Carrier crews below must identify friendly aircraft.
Deck crews must prepare to receive them.
Damaged aircraft may have landing gear problems.
Pilots may be wounded.
Fuel exhaustion can stop an engine within sight of the ship.
For McClusky himself, the attack had not been physically easy.
His aircraft was hit by enemy fire.
He was wounded.
Yet he returned.
Only later could the full meaning of his decision to follow the destroyer become clear.
Had he turned back earlier, Kaga and Akagi might have escaped that particular attack.
Could another American strike have found them later?
Possibly.
Would Japanese carriers have launched their own strike first?
Possibly.
History does not provide a second Battle of Midway in which McClusky turns around so the outcomes can be compared.
We know only what happened.
He continued searching.
He saw Arashi.
He inferred correctly.
He found the fleet.
His bombers attacked at the moment Japanese defenses were stretched in exactly the wrong direction.
The outcome followed.
Why the Destroyer Was Moving Matters More Than the Destroyer Itself
Popular versions of Midway sometimes describe McClusky simply seeing a Japanese destroyer and following it.
That summary is correct but incomplete.
The important act was interpretation.
Ships exist everywhere around a fleet.
Following every destroyer would not be intelligent.
McClusky noticed behavior.
The destroyer was making high speed.
Its direction suggested purposeful movement.
He believed it was rejoining something.
That is a different kind of battlefield intelligence.
The Japanese had not radioed the Americans their coordinates.
They had left a clue through movement.
Military command often depends on interpreting clues that look meaningless until placed in context.
A road suddenly full of empty trucks may reveal where supplies are being collected.
A bridge being guarded heavily may reveal which route matters.
Aircraft flying repeatedly toward one cloud bank may reveal the location of a carrier group.
A destroyer racing northeast may reveal where the carriers went.
The object itself is less important than the question it creates.
Where is it going?
McClusky's genius in that moment was not inventing a complex theory.
It was making a simple inference quickly enough to matter.
Arashi Was Trying to Protect the Fleet
There is an additional irony.
The destroyer had been separated because of an American submarine.
Its task around Nautilus was part of the defensive effort protecting Japanese capital ships.
Then it hurried back to resume its place in the formation.
Everything about its actions served the carrier force.
Yet the same movement helped reveal that carrier force to the Americans.
War repeatedly produces these reversals.
A protective action creates vulnerability.
A defensive maneuver reveals location.
A fighter chasing one threat leaves another altitude exposed.
A ship avoiding torpedoes turns into the path of a bomb.
No commander controls all consequences.
The battle is created jointly by both sides.
The Submarine That Did Not Sink the Carriers Still Changed the Battle
USS Nautilus did not sink Akagi or Kaga.
Its attacks encountered the technical difficulties American submarines faced throughout the early Pacific War.
Torpedoes could fail.
Targets could evade.
Destroyers could counterattack.
Yet the submarine's presence forced Japanese responses.
Arashi was delayed.
That delay placed the destroyer where McClusky could later see it racing back.
This produces another chain that no planner could have deliberately arranged.
Submarine attacks Japanese fleet.
Destroyer stays behind.
Destroyer races to rejoin.
Dive-bombers searching unsuccessfully spot destroyer.
Dive-bombers follow.
Carriers found.
Carriers attacked.
The submarine's effect therefore extended beyond anything measured by ships sunk.
Military history becomes misleading when success is counted only through direct destruction.
Sometimes the important result is what the enemy is forced to do.
Nagumo's Morning Has Often Been Reduced to One Alleged Mistake
For decades, popular accounts of Midway portrayed Vice Admiral Nagumo as a commander paralyzed by indecision.
He supposedly armed aircraft with bombs.
Then torpedoes.
Then bombs again.
His hangars supposedly filled with explosives.
American dive-bombers arrived at the one moment when the Japanese carriers were completely helpless.
There is truth inside that broad picture, but modern historical analysis has complicated it.
Nagumo faced real operational constraints.
The first Midway strike needed recovery.
Combat air patrol had to remain active.
Reports of American ships were incomplete.
Japanese carrier doctrine generally emphasized coordinated strikes rather than throwing small groups into the air piecemeal.
Aircraft below decks could not simply be launched through aircraft landing above them.
Carrier flight decks were crowded operating spaces, not unlimited runways.
Nagumo's decisions can be criticized.
They should also be understood.
He was trying to solve an information problem under time pressure.
The Americans had created that problem intentionally by appearing before Japanese planning expected them.
Intelligence had given Nimitz the initiative.
The morning's scattered attacks then prevented Nagumo from recovering it comfortably.
By the time the dive-bombers appeared, Japanese carriers were caught inside an operational cycle they could not escape quickly enough.
The American victory therefore cannot be explained by saying Nagumo made one foolish choice.
It emerged from intelligence, surprise, search, timing, Japanese doctrine, American persistence, and chance.
That explanation is less dramatic than blaming one admiral.
It is also stronger.
The Japanese Had Expected to Be the Hunters
This may be the deepest reversal at Midway.
Yamamoto's plan was designed to lure American carriers into danger.
Midway itself was bait.
The Japanese believed they possessed the initiative.
They would strike the island.
The Americans would respond.
Japanese forces would locate the responding carriers and destroy them.
Instead, American intelligence allowed Nimitz to position his carriers northeast of Midway before the Japanese knew they were there.
The hunters entered the ambush believing they were creating one.
That did not guarantee American success.
The morning demonstrated how easily the advantage might have been lost.
American aircraft struggled to find the enemy.
Torpedo attacks failed.
Fighter escort coordination collapsed.
Some Hornet aircraft followed a course that never brought them to the carriers.
Fuel became critical.
If McClusky had missed the Japanese force, foreknowledge might have produced nothing.
Intelligence tells you where an enemy intends to go.
Weapons still have to reach him.
That is why McClusky's search mattered so much.
He connected information to action.
The Empty Ocean Was the Real Test
History remembers the destroyer because the destroyer led to success.
McClusky's more difficult decision occurred several minutes earlier.
He had reached an empty search point.
That is when the outcome was uncertain.
Once he saw Arashi, he had a clue.
Before that, he had only judgment.
Should he continue?
Every commander faces moments when the safest action and the potentially decisive action diverge.
The dangerous interpretation of this history is that boldness is always rewarded.
It is not.
Many commanders continued searching and ran out of fuel.
Many pilots pressed attacks and died without changing battles.
Risk becomes wise only in relation to circumstances.
McClusky knew the strategic importance of finding the carriers.
He believed additional search was justified.
The decision succeeded.
That does not transform risk itself into virtue.
It demonstrates how command judgment operates when certainty is impossible.
The Thirty-Three Bombers Were More Valuable Than Their Fuel
Fuel limits aircraft.
Targets give aircraft purpose.
If the bombers returned without finding Nagumo, the United States might preserve the machines but lose the battle those machines existed to fight.
McClusky was balancing tactical preservation against strategic urgency.
He could not know exactly how long the opportunity would remain.
The Japanese carriers were preparing aircraft.
Once those aircraft launched against Enterprise, Hornet, or Yorktown, American losses could become severe.
The decision therefore included an invisible clock.
Not simply minutes of gasoline.
Minutes before Japanese attack.
That second clock made continuing the search more reasonable.
The Japanese Carriers Were at Their Most Dangerous Even While They Were Vulnerable
This is another paradox.
Aircraft armed and fueled for attack make a carrier dangerous.
They also create combustible risk.
Flight operations concentrate aviation gasoline, weapons, maintenance crews, hoses, aircraft, and equipment.
A carrier preparing to strike is simultaneously accumulating offensive power and exposing itself to catastrophic internal fire if struck.
The Japanese carriers beneath McClusky had not become harmless.
They were becoming dangerous precisely because they were attempting to prepare another attack.
American bombs interrupted that transformation.
Potential offensive power became burning wreckage.
This is why timing mattered more than raw bomb count.
The same bomb striking an empty deck can have one effect.
The same bomb penetrating during intense flight preparation can produce something far worse.
The Dauntless Became the Weapon the Battle Needed
The SBD's reputation after Midway was enormous.
The aircraft was not fast compared with fighters.
Its appearance was not futuristic.
Its name, Dauntless, became appropriate almost by accident of history.
What mattered was accuracy.
Naval warfare requires hitting relatively small moving targets in an enormous ocean.
High-altitude horizontal bombing against maneuvering ships had poor odds.
Torpedo aircraft needed dangerous low-level approaches.
Dive-bombing offered another solution.
Approach high.