3–7 June 1942 · Central Pacific
Midway
In about six minutes on the morning of 4 June 1942, American dive bombers wrecked three of the four Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway, all veterans of the attack on Pearl Harbor six months before. The fourth was caught that afternoon. Japan’s carrier striking force never recovered, and the Pacific war turned.
What happened
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned to seize Midway, a small atoll about 1,100 nautical miles northwest of Pearl Harbor, and use it as bait. When the US Pacific Fleet came out to take it back, his carriers and battleships would destroy what was left of it.
US Navy codebreakers in Hawaii had read enough Japanese radio traffic to know the target and roughly the date. Admiral Chester Nimitz sent the three carriers he had ready, Enterprise, Hornet and a hastily patched Yorktown, to wait northeast of Midway, out of Japanese sight.
On 4 June the Japanese carriers bombed Midway. Wave after wave of American planes attacked them without a single hit, and most were shot down. Then, at about 1022, dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrived together while the Japanese hangars were full of fueled and armed planes. Three carriers were burning within minutes. The fourth, Hiryū, struck back and crippled Yorktown before she was found and wrecked that afternoon.
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The battle in eight moments
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Times. All times are Midway local time (zone +12), as Midway and Nimitz’s report logged them. The US carriers kept zone +10, two hours ahead, and their times are converted here. The Japanese fleet kept Tokyo time, 21 hours ahead, so 0430 on 4 June at Midway was 0130 on 5 June aboard Akagi. That is why Japanese accounts date the battle to 5 June. The battle map shows both clocks. Sources often differ by a few minutes.
Colors. Blue is the United States and orange is Japan. The colors follow the US Navy’s own pre-war planning, which code-named Japan ORANGE and the United States BLUE.
Numbers. Losses and force sizes follow the standard modern histories. Map positions are approximate reconstructions, and ships within a group are drawn apart so they can be told apart.
December 1941 – June 1942
The road to Midway
Six months of Japanese victories, an American air raid on Tokyo and a costly fight in the Coral Sea decided which ships would meet at Midway.
Events before the battle
Who brought what: every fleet and light carrier on 4 June 1942
Japan had eight carriers at sea for the operation; the United States had three. But only four big Japanese carriers met the three American carriers and Midway’s land-based planes at the point of decision.
Plans and forces
Two plans
Japan brought far more ships, spread across the North Pacific in a plan that depended on surprise. Nimitz put the three carriers he had ready in one place, because he knew the plan.
Nimitz’s plan
Allies: United States
Assumed
Japan’s plan
Axis: Japan
Assumed
The forces in the carrier battle
| Carrier battle, 4 June | United States | Japan |
|---|
Each US carrier carried roughly 25 to 27 Wildcat fighters, 35 to 38 Dauntless dive bombers and 13 to 15 Devastator torpedo planes. Each Japanese carrier carried Zero fighters, Val dive bombers and Kate torpedo bombers, about 54 to 63 aircraft of its own, plus 3 to 9 extra Zeros meant for Midway’s future garrison.
Five more battleships and two light carriers, with Yamamoto’s Main Body and Kondō’s Invasion Force, never came within range of the carrier battle.
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War game. The Japanese plan had been rehearsed in a tabletop war game aboard Yamato in early May. When the umpire’s dice had American bombers sinking Akagi and Kaga, Yamamoto’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, cut the damage so that only Kaga was lost, and later put even Kaga back into play.
Machines and doctrine
Planes, ships and habits
Japan had the better fighter, the better torpedo and the most experienced carrier crews in the world. The United States had radar on its carriers, a superb dive bomber, better damage control, and Japan’s plan.
Top speed, approximate (mph)
Speed was not everything: the slow Dauntless sank four carriers. But the Devastator’s low speed, combined with a torpedo that had to be dropped low and slow, made it easy prey.
Head to head
3–7 June 1942 · hour by hour
The battle, hour by hour
Press play, or pick a moment from the log. Switch the view to see only what each side knew at that moment: where it thought the enemy was, and when.
Air strikes on the map
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Times. All times are Midway local time (zone +12), as Midway and Nimitz’s report logged them. The US carriers kept zone +10, two hours ahead, and their times are converted here. The Japanese fleet kept Tokyo time, 21 hours ahead, so 0430 on 4 June at Midway was 0130 on 5 June aboard Akagi. That is why Japanese accounts date the battle to 5 June. The battle map shows both clocks. Sources often differ by a few minutes.
Decisions
Make the call
Seven decisions shaped the battle. Each card gives you what the commander knew at the time. Choose, then see what he actually did and what followed.
0 of 7 decided
People
Who was there
Admirals, codebreakers and aviators on both sides, and what became of them.
No one matches both filters.
Show further reading
John B. Lundstrom, The First Team (1984) and Black Shoe Carrier Admiral (2006).
Edwin T. Layton, “And I Was There” (1985); Elliot Carlson, Joe Rochefort’s War (2011).
Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan (English edition 1955).
Myths
What everyone knows, checked
Several of the best-known stories about Midway come from early postwar accounts. Later research, much of it from Japanese records, overturned or complicated them.
What everyone knows
VerdictShow sources
Postwar account. Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan (English edition 1955).
Later research. Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (2005). The Japanese side, from Japanese records.
Aftermath
What Midway changed
Japan lost four of its six large carriers in a day and the initiative in the Pacific with them. Two months later US Marines landed on Guadalcanal, and the long American counteroffensive began.
Losses, 3–7 June 1942
Each measure has its own scale.
US killed includes three airmen murdered after capture.
What changed
What if?
Show sources and further reading
The US Naval History and Heritage Command publishes the official reports and photographs: history.navy.mil (opens in a new tab).
Intelligence
Reading the enemy’s mail
A small team in a basement at Pearl Harbor told Nimitz where the Japanese would strike, roughly when, and from which direction. Japan’s own reconnaissance failed to find the American carriers until it was too late.
Step by step
What Japan didn’t know
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How much was read. The codebreakers rarely read a whole message. They combined partly recovered texts with traffic analysis (who was signalling whom, from where, and how much) and with Japanese operating habits.
Not just Pearl Harbor. Station HYPO shared the work with the Navy’s codebreakers in Washington (OP-20-G) and the joint US-Australian unit in Melbourne (FRUMEL), which helped decode the water-shortage message.
Afterward. Rochefort was moved out of codebreaking in late 1942 after a turf fight with Washington. He received the Distinguished Service Medal only in 1986, ten years after his death. In April 1943 decoded messages about Yamamoto’s travel plans let American fighters shoot down his plane.
About 1020–1030, 4 June
Six minutes
Three squadrons of dive bombers from two different carriers reached the Japanese fleet at almost the same moment, more by luck than by plan. The Japanese fighters were down low, and the carriers’ hangars were full of fueled, armed aircraft.
Why the fighters were in the wrong place
Where the bombs hit
The timing
Enterprise’s dive bombers had flown a long, searching route. Yorktown’s launched more than an hour later but flew a more direct course. Neither group knew the other was there. Torpedo Squadron 3 had just drawn many of the Japanese fighters down to the water.
Why so few bombs were enough
Japanese carriers did most of their arming and fueling in enclosed hangars. At 1022 those hangars held the counterstrike being readied against the American carriers, plus bombs and torpedoes left out during the two rearmings. A 1,000-pound bomb exploding among them started fires no crew could stop.
American carriers had open-sided hangars that vented blast. After Lexington’s loss at Coral Sea, Yorktown’s crew also drained her aviation fuel lines and filled them with inert gas before each attack. Yorktown took three bombs just after noon and was under way again about an hour and a half later.