Push into a steep dive.
Keep the target visually aligned.
Release closer.
Pull out.
The method exposed aircraft to anti-aircraft fire but improved accuracy dramatically.
Against a carrier, even one or two hits could be decisive.
At Midway, dive-bombers became the main instruments of destruction.
The victory therefore reinforced American confidence in carrier aviation itself.
Battleships had dominated naval imagination for generations.
Now ships could destroy one another without seeing each other over the horizon.
Aircraft carried the weapons.
The carrier had become the capital ship of the Pacific.
Midway Was Not the First Carrier Battle, but It Changed the Balance
The Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 had already demonstrated a strange new form of naval combat.
American and Japanese carrier forces attacked one another without the opposing surface fleets directly exchanging gunfire.
Both sides suffered losses.
Japan's Shoho was sunk.
Shokaku was damaged.
Zuikaku's air group suffered losses.
USS Lexington was lost.
Yorktown was damaged.
Coral Sea disrupted Japanese plans against Port Moresby.
It also affected Midway.
Shokaku and Zuikaku were not part of Nagumo's four-carrier force at Midway.
Had they been available, the balance could have looked different.
This illustrates another truth about major battles.
They do not begin on the morning listed in history books.
Previous battles decide which ships are present.
Previous repairs decide which aircraft can fly.
Previous intelligence decides where commanders wait.
Previous losses shape current strength.
Midway was June 4 because that is when the decisive fighting occurred.
Its conditions had been created for months.
Yorktown's Presence Was Itself an American Gamble
Japanese planners had reason to believe Yorktown had been heavily damaged at Coral Sea.
They could not assume she would appear near Midway so quickly.
American repair crews at Pearl Harbor worked around the clock.
The carrier returned to battle.
Its presence gave Fletcher another flight deck.
Another air group.
Another target the Japanese had to locate.
Later, Yorktown absorbed Japanese attacks that might otherwise have been directed toward another American carrier.
The ship's damage-control performance repeatedly restored functions Japanese pilots believed they had destroyed.
Eventually, Yorktown was lost.
But before she was, her aircraft helped destroy Soryu and later participate in attacks on Hiryu.
A damaged carrier returned to service had helped destroy the enemy carriers that might otherwise have attacked Hawaii again.
That is another piece of the Midway chain.
The Japanese Loss Was More Than Four Hulls
Aircraft carriers are expensive.
Experienced carrier aviators can be even harder to replace.
Japanese losses at Midway included not only Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, but aircraft and trained personnel associated with the carrier force.
The exact scale and long-term significance of Japanese aircrew losses has sometimes been simplified in popular history.
Not every veteran Japanese pilot died at Midway.
Japan still possessed many skilled aviators afterward.
The larger problem was cumulative.
Japan's prewar naval aviation system produced highly trained pilots through a demanding process that was difficult to expand rapidly.
The United States possessed greater industrial and training capacity for a long war.
Midway did not instantly destroy Japanese naval aviation.
It accelerated a strategic imbalance that would become increasingly severe.
The four carriers themselves could not be replaced quickly.
The experienced organizational structures built around them had been disrupted.
Japan could continue fighting offensively.
It did.
But the balance had changed.
The Americans Did Not Know They Had Changed the War Yet
This is another useful corrective to hindsight.
People on June 4 did not stand on American flight decks and announce that the strategic turning point of the Pacific War had arrived.
They knew they had damaged Japanese carriers.
They knew they were still under attack.
They knew Yorktown was in danger.
They did not know what Japanese forces farther west might do.
Yamamoto still had battleships and other forces.
An invasion force still existed.
American commanders remained cautious.
For a time, Japanese surface forces considered night action.
If American carriers had moved too aggressively west, they might have encountered powerful Japanese gunfire after dark.
Spruance made conservative choices that preserved his carriers.
Victory had to be protected after it was achieved.
That restraint mattered as much as aggression earlier.
The same commander who had launched aircraft boldly did not assume Japanese defeat meant every enemy threat had vanished.
Good command changes with the situation.
Hiryu's Counterattack Proved How Quickly Fortune Could Reverse
Japanese aircraft found Yorktown.
The first attack damaged the carrier.
American crews repaired her.
When the second Japanese group arrived, the carrier was moving again.
Japanese pilots believed they had found a second American carrier.
Torpedoes struck.
The ship stopped.
Imagine if Hiryu had possessed the air groups of three additional undamaged carriers.
Imagine coordinated Japanese strikes reaching the American force while McClusky's bombers were still wandering over empty sea.
The result could have been drastically different.
This is why the few minutes over Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu mattered so much.
They did not merely destroy ships.
They removed hundreds of aircraft and multiple flight decks from the immediate tactical equation before Japan could employ them fully against the American carriers.
The dive-bombers attacked future attacks.
The Carrier Deck Is a Weapon Only While It Can Launch Aircraft
A battleship with damaged paint can still fire.
A carrier whose flight deck is wrecked may become militarily helpless even while remaining afloat.
This was the vulnerability the American bombs exploited.
Carrier combat effectiveness depends on systems.
Flight deck.
Elevators.
Fuel.
Aircraft.
Ordnance.
Pilots.
Maintenance crews.
Command systems.
Damage any one severely enough and the carrier's offensive function collapses.
Bombs that penetrated Japanese decks produced cascading failures.
Fire did the rest.
The ships did not need to roll over instantly to be defeated.
Once flight operations became impossible and fires spread uncontrollably, their role in the battle was over.
The Minutes Around Ten Twenty Became Legendary
Historians often focus on the short period around the arrival of the American dive-bombers late in the ten o'clock hour.
The precise minute assigned to each bomb varies slightly among reconstructions.
The larger point is secure.
Within an extraordinarily short interval, three Japanese carriers were fatally damaged.
Military history contains campaigns that take years.
Midway's strategic transformation can be measured in minutes.
That contrast is part of why the battle became legendary.
A war involving millions of people across thousands of miles turned on a few pilots looking down through windscreens at moving decks.
But the legend becomes misleading if those minutes are isolated from the hours before them.
The dive-bombers succeeded because intelligence placed carriers nearby.
Because American commanders launched early.
Because Midway's defenders attacked repeatedly.
Because torpedo squadrons pulled defensive fighters down.
Because Japanese flight operations created vulnerability.
Because McClusky continued searching.
Because Arashi happened to be returning to the fleet.
Because Best redirected a few aircraft toward Akagi.
Because Leslie's group arrived at nearly the same moment.
The decisive minutes were produced by the entire morning.
Richard Best's Bomb May Have Been One of the Most Consequential Ever Dropped
Among the individual stories from Midway, Richard Halsey Best's attack on Akagi stands out.
His section was small.
The carrier was Nagumo's flagship.
The bomb that struck contributed to the destruction of a ship central to Japanese carrier operations.
Best later suffered serious health problems linked to oxygen equipment and exposure during the mission, ending his combat flying career.
He did not become famous during the war in the way later films might suggest.
He was one aviator among many whose individual decisions suddenly had strategic consequences.
This is one of Midway's recurring themes.
Small groups producing enormous effects.
A submarine delays a destroyer.
A destroyer reveals a direction.
A commander decides to follow.
A squadron leader recognizes an over-concentration on one target.
A few bombers change targets.
One bomb lands.
The war shifts.
Large outcomes can emerge from small tactical judgments because the system around them is already near a tipping point.
The Japanese Aviators Were Not Defeated Because They Lacked Courage
Another harmful simplification portrays American victory as evidence of superior bravery.
Japanese aviators at Midway fought aggressively.
Combat air patrol pilots shot down large numbers of American attackers.
Japanese strike crews attacked Yorktown effectively even after three carriers were burning.
Damage-control crews worked under terrible conditions.
Commanders remained at their posts.
Rear Admiral Yamaguchi chose to remain with Hiryu when the carrier was abandoned.
American victory came through operational circumstances, intelligence, tactical decisions, persistence, and effective dive-bombing.
It did not require the enemy to be cowardly or incompetent.
Understanding an opponent's competence makes victory easier to understand, not harder.
Midway was consequential precisely because the Japanese force was dangerous.
The American Torpedo Pilots Were Not Saved by the Victory
National narratives often move too quickly from sacrifice to success.
The carriers burned.
America won.
But the men shot down before the dive-bombers arrived remained dead.
Victory does not reimburse a family.
The destruction of the Japanese carriers gave their deaths strategic meaning in later memory.
It did not change what happened to them.
Torpedo Squadron Eight became especially famous because of the scale of its loss.
The story deserves respect without turning the pilots into deliberate sacrificial pieces.
They attacked because it was their mission.
Their weapons failed to deliver the intended result.
Their attack still influenced the enemy's defensive posture.
Both statements can be true.
The Americans Also Benefited From Japanese Search Problems
Japanese reconnaissance on the morning of June 4 suffered delays and incomplete information.
One scout aircraft launched later than intended.
Reports identifying American ships came in stages.