Miracle at Midway June 4th 1942 (75 years ago).

June 4, 1942. The South Pacific Ocean is on its way to becoming a Japanese lake. Since their first smashing surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Navy and Air Fleet have strung together an almost perfectly unbroken chain of Japanese victories and American humiliations. Now the empire of the rising sun has its sights set on a new target: Midway.

Since the Pearl Harbor pummeling, every battle further torpedoed American power in the Pacific. The Japanese Empire advanced through Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Burma—brutally.  Today, it is Midway’s turn.

Japan’s First Air Fleet plowed eastward through the swells at 16 knots, a sailing steel citadel bristling with firepower and multiple victories in a war less than six months old. There were 11 destroyers; a pair of ironclad heavy cruisers; two gigantic 30,000-ton battleships; and the carriers that blasted Pearl Harbor: the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu.

A few hundred miles behind the carriers of the First Air Fleet, the main body of the Japanese battle group cut through the waves, starring the deadliest, most gigantic battleship in the world: the Yamato. When anyone dared to nose out of port to help Midway, the enormous assortment of battleships, destroyers, cruisers and light carriers would send them to the bottom.

Including support vessels, submarines and transports for the assault troops that will invade and eradicate Midway’s defenders, the armada added up to nearly 200 ships. Perhaps most importantly, each one is sailing under a proud flag. Japanese crews had a habit of triumph. Everywhere they fought, they attacked. Everywhere they attacked, they won. Everywhere they sailed, they owned. Since slamming Pearl Harbor, the First Air Fleet sunk or smashed up five enemy battleships, a carrier, two cruisers, seven destroyers, and scores of smaller ships—without losing a single Imperial ship.

And tiny Midway was next. It was a truly miniscule coral atoll more than a thousand miles west of the nearest inhabited Hawaiian island—basically two spits of sand with a runway. Once the Japanese conquered Midway, they would control a strategic position roughly halfway between Tokyo and San Francisco, enabling the empire to launch offensive actions throughout the Pacific. Eventually, they could conceivably strike the American West Coast, putting the war right into American cities and homes—literally inside their living rooms, and not just on television. More immediately, the Japanese were determined to sink the Navy’s remaining carriers and finish off what was left of its morale.

On June 4, at 0400, Japanese bombers and fighters fired their engines and shot off their carriers. A couple hours later, air raid sirens on Midway began wailing, and men rushed to battle stations. The atoll’s small complement of combat planes roared into the air. They were antique, slow-moving Brewster Buffalo fighters, also known as “Flying Coffins.” They were massacred.

But now the American carriers arrived: the Hornet, the Enterprise and the Yorktown. The Japanese had damaged the Yorktown so badly 27 days prior that they thought it was at the bottom of the ocean. But instead, the Yorktown had limped back to Pearl Harbor for what should have been more than 100 days of repairs. They did the best they could in 72 hours and put it back to sea—with repair crews still inside, still fixing it. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

These three carriers had thus far eluded the Imperial Navy’s search attempts. They were the last hope for the Battle of Midway.

As the torpedo bombers live out their minutes-long life expectancies, 33 Enterprise dive bombers drone along over the empty blue space where the Japanese were supposed to be, dozens of miles away. With fuel running dangerously low, Lt. Cmdr. Clarence W. McClusky Jr. has to decide whether to patrol this area until the Japanese show up—if they ever do—or to begin an expanding-box search pattern until his fuel runs out. He does neither. Instead, he flies west an extra 35 miles, then banks northwest. His planes likely won’t have enough fuel to get back, they still don’t know where the Japanese are, and they might all run out of gas and crash into the ocean without ever firing a shot.

It’s an unconventional and possibly foolhardy decision. Or possibly the providence of an unseen hand. Adm. Chester Nimitz would call this “the most important decision of the battle.”

Then, in the deep blue depths below, McClusky spots a white wake. It’s an Imperial destroyer. Intuitively, he decides it must be a straggler, and follows it. Minutes tick by. Some planes have to ditch because of low fuel. Two minutes, five, ten ….

Then, it’s there. White wakes from Japanese destroyers, cruisers and three carriers.

They’ve found the Japanese fleet. Not only that, but McClusky’s dive bombers are blessed with intermittent cloud cover. Not only that, but the Japanese flight decks are filled with planes, explosive ordnance and fuel lines. Not only that, but all the Zeros are currently busy, chopping apart torpedo bombers down around sea level around the Hiryu, which is well to the north of its three sisters. Not only that, but 17 dive bombers from the Yorktown happen to arrive at that same perfect spot within seconds, by sheer chance—or an unseen hand.

Now America’s own mistakes and misfortunes begin to work for it. The next few short minutes would change the battle for the Pacific.

From 20,000 feet, America finally struck back. Yorktown bombers dive toward Soryu. McClusky and the squadron from Enterprise hit Kaga. The first three miss. The fourth explodes among the takeoff-ready planes on the flight deck. More bombs find their mark, one hitting the bridge, and the Kaga is ablaze. In just three minutes, Soryu gets hit three times. Fires erupt and set off explosions that start more fires, spreading through the ship. Akagi scrambles its fighters. Only three American planes dive at it—and one misses. But one hits. The other hits the midship elevator, its bomb exploding among the planes below decks. Normally, two hits would not doom a carrier, but the Akagi and its sisters are caught with their decks and hangars full of warplanes and explosive ordnance, much of it not stored away but stacked in the open due to the rush.

Three carriers. Three minutes. For an outmatched and heretofore underdog American Navy, the turnaround was stunning.

On the Hiryu, 100 miles away, Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi hears the shocking reports and decides the Hiryu will just kill the whole enemy force by itself if it has to. And he makes a good start of it. The Hiryu launches an attack wave of dive bombers, which strike the Yorktown 40 minutes later. A bomb pierces the flight deck near the number-two elevator and starts a fire in the hangar deck below. A second bomb goes through the Yorktown’s stack and into the boilers, snuffing them out. A third bomb pierces the other elevator and detonates near the ship’s fore gasoline storage. Stricken and burning, the carrier struggles along, then stops dead in the water as its repair crews try to patch it up. Again, the Japanese believe it is sunk.

By either chance or intellect—or an unseen hand—Spruance resists calls by his officers to retaliate immediately. Aboard the Enterprise, he insists on waiting for reports from the scout planes. He wants to see if the Hiryu has changed position. If he launches planes now, the target might not be there.

And it isn’t.

The Hiryu had launched its first wave, turned north, launched a second attack, then turned northeast. An American retaliation might well have missed the Hiryu altogether.

Now, the second Japanese strike wave finds a carrier, which they presume to be the Enterprise. It’s actually the Yorktown, which is underway again. Two torpedoes miss their mark. But two others hit home and finally knock it out of commission.

Meanwhile, a scout plane from the Yorktown radios in that it has found the Hiryu. Spruance launches his remaining 24 bombers.

Hiryu is now preparing for a third successful strike. Suddenly, American dive bombers come screaming down out of the wild blue yonder. Four hits, all at once. Fires erupt, spreading throughout the ship. Before long, Hiryu too is astonishingly burning from bow to stern. Just like that, Japan’s First Air Fleet has lost all four of its mighty carriers.

Soon after, the Battle of Midway was over. Four of Japan’s proudest and most important ships, an accompanying warship, 248 of its aircraft and more than 3,000 of its men, its indestructible morale and its dream of an unbounded empire were lost. After eventually losing the Yorktown, a destroyer, about 150 planes and 307 men, America still had a long fight ahead, but Midway would prove to be the turning point of World War ii in the Pacific.

Midway is just one entry on a long roll call of miraculous events that have preserved the independence and power and blessings of the United States of America—all guided by an unseen hand. source The Trumpet

Remember why we still call it “the miracle at Midway.”