It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits were enough to doom the ships.

Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was the cause of many WWII carriers burning).

The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway is astonishing. About the only part of it not due to luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers.

This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty good and shows all the luck involved:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_bZlk...

As I studied Midway, the conclusion I came to was that the Japanese made a big mistake: They had two attacks for two quite different goals going at once, and the two conflicted and were one too many.

The two attacks were (1) attacking the ground installations on Midway island and (2) defending against the US aircraft carriers.

For (1), the main goal of the whole operation was to take Midway island, but early in that operation the goal was to destroy the ability of US planes on Midway to attack the Japanese ships. The Japanese kept worrying about attacks on their ships from US planes on Midway.

For (2) the Japanese had tried to determine where the US carriers were but the effort failed, and, net, the Japanese didn't know where the US carriers were. The Japanese considered the possibility that the US carriers really were about ready to find and attack the Japanese ships.

Then, net, handling both (1) and (2) was too much and led to (A) having the Japanese airplanes busy with (1) and unable to respond to (2) and (B) giving too little attention to (2) until too late. In particular, the Japanese had to wait, wait too long, wait on their airplanes returning from their attack on Midway and have their decks full of those returning airplanes. Also they had to wait, wait too long, wait to rearm their planes with torpedoes for attacking US ships instead of bombs for attacking Midway ground targets.

Basically, either (1) for the island or (2) for the US ships was a long term effort, from getting ready, launching the planes, managing their fighter cover for their ships, recovering the planes, getting the planes below decks, refueled, rearmed, and ready for launching again. The Japanese were able to do well at all that for either (1) or (2) but not for both in the time available. The Japanese underestimated the challenge and threat of trying to do both at essentially the same time.

Great post. And one of the things that sometimes is overlooked and might be a bit overshadowed in your post was the adherence to doctrine that Japanese commanders had - that’s why the planes were sitting on the carriers in the first place.

You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack of essentially any success early on was a bit unlucky. But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a case of everything going right at a couple points for the US. Probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer to Japan than Hawaii was.

> ... with the dive bombers avoiding running into fighters, ...

The conventional narrative of the battle is that the torpedo bombers (coming in low as part of their standard attack pattern), drew off the IJN figher cover, using up their fuel and ammo. When the dive bombers attacked the IJN fleet, the figher cover wasn't in a position to stop them effectively.

The price paid for this "distraction" (which wasn't planned as such) was steep, the losses among the torpedo bomber squadrons was severe.

Absolutely. Also the torpedo squadrons arriving piecemeal due to mishaps in navigation and the USN lack of capability to quickly launch a coordinated strike, meant that the IJN carriers were occupied with launching/recovering/refueling/rearming fighters, and weren't able to launch their own strikes. So when the dive bombers attacked, the IJN strike aircraft were waiting fully loaded and fueled in the hangars, with devastating results.

Midway had it's fortunate moments, but IJN didn't have much of a chance from the get go due to the absurd USN ship production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M

What's missing from this analysis is that the US industrial base wasn't under attack while it was producing those ships.

If you play "what if" and imagine the Japanese had won Midway, and the US had no carriers at all, that gives the Japanese total control of the Pacific. The Japanese can take Hawaii if they want to, because how could the US possibly reinforce and resupply it? The Japanese can attack shipyards and ports on the West Coast at their leisure - and those would be defended obviously, but the attacks would greatly slow the progress of shipbuilding.

Fortunately for the US, they have other ports in the Atlantic. So okay, the US builds carriers there. Now the problem is, you can't just build one carrier and send it to the Pacific. If you have just the one carrier, the Japanese will be very eager to sink it. They'll have spies and recon subs so they'll know when it sorties. If you try to take it through the Panama Canal they'll ambush it.

The bottom line is, you have to build several carriers before you even think about challenging the Japanese again. That means you're looking at years - YEARS - during which, the Japanese do whatever they like. And when you finally put a carrier task force together, at best it's a fair fight ...you might lose again.

And don't forget, while all this is going on you're also fighting Germany.

> If you play "what if" and imagine the Japanese had won Midway, and the US had no carriers at all, that gives the Japanese total control of the Pacific. The Japanese can take Hawaii if they want to, because how could the US possibly reinforce and resupply it? The Japanese can attack shipyards and ports on the West Coast at their leisure - and those would be defended obviously, but the attacks would greatly slow the progress of shipbuilding.

So here's the big problem with that thesis: the attacks at Pearl Harbor and Midway stretched the IJN's supply and logistical capabilities to their utmost limits. It's very likely that in any actual attempt to take Pearl Harbor, the US would have sabotaged the port facilities to the point that it would have required months, if not years [1], to bring it back up to an operational status capable of being used as a forward operating base for striking the US West Coast. Oh, and this is Hawaii--everything has to be brought in from the mainland, which means you're diverting a lot of shipping to maintain a supply line while you're repairing the harbor at the same time. Which is going to be vulnerable to submarine activity the entire time, and Japanese anti-submarine practices were terrible.

Yes, Hawaii is the strategic linchpin of the Pacific Ocean. However, it is so remote that actually acquiring strategic control is extremely challenging. At the same time, Japan is basically running against the clock: the Essex carriers start commissioning at the beginning of 1943, and that's the countdown Japan is running against. Japan just doesn't have the time to consolidate Pearl Harbor into an advance operating base, even if it could theoretically capture it.

[1] Keep in mind that the US was still in the middle of upgrading Pearl Harbor to serve as Pacific Fleet anchorage, which was I believe a decade-long process.

From what I've read, Japan never had anywhere near the industrial capability to pull any of that off. Even landing troops and maintaining a garrison at all on Midway and the Hawaiian islands would stretch them to the limit - they arguably already didn't have the troops to spare to do that along with their other commitments in their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere plan.

Taking Hawaii at all is already outlandish, no chance that if they found a way to pull that off, they'd be able to supply it heavily enough to make it an active seaport, patrol the waters to the east aggressively, or carry out attacks against the US West Coast and their land-based defenses at a high enough tempo to impede shipbuilding there. Similarly, maintaining enough spies and subs to track ship sorties and ambushing them at the Panama Canal isn't in the cards for them.

WWII is ultimately a logistics war. Individual battles don't really matter that much, whoever makes the most stuff will win eventually somehow, and whoever is on the other side from them will lose. Japan was way too far behind on industrial capacity to have a chance. Maybe if they managed to pull off their Co-Prosperity Sphere plan without any interference and make the most of it, they'd have the capacity in 40 years. But that's doubtful too, since everyone else in their so-called Co-Prosperity Sphere hated their guts due to horrible occupation practices on the part of the IJA.

Yes Japan has almost no natural resources which is why they invaded Asian countries in the first place. But allied submarines and seaplanes were hammering their supply lines constantly to the point they could barely get anything shipped to Japan.

The war was a Japanese gamble and quite a few intelligent Japanese predicted it would fail.

That's the reason behind why Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Japan's invasion of the rest of China though was an act of militaristic hubris that caused a net loss in resources over 4 years and led them to invade the rest of southeast asia to patch this hemorrhage which then drew the US into the conflict with its oil embargo.

Japanese military planners in 1937 knew an invasion of China would be a waste of precious resources for little potential gain. But they were sidelined by younger military officers that wanted a shot at battlefield glory and ignored orders from above for a ceasefire after the Marco Polo bridge incident. And after the first battlefield victories started rolling in it became politically impossible to halt the momentum for continued war.

I don't understand how you could question American ability to resupply Hawaii but not Japan's, given the fact that the core point is that the IJN could not afford the losses which they were suffering throughout Pacific War while the US could. The supply lines that the IJN would need to reach out so far would have given American forces the overwhelming home field advantage while greatly diminishing the capabilities of the IJN. Conversely it was no accident that the US still endured terrible losses in spite of it's overwhelming numeric advantages. The amount of manpower and material required for such long distant campaigns is enormous, and it's no accident that Super Powers are defined by their ability to wage war far away from home.

> I don't understand how you could question American ability to resupply Hawaii but not Japan's

I'm claiming that if one side has a carrier and the other side doesn't, that will determine who can reliably move convoys across the pacific.

The carriers have such an enormous capacity for reconnaissance, it's hard for me to imagine a convoy sneaking past them. So if Japan has a carrier dedicated to the blockade of Hawaii, it seems to me that Hawaii is effectively cut off.

By contrast, the US would attempt to interdict Japanese supply convoys by using the only tool they'd have left: submarines. Better than nothing, to be sure. But it's much more difficult for a sub to find a convoy, than it is for multiple airplanes.

That is not how convoys work.

You're proposing using capital ships--ships of which even the largest numbers had single digit numbers--to escort convoys. This takes them out of the action for any other offensive or defensive naval operation you might want to use. Instead, you'd use destroyers (of which you have hundreds) and cruisers (merely dozens). This also lets you have several escort vessels per convoy, which is superior because two ships can be in two places at once which a single ship cannot.

> By contrast, the US would attempt to interdict Japanese supply convoys by using the only tool they'd have left: submarines. Better than nothing, to be sure. But it's much more difficult for a sub to find a convoy, than it is for multiple airplanes.

... Merchant and convoy raiding by WW2 existed almost exclusively of submarines attacking convoys. The Germans did attempt using surface ships to raid convoys, but their record was absolutely abysmal, and it's pretty universally agreed among naval historians that not building those ships would have been better for Germany.

Now, in 1942, the US submarine fleet was greatly hampered by the fact that the Mark 14 torpedo was a piece of shit that didn't work, and the Bureau of Ordinance refused to countenance those claims. However, the US was historically targeting Japanese shipping with submarines the entire time, and once the Mark 14 torpedo was finally fixed, the US submarine fleet would go on to be the most successful of WW2, having sunk virtually the entire Japanese shipping fleet.

There's even more considerations that I'm not including here, but hopefully this should be enough to convince you that figuring fleet carrier numbers are not going to determine the victor of a battle for merchant shipping.

> You're proposing using capital ships--ships of which even the largest numbers had single digit numbers--to escort convoys. This takes them out of the action for any other offensive or defensive naval operation you might want to use. Instead, you'd use destroyers (of which you have hundreds) and cruisers (merely dozens). This also lets you have several escort vessels per convoy, which is superior because two ships can be in two places at once which a single ship cannot.

The Allies (mostly the US) built lots of escort carriers, precisely for escorting convoys (be it "normal" convoys or invasion fleets in the Pacific), and AFAIK they were considered pretty successful and took some of the glory of winning the battle of the Atlantic. But yeah, you can, with some justification, argue that escort carriers aren't capital ships.

> The Germans did attempt using surface ships to raid convoys, but their record was absolutely abysmal

IIRC the German auxiliary cruisers (HilfsKreuzer) were considered pretty successful, as they were cheap and since they were just converted merchant ships with guns etc. hidden they could often get quite close to a target before revealing themselves. But these were used for picking off lone merchantmen, not convoys.

> it's pretty universally agreed among naval historians that not building those ships would have been better for Germany.

Yes, the German capital ships were an almost complete waste of resources. Those resources would have been much better spent on, say, u-boats and land-based aircraft. I guess the only positive return Germany got from them was as a sort of 'fleet in being', in that their mere existence forced the allies to commit their own capital ships to the area in case they turned up to attack some convoy.

Of course, had the Germans not built their own capital ships, the Allies would have also reacted, e.g. by not building or stationing their own capital ships in the area, and spending more resources on, say, anti-submarine efforts. So I'm not certain the battle of the Atlantic would have turned out any different in this case either, just even more bloody.

Hawaii is an unsinkable carrier itself. If the US lost its carriers at Midway, Oahu would have been host to a massive force of fighters and long distance bombers.

Any Japanese fleet unlucky enough to come within five hundred miles of Oahu would be subject to an unending stream of heavy US bombers like the B17 escorted by long range fighters such as the P-38.

There would be little chance of any surprise either with radar installations far improved and a vigilant picket line of US subs.

Landing troops without air superiority would have been impossible, and it’s unclear whether a Japanese carrier fleet could even hold off US battle ships if they sailed with US air cover.

To win that parley, land troops and push a large US Army force off Oahu is almost impossible. But even then, to raid the US coast with your remaining fleet, against an even more formidable air and sea defense many thousands of miles from any resupply would be a disaster for the Japanese Navy.

Yes. By the end of the war, the USA had more carriers than then entire IJN surface fleet. Never mind all the cruisers, destroyers and such. And the fuel to run them.

The Japanese had absolutely no chance to win the war.

I don’t think it was ever their goal to straight up fight the US. They just wanted the US standing navy ruined so that they could go about their business in the Pacific.

I don’t think they counted on a few early problematic outcomes, and the US will to enter a fight over the loss of a few soldiers at Pearl Harbor.

Their naval plans specifically aimed for effectively a second Battle of Tsushima. Basically, harass the American strike force from afar to whittle them down as they steam towards the Home Islands in a decisive, epic showdown, and once the Americans lose that engagement and see their entire fleet sunk, they give up and go home. (The Kantai Kessen plan).

The entire war, the Japanese were still waiting for the big decisive battle, no matter if they were winning or losing the various engagements, but they never got the big battle they wanted. Eventually, they did try to force it at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, although that attempt did not turn out well for them.

I sometimes get the impression that the last time "decisive" battles worked was during the Napoleonic Wars. And even then the Russian campaign played as much a role as did Waterloo. After that everybody trying to force decisive battles got wars of attrition wich were ultimately lost.

The person you're replying to literally gave you an example of a decisive battle, the Battle of Tsushima.

And there are many others, depending on how decisive you mean.

The battle of Sedan in the Franco-prussian war resulted in the loss of most of the French army, their emperor and government. A siege and a few more battles had to be fought before France surrendered, but it was a foregone conclusion.

The battles of Tannenberg and Masurian lakes in WWI were decisive and stopped Russia for up to years, and they never recovered in the north, their only successes coming against the Austria-Hungarians.

In WWII, the Bagration and Manchurian strategic operations were pretty decisive on land. Midway was on water. The invasions of the low countries and France, Denmark and Norway, Yugoslavia and Greece, (present day) Malaysia and Indonesia were decisive and swift as well ( even if they indeed resulted in a war of attrition ultimately lost to allies of the decisively defeated countries in question).

Except Sedan, none of these battles were as decisive, or at least not in tye same sense, as the battles won and lost by Napoleon. The Pacific war just really started after Midway, After Bangration the Nazis didn't surrender. The Low Lands and Denmark fell early in the war. And as you said, despite being turning points, these battles were part of modern industrial wars. They didn't end the war, nor did they force parties to the negotiation table. Aiming for that, as part of a strategy, against a peer adversary stopped working in the mid 19th century. One could even argue that the British defeated Napoleon by forcing him into a decisive battle, Waterloo, they could afford to loose but he couldn't. It does work so against adversaries that cannot hope to win, or afford to loose. E.g. Denmark. If Denmark would have been the only country to be conquered that is.

> They didn't end the war, nor did they force parties to the negotiation table

But they did. France, the low countries, Denmark, Norway all surrendered following said battles. The fight was kept on by allies of theirs, but the battles themselves were decisive with regards to the fate of the country that lost.

But neither battle was decisive for the second world war. And deciding a war is what decisive battles are about.

France fought on, the Free French forces were active on each front. Including the Eastern Front. Norway formed a government in exile, and continued the fight. Including the sabotage of the Nazis heavy water production. So no, these countries didn't surrender, as defeated countries did in the Napoleonic Wars.

the Japanese leaders who were US-educated (including Konoe and Yamamoto) absolutely knew that attacking the US would steel the Americans' resolve against Japan:

> In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

I wonder why the US doesn’t produce a bunch of WW2 style carriers with light aircraft or helicopters. I’m aware the US has several helicopter carriers, but I would imagine we could build dozens of the things for the price of a nuclear carrier. Obviously they wouldn’t stand up to a near peer competitor but they could be useful for small scale conflicts with far less advanced militaries, which seems to be the pattern lately.

Update: It looks like there are such things, called “amphibious assault ships”. Apparently there are 7 of this type https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-class_amphibious_assaul... and 2 of a more recent type https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-class_amphibious_ass.... It seems they’re about the same length and overall size as a WW2 carrier.

So that’s interesting. So there are 11 large nuclear powered carriers and 9 of these smaller type. That’s already kind of a lot.

It's an idea that gets resurrected every so often too, and I want to say that it's been revisited lately as some articles on DefenceOne and TheWarZone have suggested.

There was the idea of the "Sea Control" ship in the 70s that would have built on this idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Control_Ship

For small-scale conflicts however, it's somewhat paradoxical that a large carrier is what you need. Putting airpower over land from a carrier requires throwing a lot of weight into the air to put an aircraft with both an effective warload and a useful loiter time. This is coupled with a large sortie rate, as the time it takes to get a warplane on station is long and needs to be replaced often. That adds up to a lot of launches.

All of that is to say then that you need a larger carrier, ideally with a catapult and the powerplant to fire it often. Skijumps and STOVL don't get you that kind of range except to the beach.

So for any kind of land strike mission, you really need a big fleet carrier. But for sea operations, smaller carriers are looking more feasable, so the idea is coming around again. The America class as you mentioned is likely going down this path, and Japan's Izumo-class is likely going to go down this route as well.

The USAF is the "light carrier" fleet. One B-52H can carry 20 air launched cruise missiles.

I think this is likely the most underappreciated comment on this thread.

INJ didn't have a chance to e.g. invade California, but they had a plausible chance to redraw some of the map of the South Pacific, if the US had proved to not have the appetite for prolonged war.

Japan was certainly aware that in a long drawn-out war they had no chance against the industrial might of the USA. The attack on Pearl Harbor was essentially a gamble that by crippling the US Pacific fleet they could sue for peace on terms favorable to them. That is, the USA would leave them alone to continue their imperial ambitions in the Pacific region, and crucially, stop the trade embargo that had quite effectively stopped their oil supply. Well, as it turns out that gamble didn't work out in their favor.

I’ve heard that USA appeared quite weak in 1940, and Axis strategists laughed with disbelief when they heard the accurate industrial capacity reported. I’m not disagreeing with you —- Japanese military strategists were immense gamblers. I wonder if only a minority of their analysts judged it this way.

The story is like with USSR, the side thats outproducing is going to win sooner or later.

I've also read that while the IJN was quite good at carrier aviation, their lack of long-term experience fighting naval battles and focus on the offensive led to a severe deficit in damage control and efforts to reduce e.g. the risk and severity of fires from being hit, both in operation and at the design stage.

That's roughly my understanding, with the exception that AFAIK several of the IJN carriers and crew had been involved in operations in China during the invasion there, so they had combat experience (though AFAIK no attacks against the carriers occurred there).

As for fuel fires, yes, several IJN carriers were essentially lost due to fuel fires or explosions after suffering damage that otherwise would have been perfectly survivable. Perhaps most spectacularly in the case of Taiho, were inept damage control essentially turned the entire ship into a giant fuel air bomb, resulting in a spark somewhere setting of a massive explosion with catastrophic loss of life (and the end of the ship).

The USN lost Lexington that way, but crucially, they learned from this incident and instituted a system where they purged the aviation fuel lines with CO2 (cooled exhaust gases, presumably?).

Also IJN carriers had dedicated damage control teams, and a very strict command hierarchy. If you weren't on such a team, you were supposed to do your assigned duty and not do anything about the ship burning or flooding. In the USN apparently everybody nearby was supposed to help with damage control efforts.

IJN had also saved on money and used iron piping for the fire suppression system, as steel was expensive or in limited supply in Japan. This turned out to not be such a good idea when the shock from a nearby bomb blast shattered the pipes. Also said piping was not zoned to nearly the same extent as on US carriers. Not a good combination, as you can imagine.

For the disastrous consequences of inept damage control, it's difficult to top the loss of the Shinano.

I read a suggestion recently that there was a higher probability of sinking IJN carriers during the Indian Ocean raid [1] than at Midway. Any attacks on them would have been done by radar equipped aircraft at night with no Zeros flying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid

This was a very good read. So many communication problems. Ships or aircraft were spotted or encrypted messages were deciphered - but information was not relayed for various reasons.

It wasn't as lucky as it seems. The dive bombers were able to dive straight down, almost vertically, with no risk of being shot down by the enemy Zero fighters (since they were drawn away by a previous attack).

It's more lucky that they didn't attack the same targets, than that they hit their targets.

Also, not directly relevant, but I'll plug this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel=... it's great.

I agree, that video series is very good. (And, among its sources it lists the Shattered Sword book recommended elsewhere in this thread)

you seem to be confusing luck with experience and skill.

what was luck was that the scouting plane flying above tf-16 didn't spot them, and even there it's debatable since the task forces where there intentionally due to an overcast weather forecast and that overcast weather was what allowed them to remain hidden.

I may concede that yorktown being bombed twice was luck, or at least unlucky for the Japanese, but even then damage party skill played an important factor in the event.