Was the Battle of Midway Won or Lost? Considerations for Strategists

The story of the June 1942 Battle of Midway is well known and well told. It is portrayed as a victory of intelligence, a quintessential analytical success that produced a detailed warning that allowed the U.S. Navy to counter-ambush the Kido Butai, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s carrier strike force.[1] It is also portrayed as a victory of bravery and sacrifice. American aviators, flying mostly obsolescent aircraft, pressed home attacks at great cost, catching Japanese carriers at their most vulnerable while refueling fighter aircraft that made up their combat air patrol on their flight decks and re-arming their strike aircraft on their hangar decks.[2] Indeed, this historical narrative is so powerful that it not only has shaped our understanding of World War II in the Pacific but also our understanding of analysis, warning, and intelligence producer-consumer relations.

Although this conventional narrative remains compelling and firmly in place, historians have turned to the inevitable strategic questions about whether and how the Japanese contributed to their defeat.[3] Some have identified new minute-by-minute timelines of the battle to explain key turning points; for instance, why the Kido Butai was caught in a vulnerable position by American airstrikes.[4] While interesting, this sort of detailed analysis tends to enter the realm of friction and fortuna. Instead, what follows here is a more general evaluation of Japanese doctrine, operations, and thinking; that is, how good was the Japanese Navy at fighting aircraft carriers as they approached Midway? If intelligence positioned the U.S. Fleet for success, did Japanese operational decisions create a pathway leading to their defeat? Or, as Carl Cavanagh Hodge put it, “Was the battle of Midway won or lost?”[5]

The answer to this question is important to land, sea, air, space, or cyberspace strategists because it alerts us to the way history influences thinking about future engagements at sea or elsewhere. Midway reveals much about the connections among tactics, operations, and strategy when it comes to war at sea, connections that remain relevant today. Additionally, the relationship of empirics to theory has always been an issue for strategists. Colin Gray warned that it is important to exercise caution when advancing narrow explanations of battlefield outcomes, while Ben Connable has recently noted that our thinking is based on only a few historical events that might not be representative of emergent trends or even recounted accurately.[6] Instead of being portrayed as materially and operationally superior to their American opponents, were the Japanese actually a notch or two below their American competitors when they met in the waters around Midway? Even with the gift of over 80 years of hindsight, it is hard to avoid the observation that the Japanese made some odd mistakes. What should strategists garner from all of this when it comes to today’s maritime strategy?

Fire Effectively First

Both Japanese and U.S. aviators appeared to possess a similar approach to carrier operations in the run-up to the Battle of Midway, which reflected Wayne Hughes’s admonition offered years later: the key to naval victory is to fire effectively first.[7] Both navies seemed to adopt a “salvo model,” which treated carrier airstrikes as pulsed firepower to penetrate defenses and inflict mission kills on opposing warships. As Hughes suggests, the side that strikes effectively first gains an advantage because attrition can facilitate increasing de facto numerical superiority as warships are damaged or sunk, leading to outcomes anticipated by the Lanchester Square Law. That is, under certain circumstances found in naval or air combat, when multiple units can fire on individual units, combat power grows by the square of the number of units. Ten units (10 x 10=100) are not twice as strong as five units (5×5=25); they are four times as strong. Striking effectively not only knocks out opposing units, but it also increases this de facto numerical superiority; ten units are more than ten times as strong as three units, etc. In practice, matters are not so easily quantified or cut and dried: weather, pilot proficiency, damage control capabilities, and tactical doctrine can alter “effective” force ratios from those predicted by Lanchester equations. Nevertheless, the key operational and tactical consideration for naval strategists is to position their forces so that they can fire effectively first to make sure that the Lanchester Square Law is working in their favor. Americans recognized the situation they faced. As the commander of U.S. naval air reconnaissance for the Midway operation noted: “The problem at Midway is one of hitting before we are hit.”[8]

The air attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 would suggest that Japanese planners understood the realities revealed in the previous paragraph: the aircraft carrier was best conceived as a source of pulsed firepower that could “shoot and scoot.” Tactical considerations forced the Japanese to fire their carrier weapon in two pulses during their attack on Oahu: it was most efficient to form up about half of the aircraft available in a strike; otherwise, aircraft launched initially would already be running low on fuel before they headed towards the target. So, the Japanese had the right operational idea: they launched as many aircraft as practical for their rendezvous with destiny. Because the Japanese also caught the Americans unprepared to repulse an air attack and with ships at anchor, the Kido Butai faced little risk of a U.S. counterattack. Pearl Harbor is an example of the lopsided victory that can follow when one side fires effectively first and confronts minimal risk of a counterstrike to boot.

In passing, it must be noted that this “success” is an often-referenced example of a brilliant tactical evolution and exquisite operational concept that produced catastrophic strategic failure. In one moment, the Pearl Harbor attack eliminated the political prerequisites of Japan’s Pacific strategy.[9] When they turned the key to tactical success by firing effectively first, Japanese planners violated the first rule of strategy: do no political harm.

This same approach to tactics and operations emerged during the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval engagement fought without the opposing fleets coming within sight of each other. As much a story of dueling reconnaissance efforts as anything else, the main engagement began on 7 May as both the Japanese and American carrier groups launched pulsed air attacks against flotillas misidentified as the opponent’s primary carrier force. The Japanese sank the fleet oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims, while the Americans sank the light carrier Shōhō, which was with the Japanese invasion force headed towards Tulagi. The Japanese then launched a strike late in the day, which failed to find any target at all.[10] The next morning, both groups detected each other at about the same time, each rushed to put about 70 aircraft in the air, and both arrived over the opponent nearly simultaneously. The Americans heavily damaged the carrier Shōkaku and destroyed so many aircraft on the carrier Zuikaku that the Japanese deemed it largely mission-ineffective. The Japanese hit the two American carriers in the battle: Yorktown, which made it back to Pearl Harbor, and the Lexington, which exploded and sank in the Coral Sea.[11] The fact that neither side remained combat effective after suffering the other’s pulsed attack is noteworthy, highlighting the impact of firing effectively first.

The Battle of Midway as Pulsed Firepower

Three lessons were offered by the battle of the Coral Sea: (1) find the enemy first; (2) attack effectively first; and then, if possible, (3) capitalize on Lanchester’s insights by launching subsequent firepower pulses. The Americans took these lessons on board in the run-up to Midway. Using their direct experience at Coral Sea, along with the experience gained in an earlier series of carrier raids conducted against Japanese positions in the Marshall and Gilbert islands, Wake Island, Marcus Island, and Salamaua-Lae (New Guinea), the Yorktown’s carrier air wing worked to refine tactics to concentrate airstrikes and penetrate defenses, and the Yorktown itself underwent emergency repairs in a few days, instead of the initial months-long repair estimate. For that matter, Americans jury-rigged weapons on several types of aircraft so they could generate more firepower against Japanese warships.

In contrast, the Japanese withdrew Shōkaku from service for months of repairs, and Zuikaku was sidelined so that it could reform its air wing instead of reconstituting it with replacement pilots. While Shōkaku’s participation in the return to the Hawaiian Islands was never in the cards, they might have paired one of the two medium carriers attached to diversionary operations in the Aleutians (Junyo or Ryujo) and the new light carrier Zuiho with Zuikaku to give the Kido Butai overwhelming combat power. Fortunately, from the American perspective, Japanese planners apparently underestimated the task at hand.[12] As a result, the Japanese only moved on Midway with four, not six carriers, which roughly evened the balance between opposing forces.[13] For decades, historians have offered various cultural and bureaucratic explanations for the extremely detrimental decision to leave available carriers behind, which ultimately culminated in the concept “victory disease” (senshōbyō), a term coined by the Japanese themselves to describe their thinking before Midway.[14]

Another manifestation of this victory disease was the Japanese willingness to endure repeated air attacks during the operation. The U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander, Admiral Chester Nimitz, hoped that a series of land-based airstrikes and submarine attacks would whittle down the size of the Japanese force before it got within reach of American carriers lying in wait northeast of Midway. While the Midway narrative focuses on the carrier-launched dive bomber attacks that destroyed three ships of the Kido Butai, that attack was the 7th air strike to reach the Japanese.

The invasion force was initially spotted about 500 miles south-west of Midway on the morning of 3 June 1942, and the Americans attacked immediately:

1. B-17 four-engine bombers from Oahu attacked the invasion force from high altitude at about 1500 on 3 June, scoring no hits.
2. Four PBY “flying boats” from Oahu hit the oiler Akebono Maru with a jury-rigged torpedo around 0100 on the morning of 4 June.

By about 0530 on 4 June, a PBY from Midway spotted the Kido Butai. Reminiscent of events on the Coral Sea, the Americans on Midway, and Japanese carriers launched simultaneous airstrikes against each other:

3. At about 0719 six Navy TBF torpedo bombers and four Army B-26 Marauders (with jury-rigged torpedoes) attacked the Akagi. No hits were scored, but one B-26 executed a strafing run across the length of the ship, and Lieutenant James Muri and his crew almost managed to crash their damaged B-26 into the bridge of the Akagi.
4. At about 0745, 16 Marine Dauntless dive bombers attacked the carrier Hiryu, with no hits, only near misses.
5. At about 0755, 17 B-17s from Midway bombed Soryu and Kaga from high altitude, scoring no hits.
6. At about 0800, 11 Marine Vindicator bombers from Midway attacked Soryu and Kaga, scoring no hits.[15]

As the Americans continued to throw the kitchen sink of obsolete aircraft, malfunctioning weapons (torpedoes), inexperienced operators, flawed tactics (high altitude bombing), and experimental contraptions at the Japanese, the mood among senior officers aboard the Kido Butai began to change. By about 0820, American carriers were reported in the vicinity. The commander of the Kido Butai, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, rattled by his near-death experience on the bridge of the Akagi, equivocated: arm aircraft with high explosives for a second strike on Midway or load armor-piercing ordnance to go after the American carriers? In the event, both types of ordnance littered his hangars when the seventh, and effective, American strike arrived overhead, starting at about 0915.

A Battle Won? A Battle Lost?

The Japanese clearly were not setting themselves up for success when Shōkaku and Zuikaku fell out of the Midway operation. A six-carrier Kido Butai would have provided the tactical options Vice Admiral Nagumo required, more striking power, and probably an increase in the rate of pulsed fire generated by the Japanese flotilla. This opened the door to American victory. What kept that door wide open was the Japanese failure to (1) find the enemy first, (2) attack effectively first, and to (3) capitalize on Lanchester’s insights by launching subsequent firepower pulses. This left them open to repeated U.S. efforts to launch a devastating air strike. Airstrike #4, undertaken by Marine dive bombers from Midway, for instance, came close to hitting the Hiryu. The Japanese seemed to ignore the realities of carrier warfare and left themselves open to attack and disaster. It is safe to say that they enabled American victory.

Midway still represents a quintessential intelligence success, but in a maritime setting, strategists should view this intelligence success as contributing greatly to the tactical and operational requirement of finding the enemy first. Intelligence allowed the Americans to concentrate near Midway, which further capitalized on the Japanese decision to go with a four-carrier Kido Butai. That smaller flotilla and apparent willingness to shrug off repeated air attacks gave the Americans a 7 to 1 advantage in pulsed fires, which overcame Japanese defenses and luck.

Conclusion

Today, the exchange models that capture the pulsed firepower of carrier and missile operations remain similar to those operating during the Battle of Midway, although one hopes that analysis of “swarmed” firepower is also underway.[16] For strategists, this suggests that maritime operations are always shaped by the need to position ships for a potential fight. Crises at sea can become a game of cat and mouse as both sides attempt to find opposing flotillas and maneuver and mass to fire effectively first.

Bringing opposing naval forces into tactical proximity is a risky evolution because it creates “ratcheting effects” as pressures to “use it or lose it” increase. U.S. commanders on the eve of Midway, for instance, recognized that they courted disaster if the Japanese managed to strike first. Those same consequences follow at the outset of hostilities. It is not entirely clear that political leaders understand that maritime standoffs could lead to inadvertent escalation.[17] There is a persistent risk that the urgency of tactical pressures might push events beyond the scope of what is intended in capitals thousands of miles away. It is also not obvious if everyone understands that formations subjected to even one pulsed attack can be rendered ineffective, or that when ships are sunk, it can lead to hundreds or even thousands of casualties promptly.[18]

A maritime deterrence strategy would attempt to capture these ratcheting effects to increase the shared risks that would follow during a crisis or actual engagement. In other words, if opponents cannot control the potential risks inherent in crossing red lines, they are less likely to cross them. By contrast, if weapons, operations, strategies, or stratagems are available to control risks, deterrence failure is increasingly likely.[19] The Japanese, for example, believed they could control the risks inherent in attacking Pearl Harbor. Their reasoning was flawed – they believed that the Americans would reach a negotiated settlement rather than fight over territory that was not important to them. Generating risk, the potential for “entanglement” leading to horizontal and vertical escalation, is one way that maritime forces can contribute to deterrence.

One might decide to run these risks for political considerations. Recent U.S. naval operations in the Red Sea are a case in point. Commanders understood that lingering in harm’s way was not in the best naval tradition. If Naval forces cannot silence land-based fires, they would be well advised to move away from the area. But U.S. Navy commanders took these risks for broader national security objectives, which were costly in terms of defensive munitions expended and aircraft losses due to accidents and friendly fire.[20]

The tactical and operational exigencies that create risk during crises and war at sea are displayed during the Battle of Midway. Nevertheless, the traditional narrative that highlights the role of intelligence during the battle pushed these considerations into the background. As Gray suggests, focusing on just one aspect of a conflict can provide an inaccurate picture of the dynamics that shape victory and defeat.[21] U.S. Naval intelligence did its part to set the stage for the American victory at Midway, but Japanese actions also contributed to the failure of their Central Pacific strategy.