittier than BOB and hard to watch some parts, but from a historical perspective it's worth watching. As for Midway, I'll add one thing: It wasn't luck, it was FATE.
Midway was the set up. Guadalcanal was the heavy punch.
Don't be confused, the Japanese didn't get knocked out right away and they got some really good knocks in, a place is called Iron Bottom Sound for a reason, but the US eventually managed to cripple the Japanese military by the end of the campaign.
On a side note, never mess with the Enterprise!
The Pacific theater in WW-2 never got the attention that the European theater did and I feel that with the world's attention on the atrocities that took place in the concentration camps that Japan got off easy for all their evil actions
by the end of the war the US had 29 fleet carriers and a total carrier force of 97
23:30 that was absolutely not a 1-for-1. The Shoho was a light carrier that carried only 30 aircraft whereas the Lexington carried 78.
Well, I don't think you'll read this, because I've never seen you respond to a comment, ever, and I've been watching for a damn long time now, but, even if the US didn't break the code, and had lost at Midway, the outcome of the war would have been the same, it simply would have taken longer. Japan could not compete with the industrial building capacity of the US. Here's were the rubber meets the road.
Japan vs. USA by the numbers.
Most of these stats are taken from Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" and John Ellis' "World War II: A Statistical Survey."
At the beginning of the war, America had:
Nearly twice the population of Japan.
Seventeen time's Japan's national income.
Five times more steel production.
Seven times more coal production.
Eighty (80) times the automobile production.
America had some hidden advantages that didn't show up directly in production figures. For one, U.S. factories were, on average, more modern and automated than those in Europe or in Japan. Additionally, American managerial practice at that time was the best in the world. Taken in combination, the per capita productivity of the American worker was the highest in the world. Furthermore, the United States was more than willing to utilize American women in the war effort: a tremendous advantage for us, and a concept which the Axis Powers seem not to have grasped until very late in the conflict. The net effect of all these factors meant that even in the Depression, American war-making potential was still around seven times larger than Japan's, and had the 'slack' been taken out in 1939, it was closer to nine or ten times as great! In fact, accroding to Kennedy, a breakdown of total global warmaking potential in 1937 looks something like this:
Country % of Total Warmaking Potential
United States 41.7%
Germany 14.4%
USSR 14.0%
UK 10.2%
France 4.2%
Japan 3.5%
Italy 2.5%
Seven Powers (total) (90.5%)
War production from 1941 to 1945 (this doesn't include any ships or planes built before these dates) was:
Fleet aircraft carrier/Light carriers/escort carriers
USA 141 Japan 17
Battleships
USA 10 Japan 2
Cruisers, both heavy and light
USA 48 Japan 9
Destroyers
USA 349 Japan 63
Destroyer Escorts
USA 498 Japan ? perhaps none
Submarines
USA 203 Japan 167
A couple of points need to made here. First, the majority of the carriers listed in the U.S. totals were 'Jeep' carriers, CVEs carrying a couple dozen aircraft and suitable mostly for escort duties rather than front-line combat (which didn't subtract a whit from their effectiveness as antisubmarine or ground-support platforms). But it should also be noted that the American CVs (fleet carriers) on average operated substantially larger air wings than their Japanese counterparts (80-90 vs. 60-70 aircraft). The net result; by 1944, when Task Force 38 or 58 (depending on whether Halsey or Spruance was in charge of the main American carrier force at the moment) came to play, they could be counted upon to bring nearly a thousand combat aircraft with them.
Mercant shipping production from 1939 to 1945(in tons):
USA 33,993,230 Japan 4,152,361
*The United States built more merchant shipping in the first four and a half months of 1943 than Japan put in the water in seven years.
Aircraft production 1939 to 1945:
USA 324,750 Japan 76,320
They were never going to win.
Look up water shortage at Midway...I think it puts all of this into a better light
Now you know why USA, has so many Carriers. We don't want to get caught flatfooted again. Good job on covering this battle with your insight. Be Safe
I am grateful, in 2023, the U.S.A. and Japan are friends! 🇺🇸 🇯🇵. GOD bless 🇬🇧
Although losing the Battle of Midway would have greatly demoralized the US leadership and public, it probably wouldn't have changed the course of the war. At most, the US would have lost its last 3 Pacific carriers. But during WW II, the US built 122 carriers including 29 larger fleet carriers. And the Japanese basically built no more than those they had at the start of the war. So by about 1943, the US would still have massively outnumbered the Japanese naval air forces.
And by the end of the war America had stopped building carriers already under construction because they has so many. Several carriers were canceled and others were left not fully built for years until they were needed as replacements for older carriers, or modified to modern designs.
to add some more facts in. Yorktoiwns fighter group wre made up of Saratoga's group since that ship was be out of action for longer to a quick transfer to get Yorktown have the needed strength to assit in battle. The japanese could have done the same thing. the last cv division one carrier was out of action due to damage the other lost it's flight group at coral sea. they could have transfered the nearly intact flight group from the damaged carrier to the intact one so they could of had 5 cvs for midway.
For Japan, it must be said that the pre-war naval buildup has almost bankrupted their nation multiple times, whereas the Americans run on civilian economy. So Japan could not build more ships any faster, whereas US just had to wake up. Japan had around 6 big carriers before the battle, and about the same number of small carriers, US had around 5, and about half the number of small carriers. But it was just a matter of time before US started producing numerous carriers each year. So in the end, the US had not just the biggest carriers in the world (with the exception of Shinano), but they also had tons of them. So when they went to kill Yamato, they launched planes from 8 big carriers just against that one ship and some small escorts.
The United States' victory at Midway sets up for the six+ month naval meatgrinder that is the Guadalcanal campaign.
I have a 303 Enfield mk 3 from my pop.end of wwII. and have old rounds for such. good Rifle
It didn't change the course of the war, it was the course of the war.
Lesson: it’s always smart to use intelligence.
I subscribed LOL much love from Florida.. God bless the United States and England
You should make a playlist for these. Ensure it's in the correct order and put the original videos in the proper order after your reactions.
Thanks!
Just a word of American industrial power. By late 1943 the US Pacific fleet, by itself, was larger than any other navy in the world. By the end of the war. 70% of all tonnage of the worlds Navy was the US Navy. Japan had no chance in a prolonged war.
It looks like you skipped the video on the Battle of the Coral Sea from this same YT channel, which happened between Pearl Harbor and Midway.
Realize: America entered the war yes, but we had to fight the Japanese long before we entered Europe. We comparatively spend a very short time in Europe.
I am subscribed and alway hit like instant I see your nice faces.
Great video
If US hadn't broke the code midway would of been lost allowing Japan to fortify it and operate with Japanese airplanes.
More the entire midway operation was designed to be a ambush for the American carriers.which might of had worked
Some bad Weather, bad coordination and a 50/50 decision somehow led the United States into one of the biggest naval victories of WW2. Truly Hilarious
Yeah, to better illustrate his point about it being inevitable that Japan would lose, just compare the populations at the time. Japan had about 72 million people. The US had over 130 million. Japan had very limited natural resources. The US has a ridiculous amount of natural resources. Sure, it took us longer to ramp up than it should have, but it was never a question of if, only when.