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| Midway Atoll (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Benjamin David Baker
One of the most decisive battles of the Second World War could have ended up very differently. Be glad it didn’t though.
This continues a series at the Diplomat on significant counterfactual scenarios in Asian history. See the first installment on Chiang Kai-shek’s victory in the Chinese civil war and the second on the United States using nuclear weapons during the Korean War.
There is a story—probably apocryphal—that wargamers at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, have replayed the 1942 Battle of Midway many times. Apparently, the Americans always lose. Almost more than any other during the Second World War, this battle was won due to a fortunate combination of good intelligence, planning, and, most of all, luck. The U.S. Navy was far inferior to its Japanese counterparts in terms of numbers and experience but was still able to sink all four of the Imperial Navy’s committed aircraft carriers. This marked the beginning of the long, grueling allied island-hopping advance in the Pacific, which eventually culminated in Japan’s defeat over three years later.
The Battle of Midway remains a well-known and cherished memory in U.S. military history. In The Collected What If?, Theodore F. Cook Jr., at the William Paterson University of New Jersey, gives a great account of how there are several points both before and during the battle that history easily could have taken a different path. In June 1942, Imperial Japan had reached the zenith of its conquests. The Japanese Empire stretched from China to Wake Island, from the Aleutians to Indonesia. It had decimated the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor (although, crucially, U.S. aircraft carriers were out of port and escaped attack), conquered all European and American colonies in Southeast Asia, and overrun the U.S. Army in the Philippines. Although the Japanese and American navies had fought an inconclusive battle at the Coral Sea, in which each side lost an aircraft carrier, the Imperial Navy retained the strategic initiative.
The Coral Sea episode indirectly resulted in two advantages for the Americans. Firstly, it prevented the Japanese from occupying Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, which could have allowed the Imperial Navy to execute their planned Operation FS, the occupation of Fiji and Samoa. This could have critically isolated Australia, diverting allied resources away from other theaters in the Pacific. Most importantly, it removed two Japanese aircraft carriers from participating at the Battle of Midway (the IJN Shokaku and IJN Zuikaku which both had to return to Japan for repairs and replacement of its fighters lost at the Coral Sea, respectively. The U.S. lost the carrier USS Lexington, while the USS Yorktown suffered critical damage and was believed to be sunk by the Japanese.)
With the Imperial Navy’s southwestern offensive stalled at the Coral Sea, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku looked to “plug the gaps” in Japan’s geostrategic cordon. First, this meant securing the northern flank by occupying the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska. However, the most important objective was the island of Midway, which hosted a large U.S. military presence. Midway allowed the U.S. to project power throughout the Central Pacific, by offering anchorage to its submarines and aircraft carriers. If the island were to fall to Japan, the Imperial Navy and Air Force could turn that projection around, towards Hawaii and the U.S. western coast.
Read the full story at The Diplomat