The Face of Victory

The U.S. had not merely won a great battle in the Pacific and averted a great disaster: The U.S. had proved its skill and might in a new form of warfare at sea. For, in the Battle of Midway, U.S. forces met and drove back the first full battle fleet, organized on the grand scale for modern war, which any nation has yet put to sea.

In the Japanese Fleet of battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines, the capital ship was the aircraft carrier. That fleet, built around seaborne air power, had to retreat before U.S. air power in a still mightier form: the land-based airplane, now come into its own as a dominant weapon of naval warfare.

Japan's losses in battleships and cruisers were great, but not decisive. Japan suffered a smashing blow to her carrier force. Yet it was not even that blow that made the U.S. Navy so jubilant this week: Japan still has more aircraft carriers than the U.S. can put into action. The U.S.--not Japan --is stronger, now and potentially, in long-ranged, heavy-loaded, land-based Army bombers of the kind which sent the Japs reeling back from Midway; and it was in this fact, rather than in the actual, comparative losses at Midway, that the U.S. saw the face of victory.

Of Things to Come. For weeks the Army & Navy had known that something Japanese was up. Seldom had the foreshadow of a great naval action been so clearly seen. U.S. and Allied reconnaissance planes constantly tabbed Japanese movements. U.S. submarines, in the role of naval cavalry, scouting while they raided, kept a steady check on the Japanese.

In Melbourne, Honolulu and Washington, pins moved and blue lights winked on Intelligence maps when the Japs shifted battleships, carriers and cruisers from the Bay of Bengal to the East Indies, then to home waters. Part of the Japanese main fleet moved southward toward a rendezvous at Formosa. Aircraft and light naval units suddenly withdrew from Australia's outlying islands; submarines were left to do the bulk of Jap work, take the brunt of Jap losses there.

By last fortnight the Japanese had amassed a great armada. According to the U.S. Navy's later communiques, this fleet must have included at least five carriers, three to five battleships, many cruisers, destroyers and submarines, with troop transports to occupy points which the advance forces had battered.

The U.S. Navy's Admiral Ernest Joseph King and the Army's General George Catlett Marshall knew that such a force would have assembled only for a major blow. The question was: Where? They had to apply what Admiral King last week called his doctrine of "calculated risk," placing the bulk of what they had where the Jap seemed most likely to strike, where the U.S. stood to win or lose the most. They calculated the risks and chose Midway. They put their own forces on the move. Then they waited. On June 3, at 9 a.m., P.W.T., the waiting ended--and the first Jap blow was not at Midway.

The Enemy Is Attacking. It was 6 a.m. at Dutch Harbor when the first Japanese planes appeared, the first Japanese bombs dropped. For their first blow, the Japs had chosen a spot in the Aleutians, the fog-bound islands which curve between Alaska and Japan. At Dutch Harbor, before Dec. 7, the Navy was perfecting a submarine and flying-boat base. Last week the Army & Navy had some defensive forces at Dutch Harbor, but not their main strength.

At first the Japanese struck lightly. Four bombers and some 15 fighters from a lurking carrier fired a few warehouses. Later scouting planes appeared, but dropped no bombs. Apparently all the Jap planes returned to their carrier, indicating little if any air defense at Dutch Harbor. Then the perennial rains and fogs of the Aleutians shrouded Dutch Harbor. The tense U.S. supposed that the Japs had hit & run, but at week's end, Admiral King announced: "Action in the Aleutians is still continuing."

It appeared that the Jap attack on Dutch Harbor was more than a reconnaissance, more than an attempt to draw U.S. forces from some other point. It was an end in itself, an effort to seize a foothold for a later drive on the inner Aleutians, the Alaskan mainland and their invaluable bases for long-range U.S. air assaults on Japan--or for Japanese assault on the northwestern U.S.

General Marshall and Admiral King had expected a foray against Dutch Harbor. They had not miscalculated the risks.

"It Is Too Early." The morning after the first attack on Dutch Harbor, another (and much stronger) force of Japanese planes assaulted Midway Island in the mid-Pacific, 1, 300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. Midway was worth a Japanese gamble ; only Pearl Harbor was more vital to U.S. operations in the Pacific. And, in Japanese hands, Midway could be a steppingstone to Pearl Harbor, Alaska and the U.S. mainland.

The Japanese got a mighty shock. Midway was ready. This much the Japanese might have expected: Midway's defending Marines had repulsed five lighter attacks. What the Japanese patently did not expect was the strength of the forces on and around Midway. Marine Corps fighters instantly took the air. On Midway's field were Army bombers, warmed up and ready to track fleeing Japs to their carriers. Anti-aircraft fire blanketed Midway's sky.

Jap planes and pilots littered the sea. U.S. fighters and bombers, pursuing the rest, found the Japanese main force. U.S. Navy carriers with their fighters, scout bombers and torpedo planes closed in for the kill. More Army bombers rose from Midway. They were not all. Tiny (1 1/2-sq. mi.) Midway's limited airfield space was no limit on the total air strength which the Army could throw into the battle.

Long-range Army bombers could fly from Hawaii and Johnston Island, refuel and load bombs on Midway, then join the struggle. Or they could fly laden from Hawaii, expend their gasoline and bombs wherever they found Jap warships, then land on Midway if that were possible. If not, they could come down at sea. This was war. This was the kill.

Carrier pilots could take the same, long chance. Whether or not they chose to, they probably had to take it: in battle, carriers give no radio fixes to returning planes and may be driven from an appointed rendezvous by enemy attack. A U.S. communique told of U.S. flyers adrift in rubber boats, of some under Jap machine-gun fire, of others parachuting down in the same hail. For both U.S. and Japanese submarines, the crowded water west of Midway made ideal hunting grounds.

Between the battle area and U.S. headquarters in Pearl Harbor there was no radio communication (the Japs might pick up messages). The Navy's Admiral Chester William Nimitz and the Army's Lieut. General Delos Carleton Emmons had to wait for reports from returning planes. The first reports were hard to believe. Cautious Admiral Nimitz held his fire. His first communique was a masterpiece of restraint. Then, on the second day, he announced:

"It is too early to claim a major Japanese disaster. . . . The enemy appears to be withdrawing, but we are continuing the battle."

"The Battle Is Not Over." Three days after the battle opened, six months after Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz announced:

"A momentous victory is in the making. . . . Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged. Vengeance will not be complete until Japanese sea power is reduced to impotence. We have made substantial progress in that direction. Perhaps we will be forgiven if we claim that we are about midway* to that objective. The battle is not over. ..." But Admiral Nimitz could claim, "with full confidence," that in the battle's first phase:

> Four (and possibly five) Jap carriers had been hit. Two were certainly sunk, with all their aircraft (about 100 planes, probably with others crated below decks). A third may have been sunk, in any event was badly damaged. So was a fourth. Most of their planes were also destroyed.

> Three battleships were hit. At least one was badly damaged.

> Two cruisers were badly damaged, two more were hit. Later, additional hits were reported on two cruisers--whether two of those previously damaged, the Navy did not immediately know.

> Three troop transports were damaged.

> One destroyer was sunk.

Many of the wounded Jap ships may never reach their bases, or nearer havens in Japan's mandated islands. So saying, Admiral Nimitz spoke from bitter experience; the Navy knows what it is to lose valuable, limping ships.

Admiral Nimitz announced that one U.S. destroyer had been sunk. He also said: "One of our carriers was hit and some planes were lost. Our personnel casualties were light." Navy men knew what these careful words meant: until the information is of no possible value to the Japs, the Navy will not detail its losses.

At Last, A Team. Successful exponents though they were of sea and air power, the Japanese had brought a major surface fleet into an area dominated by air power from the sea, plus air power from the land. On a hugely swollen scale, the Battle of Midway was a repetition of the earlier rehearsal in the Coral Sea, where Douglas MacArthur's bombers from Australia took the play from the Navy. But, this time, there was a happy difference. Between Admiral Nimitz and General Emmons in Honolulu, there was complete coordination before and during the battle. Luckily for the U.S., the Navy's sea and air forces, the Army's land-based air units made a perfect team.

What portion of the Japanese ships the U.S. accounted for could only be guessed. The U.S. apparently had sunk or hit most of the Japanese capital ships involved--particularly the most important aircraft carriers. But the Japanese had escaped with most of their lesser craft.

Among the great naval battles of the world this one was of a new kind. So far as the communiques indicated, the greater portion of the two fleets never got within a day's sailing distance of each other. Most of the action was fought by aircraft.

The Jap had suffered a crippling, but not a knockout blow. Said Admiral King in Washington: "I would not say that they [the Japanese] have been defeated yet; they have 'withdrawn.'"

* Pun.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.