The Americans were both lucky and prepared. They had broken the Japanese Naval Code so they knew where the attack was going to occur. I say lucky because it is a complete fluke that the dive bombers happened upon that destroyer racing back to the fleet after attacking a US submarine and followed it back to the Japanese carriers. Also, catching the carriers changing aircraft weapons was most fortunate.
Don't forget the efforts to repair Yorktown. Catching Japan by surprise by being where Japan never expected them to be requires deliberate planning. Definitely elements of luck, but overwhelmingly tactics, procedures and various efforts were made across the board to win this fight.
Well luck doesn't exist... there's no such thing as that, for example, Hood exploded when hit once by Bismarck, was it fortune on the German side? No, it was a shot that penetrated the deck and went straight for the magazine, a real weakness on Hood, no luck involved here because everything can be explained. Even the fact that the dive bombers encountered that destroyer going back to the fleet after attacking a US submarine. You just explained what happen, where does luck come in? Unexpected? Yes, lucky? Not at all.
AFAIR: This wasn't luck strictly speaking, as if one has rough location of Japanese carriers and aircraft speed, then figuring out how long would it take for them to make a round trip is a basic math.
We have similar saying, Luck smiles on prepared. Or Unprepared wait for blind luck, prepared make their own luck upfront ... Something along those lines, lost some in translation ...
I would argue that while preparation/skill are extremely important, luck can play a significant role. A firearm (whether small arm or cannon) or bomb is only so accurate. Better equipment reduces the size of the impact pattern, but not to zero. Skill/preparation are required to aim it properly. But hitting the exact vulnerable spot, significantly smaller than your dispersal pattern, involves some luck.
@@paulboger7377 Excellent point. There was a massive amount of hubris flowing through the Japanese military command at this point, and it worked to our advantage. It's that old, but tried and true cliché - "Never Underestimate Your Enemy." 😎
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer Ney wasn't lucky... and Napoleon would have been far better off without him, especially considering his mistake at Waterloo.
There's a quote here that i think applies from an odd source. Mike Krzyzewski is a college basketball coach here in a american, and quite successful at it. He once said "Luck only counts for something if you have the skill to take advantage of it"
The problem is for this particular battle they did 200% preparation. When they fought they showed 40% skilled compared to the Japanese and there mistakes made their success that why so much is up for debate.
@@owo5869 You can never really go beyond 100%. The thing is most times nobody strives for 100%. Most people go for a solid 40-60% and things work out well enough. People are shocked when someone shows 90% efficiency. I could be wrong. I'm just a perfectionist who lacks time and energy to do things as "perfectly" as I would like. In many areas I have to sacrifice and settle for "good enough". But when I pour time and patience into my projects my 90% quite often surprises even myself. I believe that something similar happened here. There were months of code breaking and combine that with the bottleneck nature of Midway's geographic location that really helped give a general idea of the Japanese Navy's location. It's not that the US did more at Midway, it could be that they did less at other areas of the war in comparison.
@@owo5869 that is in no way a problem with anything i said so i'm not sure you responded to right comment here. And i'd love to see the data you're using that can put a percentage rating to skill... especially one that can give a 200% result...
Petrie W Well maybe conceptual language are too hard for you. But tell me if a mass uncoordinated attack actually help you won the battle is it luck? Using two basketball team as example though it might be hard for you to understand. If one team is trained and are experts in their coordination and good at their aim they lost to a ten man random team though they don't feel overwhelmed by its number what is it that make them loose ?
@@isaiahcampbell488 Naval battle in general requires two components locate the enemy (usually code breaking, patrol, and strategic planning) and have enough force to fight (Man power, crew training, ships and technology) . That’s why I considered anything more than what mentioned above in to the “percentage” for lack of better word. Luck plays a big role in naval battle in the past even if every thing mentioned above are done in hundred percent. A battle might just not happen. In science luck will be considered a bad explanation but in naval warfare or naval history you will often see “Lucky Ships” and these usage are generally considered to be cannon. Why? it’s a generalization of all the unpredictable and out of control variables that often times crucial for victory. Midway is an air battle on sea unlike traditional naval battle luck is not as crucial as past wars this is a main point for the people debating it isn’t luck and yes it’s a valid point. The counter argument is, American have an accurate enough location of the enemy, a large enough force consisting a larger inexperienced fighting force and a small more trained force, above that they also have the element of surprise. The event leading up to this includes lot of previous investments some mistakes the enemies made but compared to past naval battle this won’t necessarily meant a decisive victory examples battle of Jutland. So it boils down to some slightly contradictory statements and questions. Americans would’ve won without luck in normal circumstances but in the actual battle their mistakes enabled them to strike a decisive victory so what is it that achieve the victory? I don’t think there’s a human word for it. In Jutland German sunk more ship but British forces them to retreat so the victory belonged to the Royal Navy. The nuance of naval battle is why it’s interesting btw.
"Where others see coincidence, I see providence." Unfortunately we are conditioned by media and culture to treat the "good guys"' successes as luck rather than due to skill or technology. This is a big problem: it's part of why a certain section of the population (supported by poorly researched "documentaries") worship the Wehrmacht; and it makes people expect "miraculous" solutions to present-day challenges rather than seeing that they must be surmounted with effort, dilligence, and sacrifice. As an aspiring sci-fi / fantasy author I try to constantly fight against this assumption. Showing the heroes doing the groundwork, being prepared, trained, evaluating situations so they can exploit moments of good fortune, while avoiding any prophecy, fate, or deus ex machina. To me, not only does this better represent how success happens, but should also make a more compelling human story.
I love your comment man, I hate to see the peoples hardwork and sacrifice and bravery to just getting chalked up to "luck". Its disrespectful to the people who achieved the victory
I would say the US strike findint the japanese fleet at all was not a result of preparation, just blind luck, and very definitely decided the engagement. When one say the us was just lucky, they do not imply the us didnt put in the work to develop equipment doctrine, train personell, gather intelligence and draft a strike plan. But these were things the japanese also did almost equally well, or better, with the exception of intelligence. However that was not a decisive factor in the battle. Finding the japanese fleet at the right momemt, from the right direction by sheer chance was. If this single variable went the exact opposite way, with the US strike wandering off into the empty ocean, and the japanese being led by a destroyer back to the US carriers as they were rotation their strike, the outcome would have been the exact opposite. Theirfore I am comfortable to say at midway the US won due to luck, and trying to deny this is disingenous.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 If it's luck, how did so many strikes find the fleet? They used standard scouting and logical reasoning coupled with intel to determine where to look. Even the planes from Midway found the fleet. Was it luck the Japanese found the US fleet, since they didn't think they should have even been there at all?
Sure. - I won't. - Looks oversimplified. There are mixed forms: mostly luck, with less skill and preparation; mostly skill, but with an important degree of luck or good fortune. I agree with I need no channel "that trying to deny this is disingenous".
Were they lucky? Sure. They were. Did they work damn hard and engineer their luck? Absolutely. Did they have the right people in the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas, all working together, all with the right opportunities to make the most of the equipment they had at the time. Depends on your definition of luck.
Carrier groups fighting each other by launching airstrikes is a high-risk, high-stakes activity. Small details in the situation can have a disproportionately big impact on the outcome.
Great video! Love the definition of luck "when preparation meets opportunity". I agree. A statistician friend of mine used to say "there's not such thing as good or bad luck, but there is such a thing as luck." He meant that you could often change the amount of randomness in a situation, or perceived luck. In a military context, one way I think to do that is to increase tempo and aggressiveness. This will lead to more random or unplanned circumstances, and that usually favors the less prepared. That also fits with an unofficial US Navy motto, of going "in harm's way", or the SAS motto of "who dares wins". Both favor the well prepared. I also agree with comments that the US shrugged off some victories to luck that were really led by code breaking or other intelligence sources, or even superior tactics or training. During and even after the way, it's better to be viewed as lucky than skilled, if you're trying to keep your skills a secret. The pool shark doesn't want you to know that his secret is shooting pool 3 hours a day, four times a week.
There is a definitely an element of luck involved during the course of events which helped the Americans win, but a lot of battles are chaotic in nature with luck/chance playing a major role. Just read Shattered Sword and that lays out the amount of flaws in the Japanese plan and the way they executed it, the Americans on the other hand were well prepared, knew the Japanese were coming and were waiting for them
Absolutely, Shattered Sword is a great book. One of my favourite parts is where that book explains that Kudo Butai (the Japanese carrier force) could very easily have had 4 more heavy cruisers in it (which were off on their own providing a pointless ‘distant protection’ for the invasion fleet). That would have meant 12 more long range reconnaissance aircraft available to Nagumo, making a much earlier Japanese detection of Enterprise and Hornet very likely. Not to mention a heavier AA defence of the carriers. Even 2 more heavy cruisers and 6 more long range floatplanes could have made a crucial difference. Also the book explains how Nagumo could have had a 5th carrier if he had ordered the undamaged Zuikaku to carry the badly damaged Shokaku’s flight group to Midway (Zuikaku’s own flight group was heavily depleted after the Battle of Coral Sea). Even after their strategic failure at Coral Sea, the Japanese just weren’t taking the American carrier force seriously enough. Victory disease was the cause.
Much of the American "luck" also came from Japanese decisions. Shattered Sword describes their search plan as using seven planes to visually scout an area the size of Sweden. That they didn't spot the US carriers early enough could be called "lucky," (for the USN) but really that's a decision to keep their strikes as large as possible by not using a dozen dive bombers as scouts. Similarly, why was IJN CAP not in place to hit the SBDs? Luck? Or a failure of IJN fighter direction? A considerable portion of the Zeros were dogfighting with Thach's *three* Wildcats and most of the rest were chasing down fleeing Devastators instead of going back to cover the fleet. Those were choices. As was having a single radio channel for all of the Zeroes so they couldn't communicate effectively. At the same time, some of the "luck" idea comes from USN mistakes that made the battle closer. If Hornet had been more experienced and the US had practiced multiple carrier operations more, I don't think Hiryu would've survived long enough to hit Yorktown. Like, US carriers at the skill they'd be by the end of 1943 probably would have won 4-0 and made it look inevitable, to the point that we wouldn't have talked about luck. The story would have been "intelligence allowed Nimitz to carefully place his carriers in the perfect position to ambush the Kido Butai, Nagumo failed to scout adequately and was caught by surprise, of *course* the Japanese were crushed."
You may find this recent article regarding Japanese scouting, and indeed carrier scouting in 1942, interesting. It was quite eye-opening for me. From Anthony Tully and Lu Yu. Yes, the same Anthony Tully that co-authored _Shattered Sword_. digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol68/iss2/6/
Personally I would have used the Kate torpedo bomber as a scout before I would have used the Val dive bomber.using the cruiser float planes was actually standard operating procedures for the Japanese Navy. Something else I don't actually agree with that they did. The other thing that I have seen in different articles and videos I've read over the last 40 or 50 years, that carriers tended to have crews that were better at one thing than they were at another thing. They also didn't take aircrew from one Carrier group to fill in on another carrier group when a carrier was laid up for repairs. Like after the battle of the Coral Sea you had one banged up carrier and one carrier that had its air group shot up.if they had taken pilots from the banged up carrier to fill out the air group on the other carrier the Japanese would have had five carriers at Midway. I think that would have made that a pretty interesting difference. Instead they had four.
By the way I agree with you on the US carriers lack of experience and training when it comes to operating as a fleet. They were nowhere near good enough coordinating all the air groups from the three carriers. Compared to mid to late 1944 45, they were pretty clumsy. The machine that was knocking on Japan's door when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed was quite different from the one that battled them to a standstill at Midway.
@@justinpyke1756 Very interesting, thank you. Having read it, I should have said that if the US air wings had been more coordinated, the *popular conception of Midway* probably would have been that it was an inevitable victory rather than luck. TBF, I lean more towards "everyone's 1942 air searches were inadequate." I don't mean to be like Fuchida and criticize Nagumo for not doing a two-phase search. That was an idea no one had yet. More that "cursory searches are okay even near enemy bases" seems like a risk everyone gotten used to getting away with. Like, Titanic's design and her captain's choice to go full speed at night through an ice field were simultaneously dangerous and also normal practice at the time. It could have happened to another ship just as easily. So I agree blaming Nagumo personally is mostly unfair. I guess that's another aspect of luck.
What was the quote? "When your enemy is making a mistake, let him."? I can't find the source for the quote that said that the difference between a bad general and a great general is that the bad general is wrong 98% of the time and a great general 95% of the time. Same with a horse race. What is two horse lengths as a proportion of the length of the track? a big win.
Ah then there is the reality that the velocity of an attack can force the enemy into a series of mistakes for you to take advantage of. I am a firm believer in speed and firepower in three dimensions. Once you break the enemies decision cycle you end up with the Battle of France. The Germans move faster than the French had trained to think and react. The consequence was mistake after mistake after well you get the drift .
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer There were "bad" decisions made by the French way before the battle. I'm sure that the French had some good, quick thinking officers but the poor communications situation made that null. There were reports of many units getting their orders a full 24 hours late.
Thank you for the great work. If possible I have one question with relation to Japanese post operation assessment. Namely if I remember correctly Nagumo assumption after the battle was that the imperial codes are still safe. It puzzles me a bit how the Japanese explained a presence of 3 US CVs in an area where they expected to meet them no earlier than 3-4 days after. Knowing that one of the them was Yorktown which had been present at Coral Sea - meant that no time was wasted by the Americans (in comparison Combined fleet just had given up on making Zuikaku receive the air replenishment becasue of time constraint) - to send them to this exact spot in the ocean - it can't be explained by coincidence. Is it an example of blinding chauvinism on Japanese side ?
Opinion: the true stroke of luck at Midway was hitting the Japanese carriers at the moment of their maximum vulnerability, so that the hits were immediate irrevocable hull losses rather than short-term functional losses of the flight decks. If that Japanese submarine had not found Yorktown, she might have got home and it would have been a 4:0 shut-out.
Richard Halsey Best - perhaps the individual who changed the course of the war more than any other front line soldier on any side. He may well have been personally responsible for sinking 2 of the 4 carriers at Midway.
Indeed. Best was the American equivalent of Germany’s best dive bomber pilot, Rudel (who sank a Soviet battleship in addition to destroying hundreds of Soviet tanks and other ground targets).
I agree with your assessment of Ozawa at the Battle of the Philippine sea might add that he was not given critical information from the land-based Army air Force because they didn't tell him how decimated their bases were and their aircraft were. If you think about the Battle of the Philippine Sea this was the first attempt by the Japanese to keep their aircraft carriers well out of range of American aircraft by using intermediate bases to refuel from. These bases were totally trashed they were incapable of landing the forces that were projected to be used. The imperial Army air Force had suffered grievous losses and did not tell their naval brethren so the number of planes that were to be involved in the attack were much smaller than planned . None of this was told to him
...the A6M Zero, unfortunately for the Japanese, was totally inadequate at intercepting well-trained SBD dive bomber crews. The Zero was a terror at low altitude at at slow speeds, but its performance dwindled to nearly nothing by 15,000 feet due to its underpowered 940-hp engine and flight controls that became nearly nonfuctional at high speed and/or in the thinner air at altitude (a concept in aviation and physics known as "coffin corner.)" The A6M's deficiencies also made the plane useless in a dive, as the controls would lock up, precisely what USN SBD crews would do when diving from 19-20,000 feet at a 70-degree angle. USMC crews flying Dauntlesses in "glide bombing" attacks were easily chewed up by the Japanese CAP as the green Marines played to the Zero's strengths; USN crews however lost only 3 out of the 24 SBDs that struck Hiryu in the second attack and scored 4 half-ton bomb hits or more despite determined opposition from the combined CAP from 4 Japanese carriers (Hiryu took on many orphaned fighters from Akagi, Kaga and Soryu and threw them against the second strike from Enterprise. To no avail). The USNI blog has a great post about SBD performance at Midway, dating from 2009. blog.usni.org/posts/2009/09/26/flightdeck-friday-smoke-and-the-battle-of-midway The Japanese had no counter to these aircraft when employed properly, as evidenced by the wreckage the Dauntless wrought in the Coral Sea, off Midway, the Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz Islands in just six months in 1942--sinking six carriers and blasting another three (admittedly Shokaku is counted twice, but Dauntlesses nearly sank her both in May and October in the first and last battles). This was profoundly unlucky...for the Japanese. Effectively, the only defense their carriers had against USN dive bombers was not to be detected and attacked. This is testament to the SKILL of USN SBD crews, not luck. From the outset of the war, they were devastating carrier- and cruiser-killing weapons. So why all the luck talk? Because Spruance never killed Miles Browning's career...
@@bingobongo1615 Depends on the unit. In the case of VMSB-241, certainly, but Henderson's Marines were too green to attack in 70-degree dives--their attacks were characterized as 'glide bombing' despite the fact that they REALLY were engaging in low-level horizontal bombing (which had been proven ineffective time and time again during the Fleet Problems and GJEs, necessitating the adoption of dive bombing in the first place). As for VB-3, VB-6 and VS-6 (VB-8 and VS-8 losses did not involve encounters with A6M CAP fighters), the fact that Leslie's entire squadron got away clean after plastering Soryu shows that USN SBDs directed by someone other than Miles Browning's idiocy are both formidable and very survivable. The fact that VB-6 and VS-6 had not been communicated Point Option by that same fool (Miles Browning) and had almost half their fuel wasted circling TF-16 waiting for VT-6 and VF-6 to launch (TF-17 instead launched VT-3 first then VB-3 and VF-3 as the SBDs and F4Fs could and did overhaul and then escort in the torpedo bombers) had a very deleterious impact that wasn't repeated in the strike against Hiryu. The afternoon attack off USS Enterprise was the most revealing strike of the day. 24 unescorted SBDs burned Hiryu to the keel with 4 1000-lb bomb hits despite being met in force by the Kido Butai's remaining CAP A6Ms (Hiryu had recovered many, if not most A6Ms that had been aloft at 10:25 and threw this composite force at Enterprise's strike). Perhaps it was mainly because 14 of the SBDs came from the grisled veterans of VB-3, but nevertheless the A6Ms and Hiryu plus her escorts' AAA took down only THREE SBDs that afternoon. As no TBDs were attacking at the time, this signals an unmitigated failure of the Japanese CAP. Considering SBDs broke through and blasted Shoho and Shokaku in the Coral Sea, Ryujo in the Eastern Solomons, and Shokaku (again) plus Zuiho in the Santa Cruz Islands, this performance against Japanese carriers was normal and repeatable throughout 1942. Midway wasn't a fluke--even Best's "miracle" of pulling off of Kaga and blasting Akagi instead was repeated--first when Best blasted Hiryu in the afternoon. But Zuiho in October showed how effective and superior American scout doctrine was. Two SBDs sight Shokaku, Zuikaku, Jun'yo and Zuiho, report the sighting, and then plant two 500-lb bombs through Zuiho's flight deck. This was the scout-bombing doctrine that had been perfected by USN dive bomber crews by the time the movie Hell Divers came out in January 1932, the month before Admiral Yarnell's raid on Pearl Harbor, and nevertheless ten years later the IJN had no counter to USN dive bombers (assuming they came in at 70-degree dives). Over the course of four years if war, the Japanese NEVER developed an effective counter to dive bombing, despite the Allies quite quickly learning how to slaughter Stuka formations. This was on display with every successive attack by US Navy dive bombers, whose aircraft (two Curtiss BFC-1 Hawks) Ernst Udet purchased in 1933 to start the Luftwaffe dive bombing program. Hopefully someday the fact that Midway wasn't miraculous or beset by poorly-trained pilots (other than VMSB-241 greenhorns and Chevy Chase's incredibly stupid grandfather, Miles Browning). Midway was a massive, elaborate trap that Nimitz sprung on Yamamoto, and because of superior USN dive bomber doctrine and training it was only a matter of time before the Kido Butai was going to be set alight.
Actually if you analyze Japanese bombing accuracy and target recognition at Pearl Harbor (ie, the lack of it), their incompetency was not uncharacteristic at all.
Oh Justin , I was expecting more from you! Number 4 plane from Tone, Yorktown's strike force, Yorktown's crew , you left important and relevant details aside.
Hello, This wasn't a detailed video about Midway, as I note in the video. It was a quick case-study on luck in war. Don't confuse my not spending two hours talking about every single detail for me not knowing. I could have added tons more if I had wanted to. Tone #4 doesn't indicate what you think it does. That is dated historiography, set up by Fuchida in particular, to make it seem like much of the loss was due to Japanese misfortune. It was in fact "lucky" that Tone #4 launched late and the crew elected to cut the corner on their search leg. If they had launched on time and flown the route as they were supposed to it would have been worse for the Japanese. It was a Chikuma scout that in theory should have sighted the Americans earlier, but didn't for whatever reason. The Americans were probably obscured by cloud at the time. Regards, Justin
@@justinpyke1756 I am aware that you know much about this subject and I know that you have a good way of analyzing information. I have seen your work before and I am a fan. And ,yes, this is a short video . But if you want to discuss luck at Midway it is my opinion that no. 4 plane's late departure is one to address because it influenced a lot in that battle. Another thing discussed is skill and I wanted mentioned not the intelligence part ( it is well known and documented) but the Yorktown's strike force. They are rarely mentioned and they were the only ones that remembered what the plan was after takeoff. Do not take my comment as a critique , I am not qualified nor willing to point to "wrongs" in your work. I am just expressing my frustration that an opportunity to clarify aspects of this battle (for me as well as others) was missed.
Shattered Sword was a brilliant book, and not merely because it disposes of the myth that Midway was due to luck. It goes far beyond that, beyond even pointing out the good and bad decisions made by the participants. It shows how deeper factors - such as doctrine, carrier design, and even culture - had major impacts on the outcome of the battle.
Anticipated the Japanese movements. Caught Japan by surprise. Heroic effort to repair Yorktown. Skill in decoding and interpreting Japanese communications.
Great video, and analysis. Raymond Spruance was mindful of his responsibility to The invasion force and to protect it. To be criticized for that is the worst kind of armchair quarterbacking. I don't fault him in the least. At the Battle of Samara the only thing I fault Halsey for is not leaving the fast battleships to guard San Bernardino straight. His all-out assault on ozawa's decoy Force was not only called for but was the right decision. He had no way of knowing the material state of the aircraft and the pilots on those carriers let alone the quantity of those planes. They were a very big threat on his flank. With the number of airfieldsin the Philippines he had no way of knowing if the Japanese would attempt to shuttle bombing again against his forces. I will also admit the idea of admiral Willis Lee going head to head with Kurita has more than a little appeal to me. willis Lee was probably our best battleship admiral. He not only understood radar but he understood the advantages it gave him and how to use it. He was gunnery expert. Jesse Oldendorf is my #2 guy.
I agree, I don't buy into the criticism of Spruance at all. It really started with Mitscher getting mad about a "black shoe" yanking on his leash, but Spruance had a clear idea of what his job was, and it wasn't charging after what was left of Ozawa's force.
Makes me think of Edward IV of England, who's often described as not a brilliant leader, just lucky. It turns out that his "luck" was having a battle plan that worked reliably, lieutenants he could trust, and consistently out-marching his opponents and forcing battle before they were ready. He knew his strengths and stuck to them. That's what it took at the time.
"Battles are decided when timing and momentum and courage all come together and, at just the right moment, someone fails to make a critical mistake and doesn't manage to miss a vital opportunity." Sethra Lavode.
If the American attack had been perfectly coordinated (no flight to nowhere, missing fighters, etc.) the attack might have been even more decisive. (All 4 carriers at one time. Yorktown escapes.) So what we are counting as luck is clumsy coordination being offset by things turning out fairly well.
It reminds me of the old American adage of "if you are being chased by a bear you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friend." In other words, you don't have to be fastest just faster than the next guy.
The biggest weakness Japan had was air defense the zero did not have the ammunition load required to fight off a major attack and the Japanese 25 mm anti-aircraft gun was considered one of the worst in the war. Japanese air defense was worn down if everyone had attacked at the same time it would have been overwhelmed
War pretty much always involves a little bit of luck. It evens out overall usually, and it typically takes a bit of initiative and work to capitalize on lucky situations.
Actually they launched not knowing that, but rather to get their first, as it was not long before the Japanese would discover the American s and attack.
I like to think of the timing of the decisive strike as the "Wouk" moment (after the quote in "The Winds of War" that the decisive strike was perfectly coordinated, and that was down to luck). But as said, "prepared" luck. The successive commanders were "lucky". McClusky was following Arashi because the Captain of Nautilus was pushing in incredibly aggressively with an utterly unsuitable sub with crappy torpedoes. A little more initiative on the part of Hornet's dive bombers and things could have been even MORE decisive and Michener doesn't have to cover up for the flight to nowhere (I always wondered, how much Wouk knew about how his writing rival's daddy had nearly screwed the pooch at that battle). Or the B26 impacts Akagi, and now the Japanese are likely down a flight deck for some hours AND showing a "flaming datum" (big column of smoke). When fortune meets preparedness, you get "lucky" some people aren't "prepared (Ring, Tambor) some just aren't lucky (that B26, Nautilus).
The best line about coincidence,etc.was in the James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever-Shady Tree says to Bond "First time happenstance, second time coincidence, third time enemy action. Be prepared! There are no substitutes!
Thank you for this great video! I would love to learn and hear more about the surprising ability to adapt of the American military in WW2, as we Germans learned the hard way as for example the Panzerwaffe was countered by the Firefly or how better trained fire crews made a difference in the battle of Midway. Last but not least, what would be a good book if I want to learn more about the intrinsic details about Miday (e.g. the example with Nimitz mentioned this episode)?
Did the US get lucky at Midway? Yes. Holy cow, they were incredibly lucky. Did the US only win due to getting lucky? No, not at all. I am an avid wargamer, and after play many battles out for many eras, playing different nations and wars, in different branches, and we have seen that what actually happens in that battle is in many ways the least important thing. The details of the battle will change, which unit killed what, when a unit gets knocked out, and sometimes even where the focus of the fight happens can change if there are multiple options for key terrain, but the end results rarely do. They key factors don't change no matter how you replay the scenario, the forces available, objectives for the sides, terrain, doctrine, and starting knowledge of the enemy are always going to be the same. These "solve" so many variables that the big final answer, which side wins, is almost pre-determined in all but the closest fights. The magnitude of victory may change, sometimes substantially, but rarely the victor. For example, we played out the "Bridge Too Far" scenario last year for the anniversary of Market Garden. When and where the British armored column was first encountered by the German armored scout units was different from history, and at first that seems like a very important possible change because that determines when the German side can start mobilizing the rest of their forces. But with the additional harrying attacks by the recon element to slow the British advance down, followed by spoiling attacks from the first mobilizations, it's always an early enough warning and slow enough advance that the Germans will be able to get the necessary forces at the bridge before the British arrive. The details change, when and where the fights take place and exactly what losses are incurred by each side, but the big picture result of the bridge being just a bit to far stays the same. The Battle of Midway is such an interesting case because it gets large swings in result almost every time, and actually very rarely gets near the dramatic historical result. Luck was definitely a factor. The USN wins pretty much every time still, proving luck isn't the reason they won. The advantage they have from Intelligence is huge, letting them get forces to the area ahead of time. They not only have carriers in the area almost a week before the Japanese expected, but they also have an extra one. The US has surprise and the Japanese plan has been ruined before they even know it. Doctrine also plays a big role in the victory. The USN has learned immediate lessons from Coral Sea, particularly in Damage Control, and encourages personal initiative, which enables Best to make his attack. The poor Japanese doctrine hurt them badly. The lack of fighter control let the Dauntless attacks be more effective and the bad Damage Control doctrine cost them big, I have doubts Hiryu and Akagi would have sunk without further hostile action if they had been USN ships. Plus the Japanese aren't in a great tactical situation from the beginning due to having to contend with attacks coming from 3 separate sources. Not only does that make it harder to predict where the next attack is coming from, and the attacks are likely to be spread out which will interrupt their flight operations more often (probably the biggest contribution from the Midway forces), they also have to debate where to send their attacks leading to Nagumo's infamous dilemma.
"You can't count on luck, but luck counts." Which is why, in anything, you have to train and prepare so the stuff you can't control will, hopefully, not be determinative of the outcome.
There was a critical over arching problem, which was systematic that the Japanese did not focus more on a continuous training program through out the war. They had a fatalistic attitude towards trying to win one great battle like they did with Russia in the sino Russian war. They started the war knowing they probably wouldn’t win it. Forget luck good or bad, that was just STUPID!!!!!!
Correct. However this didnt have an impact at midway yet. They were not yet out of trained pilots, and the idea of engaging the IS carriers in a setpiece battle was sound. They lacked the ability to defeat them in detail, and had roughly equal odds in a meeting engagement. Their mistake was thinking there were one fewer flattops.
haven't read anything on McClusky but I heard he was originally a fighter pilot so I figure his instinctive reaction was to attack the first target he could. Don't know his personality but I figured the movie Midway made him too conservative in his approach prior to the battle so they could have that drama with Best, when I think a Fighter pilot would overall be more aggressive.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, US carrier pilots were trained to fly all 3 aircraft types - fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers. Most US carrier pilots in 1942 were therefore ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’.
A pinch of luck always helps. In reality at that point in time, the US Navy really wasn't experienced in coordinating aircraft for multiple carriers. The Navy anticipated in pre-war doctrine that carriers would operate singly. The sacrifice of the torpedo bombers played into the results as well. Ray Spruance was trying to catch the carriers with the aircraft on the deck refueling. Which of course he did.
COMPLETE LUCK! Midway was an AMBUSH, the USN knew the IJN was coming and had prepared to meet them, they had ALL the advantages and STILL they came close to disaster. 1. Yamamoto received intelligence indicating the USN was aware of the Midway operation and would have its carriers THERE... BUT, he assumed Nagumo had received the same transmission and refused to retransmit the report as suggested by his staff. Midway could have well ended with Nagumo undertaking a counter-ambush aimed at the obvious position where the USN carriers would be, NE of Midway. 2. Had Nagumo held to his instructions and kept half his planes as reserve against the USN, the IJN would have been able to launch their own strike, and seeing the performance of their pilots in their almost suicidally small counterattacks, the USN carriers would have been lucky to survive. 3. The USN panicked and launched its strikes haphazardly, uncoordinated, instead of as a single coherent attack, many planes never engaged the enemy, others ran out of fuel, mst attacked due to a chance encounter with a DD... 4. The IJN carriers were hit in the worst possible moment, which doomed them, without that...
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized No, but the USN preparations for the ambush were discovered and here is where luck saves the USN, Nagumo's staff WARNED Yamamoto that Akagi was not setup to receive long range communications, its radios were too old and limited, so Yamamoto would have to forward any land transmissions to Nagumo in order to prevent them from steaming into battle in the dark... and Yamamoto didnt, he chose to believe Nagumo would get the message somehow or his order to keep half the bombers armed with torpedoes would be enough to get him out of any predicament. He LITERALLY, let Nagumo go in without a full strategic and tactical picture in order to preserve the operational security of an already-blown operation... People bitch about Nagumo, when is Yamamoto who set him up tp fail. All they had to do was to put a decent radio set in Akagi (or Kaga, which had been in dock repairing underwater damage for weeks, hell they could have even put radar on her instead of on Ise) or forward the information, the result would be a fully aware Nagumo avoiding Midway and actively looking for the USN carriers instead, a counter-ambush in which a USN that historically HORRIBLY botched its carrier strikes would have to face a full two-wave and coordinated strike by the IJN carriers... ...in that context, I would have bet on the IJN. From Inquest, pp 268: "What, then, were the real avoidable blunders that cost the Japanese the battle? There were two that were especially serious: Yamamoto’s communications failure, and Nagumo’s decision to rearm the torpedo planes. We saw that Yamamoto failed to ensure that Nagumo had the bene¤t of radio intelligence that Yamamoto received during the sortie from Japan, indicating that the Americans had discovered Yamamoto’s Midway operation and, even more critically, indicating that American carriers might actually be at Midway when Nagumo got there. Yamamoto had declined advice from his staff to forward crucial intelligence to Nagumo, preferring to maintain radio silence under the assumption that Nagumo’s ¶agship Akagi had also received the radio transmissions. This turned out to be a fatal assumption; Akagi’s radio equipment was inadequate to receive long-distance radio signals, and no alternative arrangements had been made. However, unlike the delay in forwarding initial sighting reports from search planes, this problem of poor radio equipment on Akagi had been foreseen. We saw that before the departure from Japan, Nagumo’s chief of staff, Kusaka, had warned Yamamoto’s staff that Akagi might not receive long-wave radio signals, and had urged Yamamoto to relay to Akagi from his ¶agship Yamato any important radio intelligence he received. Yamamoto ignored this plea in the interests of radio silence. This was a clear blunder and the one most responsible for the disaster that befell Nagumo’s Mobile Force at Midway. It left Nagumo assuming, on the morning of June 4, that there would be no American carriers at Midway- and that he was therefore free to give his full attention to neutralizing Midway in preparation for the amphibious invasion scheduled for June 6."
not surprising, if you're reenacting a famous battle, it removes the element of surprise that happened. The Japanese team knows that they shouldn't try to launch their surprise attack where they think the American fleet is, because they know they'll be attacked. Japanese commanders did not know that their code was broken and that it was a trap.
@@Duke_of_Lorraine there isn’t a script. Just the objective is the same. Everything else is open. Timing of, and type of strikes are up to the participants.
@@SeanRCope so anyone who knows the bare minimum about the battle of Midway has a keystone piece of information that the Japanese commanders didn't have : it's actually an american trap. With such hindsight the balance of power is severely changed. Defending France in 1940 is a piece of cake for example (that's why France is nerfed to oblivion in HOI4 to make up for that...)
@@Duke_of_Lorraine they don’t use computers at the war college wargames. No buffs no nerfs just real world capabilities. We only knew the objective. Lots of wiggle room for both sides
@@Duke_of_Lorraine That is auch an interesting point. For sure the German advance through the Ardennes would have been delayed and maybe even blocked but people often overlook that the German (planned as diversionary) attack through the Netherlands Belgium was surprisingly super effective and threw the best French and British divisions in total disarray so who knows how the Battle would have went. The French and British air forces were weak (and the French one not really combat ready) in France, troops were inexperienced (Germany had Spain and Poland), tactics and doctrine inferior and both armies did not really want to fight while the Wehrmacht was very much keen on the war. Allied tanks were individually superior but lacked good communication and abilities for good combined arms warfare. Would have all come down to how quickly France could have turned around their spirit, tactics and organization.
A good example of what they point out is the unsuccessful bombing of the Japanese carriers earlier in the morning by the Midway Naval Station based Marine Corp bombers using glide bombing techniques rather than dive bombing. I’ve read that the marine airmen supposedly selected this method due to their relative inexperience in dive bombing, as opposed to being just “unlucky” or poor marksmanship in striking their intended targets; Glide bombing being generally easier to maneuver and defend against than proper dive bombing.
In terms of intelligence, logistics (the Yorktown got patched up and put out to see in 48-72 hours), and maybe even planning, can't really say it was luck. With the lead up to the battle, possibly the Japanese submarine picket missing the US formations could possibly represent luck in some way, or represent disorganization/poor preparation on the part of the Japanese. The Americans were in a good position, on the defensive. So up to the point of actual contact of forces would not say luck was much of a factor.
It's a shame they didn't have a chance to do a proper repair job on Yorktown. She may not have been lost. As it was at the Battle of Midway she was not capable of her normal flank speed.
@@AEB1066 how much of that was processed and how much of that was cultural? The Drachinifel channel has a very interesting comparison between American and Japanese damage control and the possible contributing factor of the cultural difference between the two countries at the time. When I say cultural I'm talking about the difference is in what American young men had experienced prior to their entry into the service with mechanical equipment versus your typical Japanese young man . America was highly recognized compared to Japan in all strata of life. The same can't be said for Japan. This is not racism, I'm half asian, but there is a significant difference in the industrialization and the amount of experience the average citizen had when they entered military service. It was a great discussion about damage control. I've been reading books about World War II since about 1970. No one had ever really discussed it in the way that this channel did. For instance when the Taiho was sunk, I understood that her aviation fuel tanks were ruptured, I knew that the explosion was a result of gasoline fumes permeating the hull, I knew that the tanks were encased in concrete, I knew that someone turned on all the blowers on the ship and a spark cause an explosion . But I never thought of it in terms of crewman not being trained on a particular piece of equipment and not really understanding anything at all about it. I mean to the point that they were unwilling to touch it and the discipline in the ijn was such that touching it could get you a beating. I strongly recommend that channel to you if you don't already watch it and in particular that particular video. I don't know if you will find it as eye-opening as I did but it really struck home to me the cultural differences between Japan and America just from industrialization. I'm not talking about religion or anything else just industrial and experience.
To understand Midway you have to understand the four carrier battles of 1942: Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. Each engagement was a kind of "mad man's night out." Each engagement was connected with the movement of troops in a planned land campaign. In each case the US had better info than the Japanese - but never was the data clear in the way a satellite ID would be. This put a lot of emphasis on who spotted who and when. Add into the soup, who spotted the wrong thing when. The crucial identification phase of each battle - all confused - was followed by a wave of strikes. In 1942 Japanese attack planes were better trained and carried much better torpedoes. US SBDs and Vals were a wash. Fighter pilots in both forces (especially at Coral Sea and Midway) were veteran. US had better flak and damage control. When you rolled the dice it was very likely that a full sized carrier would damage or sink an enemy carrier. So, at the Coral Sea, the US bags one IJN small CV and damages two others. The IJN sinks one CV and damages one. The Guadalcanal campaign battles were similar. At Midway, the US sunk four IJN CVs - the IJN sunk one US CV. But remember, there were three USN CVs in the battle - so sinking 4 IJN CVs was not so much predictable as possible - certainly no fluke. Had a couple of things gone the other way, the IJN could have got off major strikes from all of their ships. (Only Hiryu launched a strike at US CVs and did it with a savage intensity.) That would have been bad news for the USN. However, had the US planes been in the air (both sides having strikes in the air was common enough) the IJN may still have suffered. Or had the Yorktown not been hit by that the spare I-Boat, the USN could have gotten out of Midway with a 4-0 score. So yes, the dice came out in favor of the USN, but not in an extraordinary way. Might add that the I-Boats kept coming and rolled Dice in favor of the IJN. I-boats torpedoed Saratoga in January 42 and then again in the fall - keeping Sara out of three of the battles. And I-19 sunk Wasp and damaged North Carolina in one strike in the fall. During Santa Cruz Enterprise had South Dakota providing deadly flak support: North Carolina was supposed to be with Hornet but was instead back at Pearl because of the torpedo. So after the Battle of Santa Cruz - with Enterprise damaged - the USN was almost without CVs, although Sara was soon back. The IJN had more CVs but their air groups were shattered. This explains why there was so much surface action and no CV intervention during the ugly fighting from November 1942 - November 1943 in the Solomons. When Sara and Princeton raided Rabaul in November - shattering the IJN cruiser force there it meant that the US CVs were back. Essex and Bunker Hill raided a few days later - that meant that the new US CVs were also in the war. Japan lost the war when the Reds defeated the Wehrmacht in 1941. But they lost their ability to resist seriously the USN onslaught at the end of 1943. The naval war in 1944-45 was a kind of mugging. No wonder Japan needed suicide attacks - and they failed.
Much ink has been spilled about how US carriers were unable to operate with the cohesion of the Kido Butai until 1944, ignoring that the USN pioneered combined carrier operations with a mock attack against Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7 February 1932 at 8 a.m. from the carriers Lexington and Saratoga. Not only did Harry Yarnell's raid provide the playbook for the later IJN raid, Lexington's captain at the time, Ernest J. King, led similarly successful war game raids against Mare Island and Pearl Harbor again in 1938. So why did Miles Browning screw up so badly four years later? The Peter Principle. Browning rose too high in the ranks before his incompetence became apparent. Halsey had led TF-16 with two fleet carriers in attendance for months prior to being put on the beach by Nimitz, yet Browning clearly never tried to coordinate operations between the sisters Enterprise and Hornet. As the SBD was a scout plane as well as a dive bomber, they were always launched first because of their longer legs, followed by torpedo planes and fighters. Enterprise and Hornet each had two dive bomber squadrons, a fighter squadron, and a torpedo squadron. If Browning had followed doctrine as set since Lexington and Saratoga had entered the fleet in 1927 and proven effective on 7 February 1932, e would have launched a coordinated attack of a SBD squadron from both carriers, followed by a torpedo squadron from one carrier and a fighter escort from the other. Then, respot and do the same with the remaining squadrons and launch a second strike. Parshall details in Shattered Sword how carrier decks were spotted in 1942, but it never occurs to him that TF-16 wasn't following USN doctrine that had been set for ten years. Neither did Browning, of course. The lack of coordination left Mitscher guessing he was supposed to find CarDiv 2, as intelligence indicated Akagi and Kaga were operating separately from Hiryu and Soryu, leading to the Flight To Nowhere. That was a decision only Browning or Spruance really should have made, but BROWNING NEVER COMMUNICATED WITH HORNET. The effect put Enterprise's planes equally out of position, until Best and McClusky stumbled on Arashi and "followed" her to the carriers (in reality the SBD cruised almost three times as fast as the Japanese destroyer could go at flank, so the SBDs really used Arashi's heading and flew a parallel course to the Kido Butai). Yet Torpedo 6 and Torpedo 8 found Nagumo with no problems. Had they launched and flew according to prewar doctrine, Torpedo 8's Waldron would have had Gray's Fighting 6 F4Fs glued to his tail while Best and Rodee's VB-6 and VS-8 SBDs flew stacked at 14,000 and 19,000 feet. Considering VB-6 killed Kaga and Best himself took out Akagi, the results likely would have been spectacular. As Parshall makes clear, the continued attacks would never have allowed the Kido Butai to get off a counterstrike until over an hour after Waldron attacked, as Torpedo 6 followed on soon after...only if they followed doctrine, McClusky with VS-6 and VB-8 would have arrived with the Devastators. Lights out, probably...though Leslie's VB-3 would also arrive by 1025, to administer the coup de grace. Luck was on the side of the Americans, as Japanese AA fire and A6Ms were largely ineffective against USN 70-degree dive bombing attacks, but the American airmen were also fighting the incompetence of their air group coordination officer. The fact that Enterprise's and Yorktown's SBD crews without fail found and killed the Kido Butai every time they took off is a testament to their skill, not their luck.
The Japanese never had a way to win badly enough to crush America. We spent a few months with one one carrier in the Pacific. Even after midway Japan still has a larger fleet.
I dont know in this is interesting for you, but I recommend the videos from Montemayor, he put a lot of work in it and did a real good job, very entertaining
I think jingles quote is perfect here "skilled people make their own luck" meaning that people who are good set themselves up so that they can be "lucky"
I 'm guessing these histories again fail to make use of recent translations of Admiral Ugaki's diaries. There were some quirky chance events that slowed Japanese deployment of a sub picket line to block US advance. I can't remember if they might have had a shot at beating that incredible fast patch up of a US carrier which could then limp towards Midway, but it was something like having to substitute very slow subs for fast ones.
I'd say it was fortunate the American Carriers were not in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese Air Raid. Where the Japanese achieved total surprise given the training, intelligence gathering, and planning. The American Navy was just as prepared for the Battle of Midway. The difference being the enemy was on full alert. Looking to lure the US carriers into a trap. So to put it all to luck on the American Navy's part is a bit short sighted of the big picture.
I just have a philosophical question to ask, what does it mean to say if something is “up to luck”? To propose a simplified question, let’s say you have a dive bomber wing with 10 pilots of progressively higher skill level, such that the first one has 10% chance of hitting a carrier, and the last has 100% chance of hitting the same carrier in the same situation, they go out on a strike and they all hit the same carrier at the same time, which one of these hits were “luck” and which ones weren’t?
No-one has a 100% chance of hitting the target, no matter how skilled they are. As shown by many experienced, highly skilled Japanese torpedo and dive bomber pilots missing stationary ships in the Pearl Harbor attack.
For one thing, too many "historians" borrow from each other when they seek to write another book about the historic battle to profit from sensationalizing on an aspect not previously focused on. What they all seem to avoid is the historic work "War Plan Orange" which documents our actual plan (called by the code-name "Rainbow" by FDR), preparing the U.S. for an eventual war with Japan over 40 years before we actually got into one. Also they tend to not fully acknowledge the U.S.'s superior ship-building industry with better safety and fire-control design then the Japanese, which explains the Yorktown's seemingly miraculous recovery. Also, as it turned out later, the Battle of Midway was not as much of a "turning point" as they seem to want to make it. In actuality, it was a major set-back, or a "blunting the Japanese sword" early in the war. For instance, later on, because of loss and damage to ours at the time brought us down to only one fleet carrier, the USS Saratoga, the U.S. literally had to "borrow" the Royal Navy carrier HMS Victorious to keep up the effort in the Pacific to keep the Japanese "hemmed in" for the final blows to come later. What it mainly did was give the U.S./FDR administration an excuse to focus on beating the Germans first, at the sacrifice of our many U.S. Marines who were forced to hold out until we got Churchill's permission to finally address the ACTUAL threat to the United States presence in the Pacific, including eventually, our base in Hawaii.
Had one or two of the large Japanese carriers survived, the subsequent Guadalcanal campaign would have been quite different perhaps and may not even have occurred - and it may have affected the subsequent planning in Europe.
Guadalcanal would have been a much tougher job if it had been launched 6 months later, that’s for sure, as the Japanese air base and shore batteries would have been fully operational by then.
@@timonsolus Both sides were also learning and fortunately for the US they seemed to realize early on that holding the field was crucial. I've been re-reading the different histories of the campaign (especially Richard Frank's account and Samuel Eliot Morrison) and one aspect that isn't mentioned much is that the US marines were very concerned of a literally counter landing right at Lunga point - that is coming ashore just north or northwest of Henderson field. The IJ army never really considered that and by the time they tried to get more serious it was too late. Another insight was from the book "The Japanese Navy in WW2" edited by David Evans - IJN admiral Tanaka recounted his efforts to explain to the IJ Army the limitations of transports, barges and so forth and it took high level wrangling to sort out a simple transport run. As much as there were issues between Fletcher, Turner and Vandegrift, they seem to grasp the other knew their business.
The Japanese had many more ships to bring to the battle than the U.S. but the actual airpower they had at the point of contact north of Midway was more or less equal to that of the Americans. Their four carrier air wings had just slightly more airplanes than did the three U.S. ones, and that's not counting the airplanes based at Midway, whose contribution to the battle was far more significant than they are usually given credit for. The far superior surface fleet of the Japanese had no chance to engage the Americans unless the air control could be established first. It should also not be forgotten that the Americans launched five dive bomber groups against the Japanese on the morning of June 4, 1942, two from ENTERPRISE, two from HORNET, and one from YORKTOWN. The two from HORNET were wasted by being sent off in a totally wrong direction and an additional dive bomber group from YORKTOWN was held back at the last minute. The victory was a lopsided decisive one for the United States, but it could have been an even greater one, destroying the carriers of Kido Butai and perhaps additional ships without having to give up YORKTOWN in exchange. The battle could have been completely over before noon on that June 4.
Luck is usually an effect of when you start looking at a situation. If the Japanese search planes spot the American carriers before the strike on the island, then the battle goes completely differently. However, starting from the point where the Americans find the Japanese fleet first, then no, there is a limited amount of luck involved. It's like a tornado hitting your house but you surviving, Were you lucky to survive, or were you unlucky that the tornado hit your house?
Good luck - something unexpected happens in your favor, so it 's good fortune. Bad luck - something unexpected happens not in your favor, so it's bad fortune. The problem is the behind the scene's decisions and actions on both sides that bring about the precipitation of outcome on either side - good or bad. Coincidence is real and is not luck. It is how we perceive coincidence and their attached outcomes that lead to false premises hence wrong conclusions.
The japanese' fatal blunder or mistake was not invading Midway Islands and Wake Island, like Guam, directly after or during pearl harbor on the way back for example, these islands were vulnerable and weak defended at this time. Without these footholds the americans would have been very less able to operate in the pacific anymore except from australia. Maybe they also could have landed on hawaii. They also did not destroy the fuel-depots at pearl harbour from wich the US-fleet could be supplied afterwards, neither did they launch more attack waves to do so. But aside from that they did not recon the battlearea densely enough. It was not luck it was japanese failure. Being aware this is a decisive battle and leaving the carrier fleet without permanent fighter cover in rotating shifts is such a desastrous blunder. Except from the surprise Blitzkrieg at start, the japanese failed in everything and made senseless sacrifices.
My one disagreement here is that I think you can argue that there were 2 instances of luck/coincidence at Midway, the other bring McClusky finding the Arashi at all. Given neither McClusky's planes nor the Arashi should have been where they were, it was somewhat lucky that the situation presented itself for McClusky to eventually find the Japanese fleet. Other than that, 100% agreed.
The Japanese destroyer that pointed McClusky to the Japanese carriers had been chasing a US submarine that was only positioned there due to the code-breaking genius of the Americans. So skill-luck-skill, with copious quantities of guts, destroyed the Japanese.
9:46 Well there were more coincidences. (Not to say skills and preparations weren't involved.) For example, the Japanese AA defense was always going to be CAP and that only. The CAP planes were drawn to the wrong altitude from an earlier attack. That in itself was not luck at all. But the timing was. Overall, USN was not destined to win Midway. Although "miracle" would be stretching the meaning of the word -- at least from today's usage. Luck was involved in the winning. Luck was heavily involved in the decisiveness of the win.
Luck plays a huge role in war, especially for the commander who can take advantage of luck, which Spruance did. Both here and at the Philippine Sea, Spruance made decisions that turned out to be right even though he couldn't have known that (he doubted himself at Philippine Sea). In "On War" Clausewitz sees this as a commander's intuition that some how is able to see through the fog of war. But as for that critical moment at Midway, yes, that's luck. The torpedo bomber squadrons have to go in in series, pulling the fighter cover down, there has to be the destroyer for one squadron to follow and arrive at the same time as the Yorktown planes. AND the IJN search has to be thrown off by mechanical problems and poor reporting. All of those unplanned pieces have to fall together or it just doesn't work. Philippine Sea was a combination of USN training and equipment (proximity fusees also played a role) together with the IJN lack of training and their decision to sacrifice aircraft survivability to range. IJN doctrine lost that battle, but Midway was luck, even though you still have to execute to make the luck pay off. If all the dive bomber squadrons had been like the ones from the Hornet even luck wouldn't have been enough.
One of the biases, I have noticed frequently happens in military history is they see their enemy as more capable than they are and because they know so much, they see what their enemy could have done so they attribute their good fortune to luck.
Thanks for the topic. So... is surprise and opportunity luck ? As a point of interest.. every soldier I've known has said they preferred luck to skill any day. I think the skill and courage of the early U.S. Naval Aviators has been largly underestimated. To my limited knowledge of the events.. I think the poor performance of U.S. torpedoes is the most inexcusable issue. On the Japanese side...I don't see why they didn't suspect their codes and signals... and do something about that. I realize that maybe they did but just couldn't fix it.
Nagumo gives this battle to the Americas due to his indecision over the events that occurred at coral sea where Japan lost carriers while following their tactical doctrine , thus Nagumo indecison rose purely from coral sea events as even with the americans knowing the attack was coming doesn't mean they won based only knowing this alone as the japan still held the advantage in number of carriers in this battle , the entire battle is decided by Nagumo not taking information in from his scouts as they reported a large group of u.s. ships where they had predicted the carriers would be ,thus Nagumo doesnt attack eminently when they are spotted due to the events at coral sea , if Nagumo follow the japannese tactical doctrine instead of questioning whenever or not the group of u.s. ship were the carrier group (the only u.s. vessels in the area were the carrier group so any grouping of ships sighted was about 100% to have the carriers with it . Nagumo knew this ) mid way would be an entirely different battle , Americans didnt win midway. Nagumo lost midway due to the events of coral sea battle causing him to question the Japan tactical doctrine and not attacking when they held the advantage as sighting the enemy before they sight you in carrier warfare is key , it means you can launch a full attack before they can send up planes to defend. Nagumo didnt do this. He gave up the advantage by not acting on the information he was receiving . Granted the american played off Nagumo mistakes perfectly but Nagumo didnt hesitate for 20 mins and order an attack onbthe reported group of u.s. vessel. The pacfic would be an entirely different threater of battle as it's only after midway that the u.s. held the advantage in carriers thus allowing advancement toward japan as no real push toward mainland Japan could begin until japan carriers were taken out to the point the remaining carriers were defense weapons due to not wanting to risk losing them in an pitched battle/offense attack ...
You know it's kind of funny the only time I've actually heard someone say that, they were extremely good at their jobs. A field engineer for Burroughs Unisys, a good friend of mine from 1981 to present used to say that all the time . He was one of those guys you could trust your professional career with. I was fortunate we had four on-site engineers assigned to our shop. We were one of their biggest corporate customers. The four guys we had were just great. Each of the four had special areas where they were really really good. Overall though you could depend on all four of them to get you out of hot water when you had an equipment failure.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer The thing is - the guys who are really good - also really understand the value of random chance working in their favor. They have seen Murphy show up and totally fuck their best efforts. Losers complain about bad luck - winners expect it. .
Correct: McCluskey following the Japanese destroyer was not luck. But it was good luck that the Nautilus had dragged the destroyer off on a wild goose chase at the right moment. It was good luck that the dive bombers arrived when they did, instead of 5, 10, or 15 minutes later. It was good and bad luck that so many squadrons went off in different directions; some missed the battle entirely, others found the target. There was also a lot of ineptitude, such as taking way too long to launch and lousy coordination. The Americans balanced good and bad luck, so it was probably not a factor in the outcome, only the manner of winning. The Japanese had no luck, good or bad, other than the Tone's search plane laucnhing late; I have seen it argued that a correct launch would have missed the sighting altogether, but then the Japanese would not have been caught with hangars full of bombs and torpedoes from the massed botched switchover. Their failures were doctrinal (Nagumo got command strictly from seniority; contrast this with Fletcher, who had seniority but gave command to Spruance operational (Yamamoto's typical cock-eyed plan), material (their planes had no radios, could not warm up in the hangar bay, had complicated bomb/torpedo fittings which slowed down switching), and their ships had crappy damage control design. And of course "victory disease".
Anyone denying that the US had incredible luck should look at other air craft carrier battles of WW2. Aircraft carriers were absolute glass cannons and whoever landed a blow first, pretty much win (and yes I know about excellent American damage control but that meant ships survived not that they could still participate in battle). If the Japanese spotted the Americans First, if the Japanese had used a different order to launch their fighters, if the Americans had struck 30min earlier or 30min later and if some of the bombs didn’t hit the Japanese as well as they did, the battle would have been quite different. This is not to take away from the good preparations, the skill and the determination of the Americans but the stars pretty much aligned the moment the US bombers approached. I believe the US still had a bigger chance to win midway thanks to their preparations of the trap but it still went extremely well (much better than pear harbor which was even better prepared and against almost stationary enemies) The Japanese biggest mistake was for sure to attack the Aleutians as well instead of concentrating.
I can see a bit of both; luck was the Japanese having problems with their scouting plane taking off late, and having issues with it's radio, so that it couldn't properly report sighting the American fleet.
Midway is a case-study in LACK of luck more than anything else. Japanese AA fire, for example, took down a total of one SBD dive bomber according to Parshall in Shattered Sword--a 5-inch (127 mm) direct hit from Kaga's guns. Parshall details how deficient IJN anti-aircraft fire was in relation to USN AA superiority from Pearl Harbor onwards. The Japanese 25mm AA gun was especially terrible at its job, but the fact that the Americans swapped 20mm cannons for 40mm Bofors whenever possible indicates how effective smaller caliber weapons were effective against any aircraft, particularly the armored SBD (unlike the A6M, B5N and D3A). Speaking of which....
You have this mixture of luck, competence and incompetence that occurs in most battles. Sometimes one of them is dominant. I've always said that no amount of intelligence, foresight and prior planning can make up for abysmally bad luck. I have had occasions in which I had done everything right - and random chance in the form of - ships power - came along and fucked everything I had done into a cocked hat ... One thing about Midway that you don't see later in the war - was the degree of American Courage. It's my understanding that the Americans normally dropped at 2,000 ft. and the Japanese doctrine was to drop at 1500 ft. At Midway the Americans were dropping at 1,000 ft and we will never know how many of them went in the water because of it. Wave after wave after wave of American Aircraft attacked the Japanese so that they had little respite. These aircraft were abysmally coordinated - the Americans demonstrating a woeful lack of competence in coordinating their attacks - but those aviators went in and did all they could to - get a hit. Many of them dying in the process. Torpedo 8, the only squadron from the Hornet that found the Japanese - being wiped out with only one of its men living. Later in the war - you would see the Americans totally dominating the Japanese but ... come away with less than they might have had they pressed their attacks harder. They were professionals at that stage of the war, knew what they were doing - and had the motto - "He who drops a bomb and flies away - lives to drop a bomb another day." Buell, Harold L. Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive Bomber Pilot's Epic Story of the Carrier Battles. New York: Crown, 1991. ISBN 0-517-57794-1 They were better at what they did - but they weren't going to die doing it. The Guys at Midway, they went in - to get a hit. Another factor of luck not mentioned was that the search plane that found the American Carriers - had difficulty launching from it's Cruiser (Japanese used Cruiser Search Aircraft so as not to deplete the Carrier Strike Forces) - and then - after finding the Americans - this aircraft had communications problems. Had this aircraft launched on time (like the others) and not had communication problems (like the others) things might have been different. Also - had the initial report included the American Carriers - that could have made a difference - though we will never know - what difference. So ... much as with the German Staff Plane landing in Belgium ... you had a number of things which were not done well - but - which in the end contributed to a victory. The Japanese CAP was kept busy all day because they had to keep dealing with a series of uncoordinated attacks by the Americans. In the last few minutes before the SBD's from Enterprise and Yorktown showed up - the sacrifice of the American Torpedo Planes kept the Japanese CAP still busy - so that - they were still dealing with Torpedo 3 and Fighting 3 instead of keeping to their patrol areas and being at altitude to intercept those - *_unescorted_* dive bombers. Over all - the Japanese lost because of American Code Breaking and muddled Japanese thinking such as (but not limited to) the Aleutians "diversion" but - random chance did work in the Americans favor at the decisive moment and made Midway the stunning victory that it was. Can you imagine what the rest of 1942 would have been like had the Japanese NOT lost 4 carriers at Midway? Anyway - I could theoretically write a book (lots of people have) on this battle so I'm not going to go into all the little things that happened but - I'll say that it was neither *_JUST_* luck or skill but as usual - a combination of both. Strategically - the Americans were at the top of their game - where as in this realm - the Japanese had better days ... Oh ... and OMT ... again - this luck business can work both ways and we will never know what might have happened had Hiryu not been in a rain squall when all those American Dive Bombers showed up ... Things might have worked out better for Yorktown had that been the case ... .
Yes, the Americans at Midway were "just lucky" after the Americans did much to make that luck. SIGINT was luck--created by massive investment in SIGINT. Putting the "sunken" Yorktown back in service with a replenished (basically "all new") air group was luck--created by excellent damage control at the Battle of the Coral Sea, by heroic repair efforts at Pearl Harbor, and that third carrier was "sunk" twice more by Japanese carrier aircraft before being sunk a fourth time by a Japanese submarine. American aviators were more mavericks and when "The Book" didn't apply, there was a splash in the ocean where the book was consigned to Davy Jones. This "know when to disobey orders" started in American homes and schools decades before the Battle of Midway and created luck. Japan contributed greatly to American luck. Yamamoto's complex plan was flawed, and the converging fleets provided minimal mutual support. At Coral Sea, one Japanese carrier was sunk (against the Lexington being sunk), one Japanese carrier was damaged (less damage than Yorktown, but it took more than two days from sailing into Pearl to combat ready again), and one Japanese carrier air group was so depleted that the carrier was ineffective. None of those three carriers were able to take part in Midway. Japanese submarines formed a picket line on schedule, but the American carriers had already passed that picket line before the Japanese picket line arrived. Imperial Japan had a shortage of two-way aircraft radios and once the fighters took off from their carriers on Combat Air Patrol, they were hard to vector at other threats, sometimes the entire CAP taking on one attacking torpedo bomber squadron. I could go through many other places where Japan handed America luck at Midway.
Great video. So pretty much, yeah, the Americans were lucky (naval warfare in particular seems to be down to luck quite often), but they earned that luck. If they set themselves up to have an 80% (random number) chance of winning and they win, sure, they got lucky that they didn't lose with a 20% chance, but they earned those odds through proper training, intelligence, etc.
To add a quote to the issue of authors ascribing luck to the outcome of the battle: Samuel Morrison introduces his narration of the successful attack on the three Japanese carriers with the words "The Americans were about to be on the receiving end of a miracle."
In the battle of midway the Americans took a calculated risk because they had the resources to recover even if it turned out not so fortunately. The fact that the Americans won such a large victory was lucky but not necessarily for strategic reasons and this was known by the American military when they did a risk analysis. The Americans could recover from a loss. The Japanese could have never maintained a presence on midway had they won in a extended war. The Japanese were truly lucky at pearl harbor but had taken a bigger risk as they had no real way of recovering from a disaster. There luck ran out at midway and it decisively ended there expansion as the loss of ships and pilots was not recoverable. The Japanese miscalculated in there strategy of one decisive battle would end the war. Americans had a huge advantage in manufacturing and resources and just needed time to bring these to bare. The Japanese also misjudged American resolve.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
The Americans were both lucky and prepared. They had broken the Japanese Naval Code so they knew where the attack was going to occur. I say lucky because it is a complete fluke that the dive bombers happened upon that destroyer racing back to the fleet after attacking a US submarine and followed it back to the Japanese carriers. Also, catching the carriers changing aircraft weapons was most fortunate.
real thanks for this one sir!
Don't forget the efforts to repair Yorktown. Catching Japan by surprise by being where Japan never expected them to be requires deliberate planning. Definitely elements of luck, but overwhelmingly tactics, procedures and various efforts were made across the board to win this fight.
@@SoloRenegade ahh thanks so much dude
i love reading comments on these videos always get to know neww stuff ill write that down thanks again!
Well luck doesn't exist... there's no such thing as that, for example, Hood exploded when hit once by Bismarck, was it fortune on the German side? No, it was a shot that penetrated the deck and went straight for the magazine, a real weakness on Hood, no luck involved here because everything can be explained.
Even the fact that the dive bombers encountered that destroyer going back to the fleet after attacking a US submarine. You just explained what happen, where does luck come in? Unexpected? Yes, lucky? Not at all.
AFAIR: This wasn't luck strictly speaking, as if one has rough location of Japanese carriers and aircraft speed, then figuring out how long would it take for them to make a round trip is a basic math.
Luck is just Preparation meeting opportunity. Or so my Marine dad says.
Wise words.
We have similar saying, Luck smiles on prepared. Or Unprepared wait for blind luck, prepared make their own luck upfront ... Something along those lines, lost some in translation ...
That is factually wrong, though. Even the unprepared can get lucky.
And if that opportunity does not come are you unlucky?
I would argue that while preparation/skill are extremely important, luck can play a significant role.
A firearm (whether small arm or cannon) or bomb is only so accurate. Better equipment reduces the size of the impact pattern, but not to zero. Skill/preparation are required to aim it properly. But hitting the exact vulnerable spot, significantly smaller than your dispersal pattern, involves some luck.
The Americans planned and executed the operation skillfully enough that it allowed them to capitalize on the lucky breaks that came their way.
Fortune favors the preepared
I totally agree with you. The USN capitalised on the lucky breaks, where as the Japanese didn't plan on things going wrong.
thanks for that info sir!
And I thought that people were familiar with the story of this battle but here you are ...
@@paulboger7377 Excellent point. There was a massive amount of hubris flowing through the Japanese military command at this point, and it worked to our advantage. It's that old, but tried and true cliché - "Never Underestimate Your Enemy." 😎
As the old saying goes:
"The harder I train the luckier I get."
"I need generals who know about strategy, generals who know about tactics, but above all i need generals with luck"
Napoleon Bonaparte.
If you look at what happened to Napoleon, I don't think we should lay too much Credence on that quote. Didn't seem to work out for him. 😜
Lady Luck is a fickle woman
@@paleposter Somebody say "The luck is mistress of many.....and wife of nobody"
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer Ney wasn't lucky... and Napoleon would have been far better off without him, especially considering his mistake at Waterloo.
Planning is necessary, but plans are worthless. Project projections are even worse than worthless - that's just made up bs.
There's a quote here that i think applies from an odd source. Mike Krzyzewski is a college basketball coach here in a american, and quite successful at it. He once said "Luck only counts for something if you have the skill to take advantage of it"
The problem is for this particular battle they did 200% preparation. When they fought they showed 40% skilled compared to the Japanese and there mistakes made their success that why so much is up for debate.
@@owo5869 You can never really go beyond 100%. The thing is most times nobody strives for 100%. Most people go for a solid 40-60% and things work out well enough. People are shocked when someone shows 90% efficiency. I could be wrong. I'm just a perfectionist who lacks time and energy to do things as "perfectly" as I would like. In many areas I have to sacrifice and settle for "good enough". But when I pour time and patience into my projects my 90% quite often surprises even myself. I believe that something similar happened here. There were months of code breaking and combine that with the bottleneck nature of Midway's geographic location that really helped give a general idea of the Japanese Navy's location. It's not that the US did more at Midway, it could be that they did less at other areas of the war in comparison.
@@owo5869 that is in no way a problem with anything i said so i'm not sure you responded to right comment here. And i'd love to see the data you're using that can put a percentage rating to skill... especially one that can give a 200% result...
Petrie W Well maybe conceptual language are too hard for you. But tell me if a mass uncoordinated attack actually help you won the battle is it luck?
Using two basketball team as example though it might be hard for you to understand.
If one team is trained and are experts in their coordination and good at their aim they lost to a ten man random team though they don't feel overwhelmed by its number what is it that make them loose ?
@@isaiahcampbell488 Naval battle in general requires two components locate the enemy (usually code breaking, patrol, and strategic planning) and have enough force to fight (Man power, crew training, ships and technology) .
That’s why I considered anything more than what mentioned above in to the “percentage” for lack of better word.
Luck plays a big role in naval battle in the past even if every thing mentioned above are done in hundred percent. A battle might just not happen. In science luck will be considered a bad explanation but in naval warfare or naval history you will often see “Lucky Ships” and these usage are generally considered to be cannon. Why? it’s a generalization of all the unpredictable and out of control variables that often times crucial for victory.
Midway is an air battle on sea unlike traditional naval battle luck is not as crucial as past wars this is a main point for the people debating it isn’t luck and yes it’s a valid point.
The counter argument is, American have an accurate enough location of the enemy, a large enough force consisting a larger inexperienced fighting force and a small more trained force, above that they also have the element of surprise. The event leading up to this includes lot of previous investments some mistakes the enemies made but compared to past naval battle this won’t necessarily meant a decisive victory examples battle of Jutland.
So it boils down to some slightly contradictory statements and questions.
Americans would’ve won without luck in normal circumstances but in the actual battle their mistakes enabled them to strike a decisive victory so what is it that achieve the victory? I don’t think there’s a human word for it.
In Jutland German sunk more ship but British forces them to retreat so the victory belonged to the Royal Navy.
The nuance of naval battle is why it’s interesting btw.
The subtitles are like : "Best pulls these two pilots with him, they recover, they go and attack Akagi, vomit, and that's the fatal hit on Akagi"
well, i guess vomiting bombs is a hell of a phrase.
"Where others see coincidence, I see providence." Unfortunately we are conditioned by media and culture to treat the "good guys"' successes as luck rather than due to skill or technology. This is a big problem: it's part of why a certain section of the population (supported by poorly researched "documentaries") worship the Wehrmacht; and it makes people expect "miraculous" solutions to present-day challenges rather than seeing that they must be surmounted with effort, dilligence, and sacrifice.
As an aspiring sci-fi / fantasy author I try to constantly fight against this assumption. Showing the heroes doing the groundwork, being prepared, trained, evaluating situations so they can exploit moments of good fortune, while avoiding any prophecy, fate, or deus ex machina. To me, not only does this better represent how success happens, but should also make a more compelling human story.
I love your comment man, I hate to see the peoples hardwork and sacrifice and bravery to just getting chalked up to "luck". Its disrespectful to the people who achieved the victory
Before watching.....man you have best youtube chanel ever......good luck...
+Khaled Guerfi
Yeah, better than that Bernhard that has that clone channel, but as the hack he is, he visualized it 👎👎👊👊🤛🤜🤦♂️
@@Tuning3434 Way better than Mark Felton.
@@jcwiggens Mark does churn them out.
Excellent analysis and presentation. The episodes with Prof. Neitzel were really good.
fortune favors the prepared. never confuse the good fortune created by preparation with luck. Luck is an agentless outcome to which you had no input.
I would say the US strike findint the japanese fleet at all was not a result of preparation, just blind luck, and very definitely decided the engagement.
When one say the us was just lucky, they do not imply the us didnt put in the work to develop equipment doctrine, train personell, gather intelligence and draft a strike plan.
But these were things the japanese also did almost equally well, or better, with the exception of intelligence.
However that was not a decisive factor in the battle.
Finding the japanese fleet at the right momemt, from the right direction by sheer chance was.
If this single variable went the exact opposite way, with the US strike wandering off into the empty ocean, and the japanese being led by a destroyer back to the US carriers as they were rotation their strike, the outcome would have been the exact opposite.
Theirfore I am comfortable to say at midway the US won due to luck, and trying to deny this is disingenous.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 If it's luck, how did so many strikes find the fleet? They used standard scouting and logical reasoning coupled with intel to determine where to look. Even the planes from Midway found the fleet. Was it luck the Japanese found the US fleet, since they didn't think they should have even been there at all?
Sure. - I won't. - Looks oversimplified. There are mixed forms: mostly luck, with less skill and preparation; mostly skill, but with an important degree of luck or good fortune. I agree with I need no channel "that trying to deny this is disingenous".
Were they lucky? Sure. They were.
Did they work damn hard and engineer their luck? Absolutely.
Did they have the right people in the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas, all working together, all with the right opportunities to make the most of the equipment they had at the time.
Depends on your definition of luck.
Justin needs a youtube series at this point. Just Justin talking on the IJN and the Pacific theatre. Greatly interesting.
Call it "Impaled on a Pyke" (ba-doom-tish)
Carrier groups fighting each other by launching airstrikes is a high-risk, high-stakes activity. Small details in the situation can have a disproportionately big impact on the outcome.
Great video! Love the definition of luck "when preparation meets opportunity". I agree. A statistician friend of mine used to say "there's not such thing as good or bad luck, but there is such a thing as luck." He meant that you could often change the amount of randomness in a situation, or perceived luck. In a military context, one way I think to do that is to increase tempo and aggressiveness. This will lead to more random or unplanned circumstances, and that usually favors the less prepared. That also fits with an unofficial US Navy motto, of going "in harm's way", or the SAS motto of "who dares wins". Both favor the well prepared. I also agree with comments that the US shrugged off some victories to luck that were really led by code breaking or other intelligence sources, or even superior tactics or training. During and even after the way, it's better to be viewed as lucky than skilled, if you're trying to keep your skills a secret. The pool shark doesn't want you to know that his secret is shooting pool 3 hours a day, four times a week.
I like Montemayor's take on the battle of midway on his video.
Luck and Mistake are two very misused words.
There is a definitely an element of luck involved during the course of events which helped the Americans win, but a lot of battles are chaotic in nature with luck/chance playing a major role. Just read Shattered Sword and that lays out the amount of flaws in the Japanese plan and the way they executed it, the Americans on the other hand were well prepared, knew the Japanese were coming and were waiting for them
Absolutely, Shattered Sword is a great book.
One of my favourite parts is where that book explains that Kudo Butai (the Japanese carrier force) could very easily have had 4 more heavy cruisers in it (which were off on their own providing a pointless ‘distant protection’ for the invasion fleet).
That would have meant 12 more long range reconnaissance aircraft available to Nagumo, making a much earlier Japanese detection of Enterprise and Hornet very likely. Not to mention a heavier AA defence of the carriers.
Even 2 more heavy cruisers and 6 more long range floatplanes could have made a crucial difference.
Also the book explains how Nagumo could have had a 5th carrier if he had ordered the undamaged Zuikaku to carry the badly damaged Shokaku’s flight group to Midway (Zuikaku’s own flight group was heavily depleted after the Battle of Coral Sea).
Even after their strategic failure at Coral Sea, the Japanese just weren’t taking the American carrier force seriously enough. Victory disease was the cause.
I don't remeber where the quote came from but it was something like this, "Victory in battle often goes to the one who makes the fewest mistakes."
Much of the American "luck" also came from Japanese decisions. Shattered Sword describes their search plan as using seven planes to visually scout an area the size of Sweden. That they didn't spot the US carriers early enough could be called "lucky," (for the USN) but really that's a decision to keep their strikes as large as possible by not using a dozen dive bombers as scouts.
Similarly, why was IJN CAP not in place to hit the SBDs? Luck? Or a failure of IJN fighter direction? A considerable portion of the Zeros were dogfighting with Thach's *three* Wildcats and most of the rest were chasing down fleeing Devastators instead of going back to cover the fleet. Those were choices. As was having a single radio channel for all of the Zeroes so they couldn't communicate effectively.
At the same time, some of the "luck" idea comes from USN mistakes that made the battle closer. If Hornet had been more experienced and the US had practiced multiple carrier operations more, I don't think Hiryu would've survived long enough to hit Yorktown. Like, US carriers at the skill they'd be by the end of 1943 probably would have won 4-0 and made it look inevitable, to the point that we wouldn't have talked about luck. The story would have been "intelligence allowed Nimitz to carefully place his carriers in the perfect position to ambush the Kido Butai, Nagumo failed to scout adequately and was caught by surprise, of *course* the Japanese were crushed."
You may find this recent article regarding Japanese scouting, and indeed carrier scouting in 1942, interesting. It was quite eye-opening for me. From Anthony Tully and Lu Yu. Yes, the same Anthony Tully that co-authored _Shattered Sword_.
digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol68/iss2/6/
Personally I would have used the Kate torpedo bomber as a scout before I would have used the Val dive bomber.using the cruiser float planes was actually standard operating procedures for the Japanese Navy. Something else I don't actually agree with that they did. The other thing that I have seen in different articles and videos I've read over the last 40 or 50 years, that carriers tended to have crews that were better at one thing than they were at another thing. They also didn't take aircrew from one Carrier group to fill in on another carrier group when a carrier was laid up for repairs. Like after the battle of the Coral Sea you had one banged up carrier and one carrier that had its air group shot up.if they had taken pilots from the banged up carrier to fill out the air group on the other carrier the Japanese would have had five carriers at Midway. I think that would have made that a pretty interesting difference. Instead they had four.
By the way I agree with you on the US carriers lack of experience and training when it comes to operating as a fleet. They were nowhere near good enough coordinating all the air groups from the three carriers. Compared to mid to late 1944 45, they were pretty clumsy. The machine that was knocking on Japan's door when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed was quite different from the one that battled them to a standstill at Midway.
@@justinpyke1756 Very interesting, thank you. Having read it, I should have said that if the US air wings had been more coordinated, the *popular conception of Midway* probably would have been that it was an inevitable victory rather than luck.
TBF, I lean more towards "everyone's 1942 air searches were inadequate." I don't mean to be like Fuchida and criticize Nagumo for not doing a two-phase search. That was an idea no one had yet. More that "cursory searches are okay even near enemy bases" seems like a risk everyone gotten used to getting away with. Like, Titanic's design and her captain's choice to go full speed at night through an ice field were simultaneously dangerous and also normal practice at the time. It could have happened to another ship just as easily. So I agree blaming Nagumo personally is mostly unfair. I guess that's another aspect of luck.
What was the quote? "When your enemy is making a mistake, let him."?
I can't find the source for the quote that said that the difference between a bad general and a great general
is that the bad general is wrong 98% of the time and a great general 95% of the time.
Same with a horse race. What is two horse lengths as a proportion of the length of the track? a big win.
The shorthand quote: "Never interrupt the enemy when he's making a mistake" is attributed to Napoleon.
Ah then there is the reality that the velocity of an attack can force the enemy into a series of mistakes for you to take advantage of. I am a firm believer in speed and firepower in three dimensions. Once you break the enemies decision cycle you end up with the Battle of France. The Germans move faster than the French had trained to think and react. The consequence was mistake after mistake after well you get the drift .
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer There were "bad" decisions made by the French way before the battle. I'm sure that the French had some good, quick thinking officers but the poor communications situation made that null. There were reports of many units getting their orders a full 24 hours late.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Thank you for the great work. If possible I have one question with relation to Japanese post operation assessment. Namely if I remember correctly Nagumo assumption after the battle was that the imperial codes are still safe. It puzzles me a bit how the Japanese explained a presence of 3 US CVs in an area where they expected to meet them no earlier than 3-4 days after. Knowing that one of the them was Yorktown which had been present at Coral Sea - meant that no time was wasted by the Americans (in comparison Combined fleet just had given up on making Zuikaku receive the air replenishment becasue of time constraint) - to send them to this exact spot in the ocean - it can't be explained by coincidence. Is it an example of blinding chauvinism on Japanese side ?
Opinion: the true stroke of luck at Midway was hitting the Japanese carriers at the moment of their maximum vulnerability, so that the hits were immediate irrevocable hull losses rather than short-term functional losses of the flight decks. If that Japanese submarine had not found Yorktown, she might have got home and it would have been a 4:0 shut-out.
Richard Halsey Best - perhaps the individual who changed the course of the war more than any other front line soldier on any side. He may well have been personally responsible for sinking 2 of the 4 carriers at Midway.
Charles what about McClusky whose instinct brought the dive bombers to bear?
Indeed. Best was the American equivalent of Germany’s best dive bomber pilot, Rudel (who sank a Soviet battleship in addition to destroying hundreds of Soviet tanks and other ground targets).
I agree with your assessment of Ozawa at the Battle of the Philippine sea might add that he was not given critical information from the land-based Army air Force because they didn't tell him how decimated their bases were and their aircraft were. If you think about the Battle of the Philippine Sea this was the first attempt by the Japanese to keep their aircraft carriers well out of range of American aircraft by using intermediate bases to refuel from. These bases were totally trashed they were incapable of landing the forces that were projected to be used. The imperial Army air Force had suffered grievous losses and did not tell their naval brethren so the number of planes that were to be involved in the attack were much smaller than planned . None of this was told to him
You could not expect the Japanese Army to communicate with our greatest enemy the Japanese Navy
...the A6M Zero, unfortunately for the Japanese, was totally inadequate at intercepting well-trained SBD dive bomber crews. The Zero was a terror at low altitude at at slow speeds, but its performance dwindled to nearly nothing by 15,000 feet due to its underpowered 940-hp engine and flight controls that became nearly nonfuctional at high speed and/or in the thinner air at altitude (a concept in aviation and physics known as "coffin corner.)"
The A6M's deficiencies also made the plane useless in a dive, as the controls would lock up, precisely what USN SBD crews would do when diving from 19-20,000 feet at a 70-degree angle.
USMC crews flying Dauntlesses in "glide bombing" attacks were easily chewed up by the Japanese CAP as the green Marines played to the Zero's strengths; USN crews however lost only 3 out of the 24 SBDs that struck Hiryu in the second attack and scored 4 half-ton bomb hits or more despite determined opposition from the combined CAP from 4 Japanese carriers (Hiryu took on many orphaned fighters from Akagi, Kaga and Soryu and threw them against the second strike from Enterprise. To no avail).
The USNI blog has a great post about SBD performance at Midway, dating from 2009. blog.usni.org/posts/2009/09/26/flightdeck-friday-smoke-and-the-battle-of-midway
The Japanese had no counter to these aircraft when employed properly, as evidenced by the wreckage the Dauntless wrought in the Coral Sea, off Midway, the Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz Islands in just six months in 1942--sinking six carriers and blasting another three (admittedly Shokaku is counted twice, but Dauntlesses nearly sank her both in May and October in the first and last battles).
This was profoundly unlucky...for the Japanese. Effectively, the only defense their carriers had against USN dive bombers was not to be detected and attacked.
This is testament to the SKILL of USN SBD crews, not luck. From the outset of the war, they were devastating carrier- and cruiser-killing weapons. So why all the luck talk?
Because Spruance never killed Miles Browning's career...
While the zero had indeed issues, not a lot of dauntless pilots lived to tell that tale…
@@bingobongo1615 Depends on the unit. In the case of VMSB-241, certainly, but Henderson's Marines were too green to attack in 70-degree dives--their attacks were characterized as 'glide bombing' despite the fact that they REALLY were engaging in low-level horizontal bombing (which had been proven ineffective time and time again during the Fleet Problems and GJEs, necessitating the adoption of dive bombing in the first place).
As for VB-3, VB-6 and VS-6 (VB-8 and VS-8 losses did not involve encounters with A6M CAP fighters), the fact that Leslie's entire squadron got away clean after plastering Soryu shows that USN SBDs directed by someone other than Miles Browning's idiocy are both formidable and very survivable.
The fact that VB-6 and VS-6 had not been communicated Point Option by that same fool (Miles Browning) and had almost half their fuel wasted circling TF-16 waiting for VT-6 and VF-6 to launch (TF-17 instead launched VT-3 first then VB-3 and VF-3 as the SBDs and F4Fs could and did overhaul and then escort in the torpedo bombers) had a very deleterious impact that wasn't repeated in the strike against Hiryu.
The afternoon attack off USS Enterprise was the most revealing strike of the day. 24 unescorted SBDs burned Hiryu to the keel with 4 1000-lb bomb hits despite being met in force by the Kido Butai's remaining CAP A6Ms (Hiryu had recovered many, if not most A6Ms that had been aloft at 10:25 and threw this composite force at Enterprise's strike). Perhaps it was mainly because 14 of the SBDs came from the grisled veterans of VB-3, but nevertheless the A6Ms and Hiryu plus her escorts' AAA took down only THREE SBDs that afternoon. As no TBDs were attacking at the time, this signals an unmitigated failure of the Japanese CAP.
Considering SBDs broke through and blasted Shoho and Shokaku in the Coral Sea, Ryujo in the Eastern Solomons, and Shokaku (again) plus Zuiho in the Santa Cruz Islands, this performance against Japanese carriers was normal and repeatable throughout 1942. Midway wasn't a fluke--even Best's "miracle" of pulling off of Kaga and blasting Akagi instead was repeated--first when Best blasted Hiryu in the afternoon.
But Zuiho in October showed how effective and superior American scout doctrine was. Two SBDs sight Shokaku, Zuikaku, Jun'yo and Zuiho, report the sighting, and then plant two 500-lb bombs through Zuiho's flight deck. This was the scout-bombing doctrine that had been perfected by USN dive bomber crews by the time the movie Hell Divers came out in January 1932, the month before Admiral Yarnell's raid on Pearl Harbor, and nevertheless ten years later the IJN had no counter to USN dive bombers (assuming they came in at 70-degree dives).
Over the course of four years if war, the Japanese NEVER developed an effective counter to dive bombing, despite the Allies quite quickly learning how to slaughter Stuka formations. This was on display with every successive attack by US Navy dive bombers, whose aircraft (two Curtiss BFC-1 Hawks) Ernst Udet purchased in 1933 to start the Luftwaffe dive bombing program.
Hopefully someday the fact that Midway wasn't miraculous or beset by poorly-trained pilots (other than VMSB-241 greenhorns and Chevy Chase's incredibly stupid grandfather, Miles Browning). Midway was a massive, elaborate trap that Nimitz sprung on Yamamoto, and because of superior USN dive bomber doctrine and training it was only a matter of time before the Kido Butai was going to be set alight.
The enemy being uncharacteristically incompetent is luck.
Actually if you analyze Japanese bombing accuracy and target recognition at Pearl Harbor (ie, the lack of it), their incompetency was not uncharacteristic at all.
Oh Justin , I was expecting more from you! Number 4 plane from Tone, Yorktown's strike force, Yorktown's crew , you left important and relevant details aside.
Hello,
This wasn't a detailed video about Midway, as I note in the video. It was a quick case-study on luck in war. Don't confuse my not spending two hours talking about every single detail for me not knowing. I could have added tons more if I had wanted to. Tone #4 doesn't indicate what you think it does. That is dated historiography, set up by Fuchida in particular, to make it seem like much of the loss was due to Japanese misfortune. It was in fact "lucky" that Tone #4 launched late and the crew elected to cut the corner on their search leg. If they had launched on time and flown the route as they were supposed to it would have been worse for the Japanese. It was a Chikuma scout that in theory should have sighted the Americans earlier, but didn't for whatever reason. The Americans were probably obscured by cloud at the time.
Regards,
Justin
@@justinpyke1756 I am aware that you know much about this subject and I know that you have a good way of analyzing information. I have seen your work before and I am a fan. And ,yes, this is a short video .
But if you want to discuss luck at Midway it is my opinion that no. 4 plane's late departure is one to address because it influenced a lot in that battle.
Another thing discussed is skill and I wanted mentioned not the intelligence part ( it is well known and documented) but the Yorktown's strike force. They are rarely mentioned and they were the only ones that remembered what the plan was after takeoff.
Do not take my comment as a critique , I am not qualified nor willing to point to "wrongs" in your work. I am just expressing my frustration that an opportunity to clarify aspects of this battle (for me as well as others) was missed.
Being prepared makes your bad luck less disatrous and your oppotunity a bigger advantage
"The more I practice, the luckier I get." - Lee Trevino
No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
Shattered Sword was a brilliant book, and not merely because it disposes of the myth that Midway was due to luck. It goes far beyond that, beyond even pointing out the good and bad decisions made by the participants. It shows how deeper factors - such as doctrine, carrier design, and even culture - had major impacts on the outcome of the battle.
Anticipated the Japanese movements. Caught Japan by surprise. Heroic effort to repair Yorktown. Skill in decoding and interpreting Japanese communications.
Great video, and analysis. Raymond Spruance was mindful of his responsibility to The invasion force and to protect it. To be criticized for that is the worst kind of armchair quarterbacking. I don't fault him in the least. At the Battle of Samara the only thing I fault Halsey for is not leaving the fast battleships to guard San Bernardino straight. His all-out assault on ozawa's decoy Force was not only called for but was the right decision. He had no way of knowing the material state of the aircraft and the pilots on those carriers let alone the quantity of those planes. They were a very big threat on his flank. With the number of airfieldsin the Philippines he had no way of knowing if the Japanese would attempt to shuttle bombing again against his forces. I will also admit the idea of admiral Willis Lee going head to head with Kurita has more than a little appeal to me. willis Lee was probably our best battleship admiral. He not only understood radar but he understood the advantages it gave him and how to use it. He was gunnery expert. Jesse Oldendorf is my #2 guy.
I agree, I don't buy into the criticism of Spruance at all. It really started with Mitscher getting mad about a "black shoe" yanking on his leash, but Spruance had a clear idea of what his job was, and it wasn't charging after what was left of Ozawa's force.
Makes me think of Edward IV of England, who's often described as not a brilliant leader, just lucky. It turns out that his "luck" was having a battle plan that worked reliably, lieutenants he could trust, and consistently out-marching his opponents and forcing battle before they were ready. He knew his strengths and stuck to them. That's what it took at the time.
"Battles are decided when timing and momentum and courage all come together and, at just the right moment, someone fails to make a critical mistake and doesn't manage to miss a vital opportunity." Sethra Lavode.
If the American attack had been perfectly coordinated (no flight to nowhere, missing fighters, etc.) the attack might have been even more decisive. (All 4 carriers at one time. Yorktown escapes.) So what we are counting as luck is clumsy coordination being offset by things turning out fairly well.
Pretty much. The Japanese were even more clumsy than the Americans tbh.
It reminds me of the old American adage of "if you are being chased by a bear you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friend."
In other words, you don't have to be fastest just faster than the next guy.
The biggest weakness Japan had was air defense the zero did not have the ammunition load required to fight off a major attack and the Japanese 25 mm anti-aircraft gun was considered one of the worst in the war.
Japanese air defense was worn down if everyone had attacked at the same time it would have been overwhelmed
War pretty much always involves a little bit of luck. It evens out overall usually, and it typically takes a bit of initiative and work to capitalize on lucky situations.
Breaking the Japanese code required skill and this began a series of strategic decisions which benefited from combined luck and skill.
Exactly when Ray Spruance and Jack Fletcher launched those planes was a pretty big deal. They had the right idea about catching Nagumo in transition.
Actually they launched not knowing that, but rather to get their first, as it was not long before the Japanese would discover the American s and attack.
I grew up hearing about the luck. You’re right, it does everyone involved on the American side a disservice.
On the negative side, there was success, in spite of CAG 8 (Ring) leading his strike group off, while taking a nap.
I like to think of the timing of the decisive strike as the "Wouk" moment (after the quote in "The Winds of War" that the decisive strike was perfectly coordinated, and that was down to luck). But as said, "prepared" luck. The successive commanders were "lucky". McClusky was following Arashi because the Captain of Nautilus was pushing in incredibly aggressively with an utterly unsuitable sub with crappy torpedoes. A little more initiative on the part of Hornet's dive bombers and things could have been even MORE decisive and Michener doesn't have to cover up for the flight to nowhere (I always wondered, how much Wouk knew about how his writing rival's daddy had nearly screwed the pooch at that battle). Or the B26 impacts Akagi, and now the Japanese are likely down a flight deck for some hours AND showing a "flaming datum" (big column of smoke). When fortune meets preparedness, you get "lucky" some people aren't "prepared (Ring, Tambor) some just aren't lucky (that B26, Nautilus).
Any submarine in the vicinity of an enemy fleet is better than no submarine at all. Nautilus did her best.
The best line about coincidence,etc.was in the James Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever-Shady Tree says to Bond "First time happenstance, second time coincidence, third time enemy action. Be prepared! There are no substitutes!
Thank you for this great video! I would love to learn and hear more about the surprising ability to adapt of the American military in WW2, as we Germans learned the hard way as for example the Panzerwaffe was countered by the Firefly or how better trained fire crews made a difference in the battle of Midway. Last but not least, what would be a good book if I want to learn more about the intrinsic details about Miday (e.g. the example with Nimitz mentioned this episode)?
Did the US get lucky at Midway? Yes. Holy cow, they were incredibly lucky.
Did the US only win due to getting lucky? No, not at all.
I am an avid wargamer, and after play many battles out for many eras, playing different nations and wars, in different branches, and we have seen that what actually happens in that battle is in many ways the least important thing. The details of the battle will change, which unit killed what, when a unit gets knocked out, and sometimes even where the focus of the fight happens can change if there are multiple options for key terrain, but the end results rarely do. They key factors don't change no matter how you replay the scenario, the forces available, objectives for the sides, terrain, doctrine, and starting knowledge of the enemy are always going to be the same. These "solve" so many variables that the big final answer, which side wins, is almost pre-determined in all but the closest fights. The magnitude of victory may change, sometimes substantially, but rarely the victor.
For example, we played out the "Bridge Too Far" scenario last year for the anniversary of Market Garden. When and where the British armored column was first encountered by the German armored scout units was different from history, and at first that seems like a very important possible change because that determines when the German side can start mobilizing the rest of their forces. But with the additional harrying attacks by the recon element to slow the British advance down, followed by spoiling attacks from the first mobilizations, it's always an early enough warning and slow enough advance that the Germans will be able to get the necessary forces at the bridge before the British arrive. The details change, when and where the fights take place and exactly what losses are incurred by each side, but the big picture result of the bridge being just a bit to far stays the same.
The Battle of Midway is such an interesting case because it gets large swings in result almost every time, and actually very rarely gets near the dramatic historical result. Luck was definitely a factor.
The USN wins pretty much every time still, proving luck isn't the reason they won. The advantage they have from Intelligence is huge, letting them get forces to the area ahead of time. They not only have carriers in the area almost a week before the Japanese expected, but they also have an extra one. The US has surprise and the Japanese plan has been ruined before they even know it. Doctrine also plays a big role in the victory. The USN has learned immediate lessons from Coral Sea, particularly in Damage Control, and encourages personal initiative, which enables Best to make his attack. The poor Japanese doctrine hurt them badly. The lack of fighter control let the Dauntless attacks be more effective and the bad Damage Control doctrine cost them big, I have doubts Hiryu and Akagi would have sunk without further hostile action if they had been USN ships. Plus the Japanese aren't in a great tactical situation from the beginning due to having to contend with attacks coming from 3 separate sources. Not only does that make it harder to predict where the next attack is coming from, and the attacks are likely to be spread out which will interrupt their flight operations more often (probably the biggest contribution from the Midway forces), they also have to debate where to send their attacks leading to Nagumo's infamous dilemma.
To Justin, thank you for your honest open opinion.
The guys who were there said they got incredibly lucky. Geoff Who met a Midway pilot in his youth.
Of course after making it through that when so many didn't you'd consider yourself lucky . But luck didn't put them there , that was on purpose
"You can't count on luck, but luck counts." Which is why, in anything, you have to train and prepare so the stuff you can't control will, hopefully, not be determinative of the outcome.
There was a critical over arching problem, which was systematic that the Japanese did not focus more on a continuous training program through out the war. They had a fatalistic attitude towards trying to win one great battle like they did with Russia in the sino Russian war. They started the war knowing they probably wouldn’t win it. Forget luck good or bad, that was just STUPID!!!!!!
Correct. However this didnt have an impact at midway yet. They were not yet out of trained pilots, and the idea of engaging the IS carriers in a setpiece battle was sound. They lacked the ability to defeat them in detail, and had roughly equal odds in a meeting engagement.
Their mistake was thinking there were one fewer flattops.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384: I agree I was just thinking strategically
haven't read anything on McClusky but I heard he was originally a fighter pilot so I figure his instinctive reaction was to attack the first target he could. Don't know his personality but I figured the movie Midway made him too conservative in his approach prior to the battle so they could have that drama with Best, when I think a Fighter pilot would overall be more aggressive.
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, US carrier pilots were trained to fly all 3 aircraft types - fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers. Most US carrier pilots in 1942 were therefore ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’.
A pinch of luck always helps. In reality at that point in time, the US Navy really wasn't experienced in coordinating aircraft for multiple carriers. The Navy anticipated in pre-war doctrine that carriers would operate singly. The sacrifice of the torpedo bombers played into the results as well. Ray Spruance was trying to catch the carriers with the aircraft on the deck refueling. Which of course he did.
Spruance did very well, considering that he was a cruiser admiral, not a carrier admiral.
COMPLETE LUCK!
Midway was an AMBUSH, the USN knew the IJN was coming and had prepared to meet them, they had ALL the advantages and STILL they came close to disaster.
1. Yamamoto received intelligence indicating the USN was aware of the Midway operation and would have its carriers THERE... BUT, he assumed Nagumo had received the same transmission and refused to retransmit the report as suggested by his staff. Midway could have well ended with Nagumo undertaking a counter-ambush aimed at the obvious position where the USN carriers would be, NE of Midway.
2. Had Nagumo held to his instructions and kept half his planes as reserve against the USN, the IJN would have been able to launch their own strike, and seeing the performance of their pilots in their almost suicidally small counterattacks, the USN carriers would have been lucky to survive.
3. The USN panicked and launched its strikes haphazardly, uncoordinated, instead of as a single coherent attack, many planes never engaged the enemy, others ran out of fuel, mst attacked due to a chance encounter with a DD...
4. The IJN carriers were hit in the worst possible moment, which doomed them, without that...
you can't setup an ambush with luck.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized No, but the USN preparations for the ambush were discovered and here is where luck saves the USN, Nagumo's staff WARNED Yamamoto that Akagi was not setup to receive long range communications, its radios were too old and limited, so Yamamoto would have to forward any land transmissions to Nagumo in order to prevent them from steaming into battle in the dark... and Yamamoto didnt, he chose to believe Nagumo would get the message somehow or his order to keep half the bombers armed with torpedoes would be enough to get him out of any predicament.
He LITERALLY, let Nagumo go in without a full strategic and tactical picture in order to preserve the operational security of an already-blown operation...
People bitch about Nagumo, when is Yamamoto who set him up tp fail.
All they had to do was to put a decent radio set in Akagi (or Kaga, which had been in dock repairing underwater damage for weeks, hell they could have even put radar on her instead of on Ise) or forward the information, the result would be a fully aware Nagumo avoiding Midway and actively looking for the USN carriers instead, a counter-ambush in which a USN that historically HORRIBLY botched its carrier strikes would have to face a full two-wave and coordinated strike by the IJN carriers...
...in that context, I would have bet on the IJN.
From Inquest, pp 268:
"What, then, were the real avoidable blunders that cost the Japanese the battle?
There were two that were especially serious: Yamamoto’s communications failure,
and Nagumo’s decision to rearm the torpedo planes. We saw that Yamamoto
failed to ensure that Nagumo had the bene¤t of radio intelligence that
Yamamoto received during the sortie from Japan, indicating that the Americans
had discovered Yamamoto’s Midway operation and, even more critically,
indicating that American carriers might actually be at Midway when Nagumo
got there. Yamamoto had declined advice from his staff to forward crucial intelligence
to Nagumo, preferring to maintain radio silence under the assumption
that Nagumo’s ¶agship Akagi had also received the radio transmissions. This
turned out to be a fatal assumption; Akagi’s radio equipment was inadequate to
receive long-distance radio signals, and no alternative arrangements had been
made.
However, unlike the delay in forwarding initial sighting reports from search
planes, this problem of poor radio equipment on Akagi had been foreseen. We
saw that before the departure from Japan, Nagumo’s chief of staff, Kusaka, had
warned Yamamoto’s staff that Akagi might not receive long-wave radio signals,
and had urged Yamamoto to relay to Akagi from his ¶agship Yamato any important
radio intelligence he received. Yamamoto ignored this plea in the interests
of radio silence. This was a clear blunder and the one most responsible for the
disaster that befell Nagumo’s Mobile Force at Midway. It left Nagumo assuming,
on the morning of June 4, that there would be no American carriers at Midway-
and that he was therefore free to give his full attention to neutralizing
Midway in preparation for the amphibious invasion scheduled for June 6."
I’ve heard that at the war college when they game it out the Japanese usually win...
not surprising, if you're reenacting a famous battle, it removes the element of surprise that happened. The Japanese team knows that they shouldn't try to launch their surprise attack where they think the American fleet is, because they know they'll be attacked. Japanese commanders did not know that their code was broken and that it was a trap.
@@Duke_of_Lorraine there isn’t a script. Just the objective is the same. Everything else is open. Timing of, and type of strikes are up to the participants.
@@SeanRCope so anyone who knows the bare minimum about the battle of Midway has a keystone piece of information that the Japanese commanders didn't have : it's actually an american trap.
With such hindsight the balance of power is severely changed. Defending France in 1940 is a piece of cake for example (that's why France is nerfed to oblivion in HOI4 to make up for that...)
@@Duke_of_Lorraine they don’t use computers at the war college wargames. No buffs no nerfs just real world capabilities. We only knew the objective. Lots of wiggle room for both sides
@@Duke_of_Lorraine That is auch an interesting point.
For sure the German advance through the Ardennes would have been delayed and maybe even blocked but people often overlook that the German (planned as diversionary) attack through the Netherlands Belgium was surprisingly super effective and threw the best French and British divisions in total disarray so who knows how the Battle would have went.
The French and British air forces were weak (and the French one not really combat ready) in France, troops were inexperienced (Germany had Spain and Poland), tactics and doctrine inferior and both armies did not really want to fight while the Wehrmacht was very much keen on the war.
Allied tanks were individually superior but lacked good communication and abilities for good combined arms warfare. Would have all come down to how quickly France could have turned around their spirit, tactics and organization.
A good example of what they point out is the unsuccessful bombing of the Japanese carriers earlier in the morning by the Midway Naval Station based Marine Corp bombers using glide bombing techniques rather than dive bombing.
I’ve read that the marine airmen supposedly selected this method due to their relative inexperience in dive bombing, as opposed to being just “unlucky” or poor marksmanship in striking their intended targets; Glide bombing being generally easier to maneuver and defend against than proper dive bombing.
In terms of intelligence, logistics (the Yorktown got patched up and put out to see in 48-72 hours), and maybe even planning, can't really say it was luck. With the lead up to the battle, possibly the Japanese submarine picket missing the US formations could possibly represent luck in some way, or represent disorganization/poor preparation on the part of the Japanese. The Americans were in a good position, on the defensive. So up to the point of actual contact of forces would not say luck was much of a factor.
It's a shame they didn't have a chance to do a proper repair job on Yorktown. She may not have been lost. As it was at the Battle of Midway she was not capable of her normal flank speed.
American damage control was superior to the Japanese for the whole war. The Japanese lost ships that the Americans would have saved.
@@AEB1066 how much of that was processed and how much of that was cultural? The Drachinifel channel has a very interesting comparison between American and Japanese damage control and the possible contributing factor of the cultural difference between the two countries at the time. When I say cultural I'm talking about the difference is in what American young men had experienced prior to their entry into the service with mechanical equipment versus your typical Japanese young man . America was highly recognized compared to Japan in all strata of life. The same can't be said for Japan. This is not racism, I'm half asian, but there is a significant difference in the industrialization and the amount of experience the average citizen had when they entered military service. It was a great discussion about damage control. I've been reading books about World War II since about 1970. No one had ever really discussed it in the way that this channel did. For instance when the Taiho was sunk, I understood that her aviation fuel tanks were ruptured, I knew that the explosion was a result of gasoline fumes permeating the hull, I knew that the tanks were encased in concrete, I knew that someone turned on all the blowers on the ship and a spark cause an explosion . But I never thought of it in terms of crewman not being trained on a particular piece of equipment and not really understanding anything at all about it. I mean to the point that they were unwilling to touch it and the discipline in the ijn was such that touching it could get you a beating. I strongly recommend that channel to you if you don't already watch it and in particular that particular video. I don't know if you will find it as eye-opening as I did but it really struck home to me the cultural differences between Japan and America just from industrialization. I'm not talking about religion or anything else just industrial and experience.
To understand Midway you have to understand the four carrier battles of 1942: Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. Each engagement was a kind of "mad man's night out." Each engagement was connected with the movement of troops in a planned land campaign. In each case the US had better info than the Japanese - but never was the data clear in the way a satellite ID would be. This put a lot of emphasis on who spotted who and when. Add into the soup, who spotted the wrong thing when. The crucial identification phase of each battle - all confused - was followed by a wave of strikes. In 1942 Japanese attack planes were better trained and carried much better torpedoes. US SBDs and Vals were a wash. Fighter pilots in both forces (especially at Coral Sea and Midway) were veteran. US had better flak and damage control. When you rolled the dice it was very likely that a full sized carrier would damage or sink an enemy carrier. So, at the Coral Sea, the US bags one IJN small CV and damages two others. The IJN sinks one CV and damages one. The Guadalcanal campaign battles were similar. At Midway, the US sunk four IJN CVs - the IJN sunk one US CV. But remember, there were three USN CVs in the battle - so sinking 4 IJN CVs was not so much predictable as possible - certainly no fluke. Had a couple of things gone the other way, the IJN could have got off major strikes from all of their ships. (Only Hiryu launched a strike at US CVs and did it with a savage intensity.) That would have been bad news for the USN. However, had the US planes been in the air (both sides having strikes in the air was common enough) the IJN may still have suffered. Or had the Yorktown not been hit by that the spare I-Boat, the USN could have gotten out of Midway with a 4-0 score. So yes, the dice came out in favor of the USN, but not in an extraordinary way. Might add that the I-Boats kept coming and rolled Dice in favor of the IJN. I-boats torpedoed Saratoga in January 42 and then again in the fall - keeping Sara out of three of the battles. And I-19 sunk Wasp and damaged North Carolina in one strike in the fall. During Santa Cruz Enterprise had South Dakota providing deadly flak support: North Carolina was supposed to be with Hornet but was instead back at Pearl because of the torpedo. So after the Battle of Santa Cruz - with Enterprise damaged - the USN was almost without CVs, although Sara was soon back. The IJN had more CVs but their air groups were shattered. This explains why there was so much surface action and no CV intervention during the ugly fighting from November 1942 - November 1943 in the Solomons. When Sara and Princeton raided Rabaul in November - shattering the IJN cruiser force there it meant that the US CVs were back. Essex and Bunker Hill raided a few days later - that meant that the new US CVs were also in the war. Japan lost the war when the Reds defeated the Wehrmacht in 1941. But they lost their ability to resist seriously the USN onslaught at the end of 1943. The naval war in 1944-45 was a kind of mugging. No wonder Japan needed suicide attacks - and they failed.
Nicely done
Much ink has been spilled about how US carriers were unable to operate with the cohesion of the Kido Butai until 1944, ignoring that the USN pioneered combined carrier operations with a mock attack against Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7 February 1932 at 8 a.m. from the carriers Lexington and Saratoga.
Not only did Harry Yarnell's raid provide the playbook for the later IJN raid, Lexington's captain at the time, Ernest J. King, led similarly successful war game raids against Mare Island and Pearl Harbor again in 1938. So why did Miles Browning screw up so badly four years later?
The Peter Principle. Browning rose too high in the ranks before his incompetence became apparent. Halsey had led TF-16 with two fleet carriers in attendance for months prior to being put on the beach by Nimitz, yet Browning clearly never tried to coordinate operations between the sisters Enterprise and Hornet. As the SBD was a scout plane as well as a dive bomber, they were always launched first because of their longer legs, followed by torpedo planes and fighters.
Enterprise and Hornet each had two dive bomber squadrons, a fighter squadron, and a torpedo squadron. If Browning had followed doctrine as set since Lexington and Saratoga had entered the fleet in 1927 and proven effective on 7 February 1932, e would have launched a coordinated attack of a SBD squadron from both carriers, followed by a torpedo squadron from one carrier and a fighter escort from the other. Then, respot and do the same with the remaining squadrons and launch a second strike.
Parshall details in Shattered Sword how carrier decks were spotted in 1942, but it never occurs to him that TF-16 wasn't following USN doctrine that had been set for ten years. Neither did Browning, of course. The lack of coordination left Mitscher guessing he was supposed to find CarDiv 2, as intelligence indicated Akagi and Kaga were operating separately from Hiryu and Soryu, leading to the Flight To Nowhere.
That was a decision only Browning or Spruance really should have made, but BROWNING NEVER COMMUNICATED WITH HORNET. The effect put Enterprise's planes equally out of position, until Best and McClusky stumbled on Arashi and "followed" her to the carriers (in reality the SBD cruised almost three times as fast as the Japanese destroyer could go at flank, so the SBDs really used Arashi's heading and flew a parallel course to the Kido Butai).
Yet Torpedo 6 and Torpedo 8 found Nagumo with no problems. Had they launched and flew according to prewar doctrine, Torpedo 8's Waldron would have had Gray's Fighting 6 F4Fs glued to his tail while Best and Rodee's VB-6 and VS-8 SBDs flew stacked at 14,000 and 19,000 feet. Considering VB-6 killed Kaga and Best himself took out Akagi, the results likely would have been spectacular.
As Parshall makes clear, the continued attacks would never have allowed the Kido Butai to get off a counterstrike until over an hour after Waldron attacked, as Torpedo 6 followed on soon after...only if they followed doctrine, McClusky with VS-6 and VB-8 would have arrived with the Devastators. Lights out, probably...though Leslie's VB-3 would also arrive by 1025, to administer the coup de grace.
Luck was on the side of the Americans, as Japanese AA fire and A6Ms were largely ineffective against USN 70-degree dive bombing attacks, but the American airmen were also fighting the incompetence of their air group coordination officer. The fact that Enterprise's and Yorktown's SBD crews without fail found and killed the Kido Butai every time they took off is a testament to their skill, not their luck.
The Japanese never had a way to win badly enough to crush America. We spent a few months with one one carrier in the Pacific. Even after midway Japan still has a larger fleet.
Hey its Gary who visited Drachinifel!
I dont know in this is interesting for you, but I recommend the videos from Montemayor, he put a lot of work in it and did a real good job, very entertaining
I think jingles quote is perfect here "skilled people make their own luck" meaning that people who are good set themselves up so that they can be "lucky"
And sometimes that doesn't help and the less skilled people are lucky and defeat them
@@TheHerrUlf but not often
I 'm guessing these histories again fail to make use of recent translations of Admiral Ugaki's diaries. There were some quirky chance events that slowed Japanese deployment of a sub picket line to block US advance. I can't remember if they might have had a shot at beating that incredible fast patch up of a US carrier which could then limp towards Midway, but it was something like having to substitute very slow subs for fast ones.
I'd say it was fortunate the American Carriers were not in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese Air Raid. Where the Japanese achieved total surprise given the training, intelligence gathering, and planning. The American Navy was just as prepared for the Battle of Midway. The difference being the enemy was on full alert. Looking to lure the US carriers into a trap. So to put it all to luck on the American Navy's part is a bit short sighted of the big picture.
Enterprise was supposed to be in Pearl Harbor when the December 7 attack occurred but was sent south west on an unplanned exercise
The greatest part of the success was good intelligence and good leadership.
Another appropriate, yet highly applicable, saying is... "You make your own luck"!!
I just have a philosophical question to ask, what does it mean to say if something is “up to luck”?
To propose a simplified question, let’s say you have a dive bomber wing with 10 pilots of progressively higher skill level, such that the first one has 10% chance of hitting a carrier, and the last has 100% chance of hitting the same carrier in the same situation, they go out on a strike and they all hit the same carrier at the same time, which one of these hits were “luck” and which ones weren’t?
No-one has a 100% chance of hitting the target, no matter how skilled they are. As shown by many experienced, highly skilled Japanese torpedo and dive bomber pilots missing stationary ships in the Pearl Harbor attack.
For one thing, too many "historians" borrow from each other when they seek to write another book about the historic battle to profit from sensationalizing on an aspect not previously focused on.
What they all seem to avoid is the historic work "War Plan Orange" which documents our actual plan (called by the code-name "Rainbow" by FDR), preparing the U.S. for an eventual war with Japan over 40 years before we actually got into one.
Also they tend to not fully acknowledge the U.S.'s superior ship-building industry with better safety and fire-control design then the Japanese, which explains the Yorktown's seemingly miraculous recovery.
Also, as it turned out later, the Battle of Midway was not as much of a "turning point" as they seem to want to make it.
In actuality, it was a major set-back, or a "blunting the Japanese sword" early in the war.
For instance, later on, because of loss and damage to ours at the time brought us down to only one fleet carrier, the USS Saratoga, the U.S. literally had to "borrow" the Royal Navy carrier HMS Victorious to keep up the effort in the Pacific to keep the Japanese "hemmed in" for the final blows to come later.
What it mainly did was give the U.S./FDR administration an excuse to focus on beating the Germans first, at the sacrifice of our many U.S. Marines who were forced to hold out until we got Churchill's permission to finally address the ACTUAL threat to the United States presence in the Pacific, including eventually, our base in Hawaii.
Had one or two of the large Japanese carriers survived, the subsequent Guadalcanal campaign would have been quite different perhaps and may not even have occurred - and it may have affected the subsequent planning in Europe.
Maybe, depends on the air wings.
Guadalcanal would have been a much tougher job if it had been launched 6 months later, that’s for sure, as the Japanese air base and shore batteries would have been fully operational by then.
@@timonsolus Both sides were also learning and fortunately for the US they seemed to realize early on that holding the field was crucial.
I've been re-reading the different histories of the campaign (especially Richard Frank's account and Samuel Eliot Morrison) and one aspect that isn't mentioned much is that the US marines were very concerned of a literally counter landing right at Lunga point - that is coming ashore just north or northwest of Henderson field. The IJ army never really considered that and by the time they tried to get more serious it was too late.
Another insight was from the book "The Japanese Navy in WW2" edited by David Evans - IJN admiral Tanaka recounted his efforts to explain to the IJ Army the limitations of transports, barges and so forth and it took high level wrangling to sort out a simple transport run. As much as there were issues between Fletcher, Turner and Vandegrift, they seem to grasp the other knew their business.
The Japanese had many more ships to bring to the battle than the U.S. but the actual airpower they had at the point of contact north of Midway was more or less equal to that of the Americans. Their four carrier air wings had just slightly more airplanes than did the three U.S. ones, and that's not counting the airplanes based at Midway, whose contribution to the battle was far more significant than they are usually given credit for. The far superior surface fleet of the Japanese had no chance to engage the Americans unless the air control could be established first. It should also not be forgotten that the Americans launched five dive bomber groups against the Japanese on the morning of June 4, 1942, two from ENTERPRISE, two from HORNET, and one from YORKTOWN. The two from HORNET were wasted by being sent off in a totally wrong direction and an additional dive bomber group from YORKTOWN was held back at the last minute. The victory was a lopsided decisive one for the United States, but it could have been an even greater one, destroying the carriers of Kido Butai and perhaps additional ships without having to give up YORKTOWN in exchange. The battle could have been completely over before noon on that June 4.
Luck is usually an effect of when you start looking at a situation. If the Japanese search planes spot the American carriers before the strike on the island, then the battle goes completely differently. However, starting from the point where the Americans find the Japanese fleet first, then no, there is a limited amount of luck involved. It's like a tornado hitting your house but you surviving, Were you lucky to survive, or were you unlucky that the tornado hit your house?
Good luck - something unexpected happens in your favor, so it 's good fortune. Bad luck - something unexpected happens not in your favor, so it's bad fortune. The problem is the behind the scene's decisions and actions on both sides that bring about the precipitation of outcome on either side - good or bad. Coincidence is real and is not luck. It is how we perceive coincidence and their attached outcomes that lead to false premises hence wrong conclusions.
The japanese' fatal blunder or mistake was not invading Midway Islands and Wake Island, like Guam, directly after or during pearl harbor on the way back for example, these islands were vulnerable and weak defended at this time. Without these footholds the americans would have been very less able to operate in the pacific anymore except from australia. Maybe they also could have landed on hawaii. They also did not destroy the fuel-depots at pearl harbour from wich the US-fleet could be supplied afterwards, neither did they launch more attack waves to do so. But aside from that they did not recon the battlearea densely enough. It was not luck it was japanese failure. Being aware this is a decisive battle and leaving the carrier fleet without permanent fighter cover in rotating shifts is such a desastrous blunder. Except from the surprise Blitzkrieg at start, the japanese failed in everything and made senseless sacrifices.
My one disagreement here is that I think you can argue that there were 2 instances of luck/coincidence at Midway, the other bring McClusky finding the Arashi at all. Given neither McClusky's planes nor the Arashi should have been where they were, it was somewhat lucky that the situation presented itself for McClusky to eventually find the Japanese fleet. Other than that, 100% agreed.
The Japanese destroyer that pointed McClusky to the Japanese carriers had been chasing a US submarine that was only positioned there due to the code-breaking genius of the Americans. So skill-luck-skill, with copious quantities of guts, destroyed the Japanese.
9:46 Well there were more coincidences. (Not to say skills and preparations weren't involved.) For example, the Japanese AA defense was always going to be CAP and that only. The CAP planes were drawn to the wrong altitude from an earlier attack. That in itself was not luck at all. But the timing was. Overall, USN was not destined to win Midway. Although "miracle" would be stretching the meaning of the word -- at least from today's usage. Luck was involved in the winning. Luck was heavily involved in the decisiveness of the win.
Luck plays a huge role in war, especially for the commander who can take advantage of luck, which Spruance did. Both here and at the Philippine Sea, Spruance made decisions that turned out to be right even though he couldn't have known that (he doubted himself at Philippine Sea). In "On War" Clausewitz sees this as a commander's intuition that some how is able to see through the fog of war.
But as for that critical moment at Midway, yes, that's luck. The torpedo bomber squadrons have to go in in series, pulling the fighter cover down, there has to be the destroyer for one squadron to follow and arrive at the same time as the Yorktown planes. AND the IJN search has to be thrown off by mechanical problems and poor reporting. All of those unplanned pieces have to fall together or it just doesn't work.
Philippine Sea was a combination of USN training and equipment (proximity fusees also played a role) together with the IJN lack of training and their decision to sacrifice aircraft survivability to range. IJN doctrine lost that battle, but Midway was luck, even though you still have to execute to make the luck pay off. If all the dive bomber squadrons had been like the ones from the Hornet even luck wouldn't have been enough.
Interesting bit at the end about luck in your personal life.
As someone once said - luck favours the prepared mind.
Not always. Luck is capricious
One of the biases, I have noticed frequently happens in military history is they see their enemy as more capable than they are and because they know so much, they see what their enemy could have done so they attribute their good fortune to luck.
Thanks for the topic. So... is surprise and opportunity luck ? As a point of interest.. every soldier I've known has said they preferred luck to skill any day. I think the skill and courage of the early U.S. Naval Aviators has been largly underestimated. To my limited knowledge of the events.. I think the poor performance of U.S. torpedoes is the most inexcusable issue. On the Japanese side...I don't see why they didn't suspect their codes and signals... and do something about that. I realize that maybe they did but just couldn't fix it.
If there was a major element of luck involved it was in the Japanese indecision on arming the torpedo bombers
Nagumo gives this battle to the Americas due to his indecision over the events that occurred at coral sea where Japan lost carriers while following their tactical doctrine , thus Nagumo indecison rose purely from coral sea events as even with the americans knowing the attack was coming doesn't mean they won based only knowing this alone as the japan still held the advantage in number of carriers in this battle , the entire battle is decided by Nagumo not taking information in from his scouts as they reported a large group of u.s. ships where they had predicted the carriers would be ,thus Nagumo doesnt attack eminently when they are spotted due to the events at coral sea , if Nagumo follow the japannese tactical doctrine instead of questioning whenever or not the group of u.s. ship were the carrier group (the only u.s. vessels in the area were the carrier group so any grouping of ships sighted was about 100% to have the carriers with it . Nagumo knew this ) mid way would be an entirely different battle ,
Americans didnt win midway. Nagumo lost midway due to the events of coral sea battle causing him to question the Japan tactical doctrine and not attacking when they held the advantage as sighting the enemy before they sight you in carrier warfare is key , it means you can launch a full attack before they can send up planes to defend. Nagumo didnt do this. He gave up the advantage by not acting on the information he was receiving .
Granted the american played off Nagumo mistakes perfectly but Nagumo didnt hesitate for 20 mins and order an attack onbthe reported group of u.s. vessel. The pacfic would be an entirely different threater of battle as it's only after midway that the u.s. held the advantage in carriers thus allowing advancement toward japan as no real push toward mainland Japan could begin until japan carriers were taken out to the point the remaining carriers were defense weapons due to not wanting to risk losing them in an pitched battle/offense attack ...
The US Navy was reading the IJN’s mail before the IJN. Let that sink in.
Fortune (usually) favors the prepared mind.
Bad luck for the guys in the TBDs, their deaths bought a big piece of the victory. Geoff Who mourns the dead.
"I'd rather be lucky than good." 'Nuff said.
You know it's kind of funny the only time I've actually heard someone say that, they were extremely good at their jobs. A field engineer for Burroughs Unisys, a good friend of mine from 1981 to present used to say that all the time . He was one of those guys you could trust your professional career with. I was fortunate we had four on-site engineers assigned to our shop. We were one of their biggest corporate customers. The four guys we had were just great. Each of the four had special areas where they were really really good. Overall though you could depend on all four of them to get you out of hot water when you had an equipment failure.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer The thing is - the guys who are really good - also really understand the value of random chance working in their favor. They have seen Murphy show up and totally fuck their best efforts. Losers complain about bad luck - winners expect it.
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Elwood P. Dowd
Correct: McCluskey following the Japanese destroyer was not luck. But it was good luck that the Nautilus had dragged the destroyer off on a wild goose chase at the right moment. It was good luck that the dive bombers arrived when they did, instead of 5, 10, or 15 minutes later. It was good and bad luck that so many squadrons went off in different directions; some missed the battle entirely, others found the target. There was also a lot of ineptitude, such as taking way too long to launch and lousy coordination. The Americans balanced good and bad luck, so it was probably not a factor in the outcome, only the manner of winning.
The Japanese had no luck, good or bad, other than the Tone's search plane laucnhing late; I have seen it argued that a correct launch would have missed the sighting altogether, but then the Japanese would not have been caught with hangars full of bombs and torpedoes from the massed botched switchover. Their failures were doctrinal (Nagumo got command strictly from seniority; contrast this with Fletcher, who had seniority but gave command to Spruance operational (Yamamoto's typical cock-eyed plan), material (their planes had no radios, could not warm up in the hangar bay, had complicated bomb/torpedo fittings which slowed down switching), and their ships had crappy damage control design. And of course "victory disease".
Anyone denying that the US had incredible luck should look at other air craft carrier battles of WW2.
Aircraft carriers were absolute glass cannons and whoever landed a blow first, pretty much win (and yes I know about excellent American damage control but that meant ships survived not that they could still participate in battle).
If the Japanese spotted the Americans First, if the Japanese had used a different order to launch their fighters, if the Americans had struck 30min earlier or 30min later and if some of the bombs didn’t hit the Japanese as well as they did, the battle would have been quite different.
This is not to take away from the good preparations, the skill and the determination of the Americans but the stars pretty much aligned the moment the US bombers approached. I believe the US still had a bigger chance to win midway thanks to their preparations of the trap but it still went extremely well (much better than pear harbor which was even better prepared and against almost stationary enemies)
The Japanese biggest mistake was for sure to attack the Aleutians as well instead of concentrating.
Is there a podcast?
I can see a bit of both; luck was the Japanese having problems with their scouting plane taking off late, and having issues with it's radio, so that it couldn't properly report sighting the American fleet.
Midway is a case-study in LACK of luck more than anything else. Japanese AA fire, for example, took down a total of one SBD dive bomber according to Parshall in Shattered Sword--a 5-inch (127 mm) direct hit from Kaga's guns.
Parshall details how deficient IJN anti-aircraft fire was in relation to USN AA superiority from Pearl Harbor onwards. The Japanese 25mm AA gun was especially terrible at its job, but the fact that the Americans swapped 20mm cannons for 40mm Bofors whenever possible indicates how effective smaller caliber weapons were effective against any aircraft, particularly the armored SBD (unlike the A6M, B5N and D3A).
Speaking of which....
If you rely on luck for the outcome of any event then all you'll get us bad luck.
You have this mixture of luck, competence and incompetence that occurs in most battles. Sometimes one of them is dominant. I've always said that no amount of intelligence, foresight and prior planning can make up for abysmally bad luck. I have had occasions in which I had done everything right - and random chance in the form of - ships power - came along and fucked everything I had done into a cocked hat ...
One thing about Midway that you don't see later in the war - was the degree of American Courage. It's my understanding that the Americans normally dropped at 2,000 ft. and the Japanese doctrine was to drop at 1500 ft. At Midway the Americans were dropping at 1,000 ft and we will never know how many of them went in the water because of it. Wave after wave after wave of American Aircraft attacked the Japanese so that they had little respite. These aircraft were abysmally coordinated - the Americans demonstrating a woeful lack of competence in coordinating their attacks - but those aviators went in and did all they could to - get a hit. Many of them dying in the process. Torpedo 8, the only squadron from the Hornet that found the Japanese - being wiped out with only one of its men living.
Later in the war - you would see the Americans totally dominating the Japanese but ... come away with less than they might have had they pressed their attacks harder. They were professionals at that stage of the war, knew what they were doing - and had the motto - "He who drops a bomb and flies away - lives to drop a bomb another day."
Buell, Harold L. Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive Bomber Pilot's Epic Story of the Carrier Battles. New York: Crown, 1991. ISBN 0-517-57794-1
They were better at what they did - but they weren't going to die doing it. The Guys at Midway, they went in - to get a hit.
Another factor of luck not mentioned was that the search plane that found the American Carriers - had difficulty launching from it's Cruiser (Japanese used Cruiser Search Aircraft so as not to deplete the Carrier Strike Forces) - and then - after finding the Americans - this aircraft had communications problems. Had this aircraft launched on time (like the others) and not had communication problems (like the others) things might have been different. Also - had the initial report included the American Carriers - that could have made a difference - though we will never know - what difference.
So ... much as with the German Staff Plane landing in Belgium ... you had a number of things which were not done well - but - which in the end contributed to a victory. The Japanese CAP was kept busy all day because they had to keep dealing with a series of uncoordinated attacks by the Americans. In the last few minutes before the SBD's from Enterprise and Yorktown showed up - the sacrifice of the American Torpedo Planes kept the Japanese CAP still busy - so that - they were still dealing with Torpedo 3 and Fighting 3 instead of keeping to their patrol areas and being at altitude to intercept those - *_unescorted_* dive bombers.
Over all - the Japanese lost because of American Code Breaking and muddled Japanese thinking such as (but not limited to) the Aleutians "diversion" but - random chance did work in the Americans favor at the decisive moment and made Midway the stunning victory that it was. Can you imagine what the rest of 1942 would have been like had the Japanese NOT lost 4 carriers at Midway?
Anyway - I could theoretically write a book (lots of people have) on this battle so I'm not going to go into all the little things that happened but - I'll say that it was neither *_JUST_* luck or skill but as usual - a combination of both. Strategically - the Americans were at the top of their game - where as in this realm - the Japanese had better days ...
Oh ... and OMT ... again - this luck business can work both ways and we will never know what might have happened had Hiryu not been in a rain squall when all those American Dive Bombers showed up ... Things might have worked out better for Yorktown had that been the case ...
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Yes, the Americans at Midway were "just lucky" after the Americans did much to make that luck. SIGINT was luck--created by massive investment in SIGINT. Putting the "sunken" Yorktown back in service with a replenished (basically "all new") air group was luck--created by excellent damage control at the Battle of the Coral Sea, by heroic repair efforts at Pearl Harbor, and that third carrier was "sunk" twice more by Japanese carrier aircraft before being sunk a fourth time by a Japanese submarine. American aviators were more mavericks and when "The Book" didn't apply, there was a splash in the ocean where the book was consigned to Davy Jones. This "know when to disobey orders" started in American homes and schools decades before the Battle of Midway and created luck.
Japan contributed greatly to American luck. Yamamoto's complex plan was flawed, and the converging fleets provided minimal mutual support. At Coral Sea, one Japanese carrier was sunk (against the Lexington being sunk), one Japanese carrier was damaged (less damage than Yorktown, but it took more than two days from sailing into Pearl to combat ready again), and one Japanese carrier air group was so depleted that the carrier was ineffective. None of those three carriers were able to take part in Midway. Japanese submarines formed a picket line on schedule, but the American carriers had already passed that picket line before the Japanese picket line arrived. Imperial Japan had a shortage of two-way aircraft radios and once the fighters took off from their carriers on Combat Air Patrol, they were hard to vector at other threats, sometimes the entire CAP taking on one attacking torpedo bomber squadron. I could go through many other places where Japan handed America luck at Midway.
Prior preparation prevents p... poor performance.
Heard that one before! 😉
@@gillesmeura3416 truth bears repeating. There are many variations on the phrase.
Great video. So pretty much, yeah, the Americans were lucky (naval warfare in particular seems to be down to luck quite often), but they earned that luck. If they set themselves up to have an 80% (random number) chance of winning and they win, sure, they got lucky that they didn't lose with a 20% chance, but they earned those odds through proper training, intelligence, etc.
To add a quote to the issue of authors ascribing luck to the outcome of the battle: Samuel Morrison introduces his narration of the successful attack on the three Japanese carriers with the words "The Americans were about to be on the receiving end of a miracle."
In the battle of midway the Americans took a calculated risk because they had the resources to recover even if it turned out not so fortunately. The fact that the Americans won such a large victory was lucky but not necessarily for strategic reasons and this was known by the American military when they did a risk analysis. The Americans could recover from a loss. The Japanese could have never maintained a presence on midway had they won in a extended war. The Japanese were truly lucky at pearl harbor but had taken a bigger risk as they had no real way of recovering from a disaster. There luck ran out at midway and it decisively ended there expansion as the loss of ships and pilots was not recoverable. The Japanese miscalculated in there strategy of one decisive battle would end the war. Americans had a huge advantage in manufacturing and resources and just needed time to bring these to bare. The Japanese also misjudged American resolve.
Luck turned this win into a route