According to what I’ve read there was some ordnance not stowed in the ships’ magazines, but in racks on both the flight and hangar decks.
Don’t ya just hate when that happens. 
I agree with the accident assessment. No major battle plans survives intact after the first shots are fired. Victory often depends on luck, training, and the determination of brave men willing to risk their lives.
If the torpedo planes and dive bombers had arrived together, as planned, Japanese planes and ships gunners would have had to divide there defensive fire between high and low targets, decreasing their effectivness and increasing the chances of some torpedo impacts and more bomb hits. It’s much more difficult for ships to dodge both at the same time.
Plus, the U.S. Navy was not in the habit of sacrificing torpedo pilots in the hopes of scoring more dive bombing hits.
Well, certainly the hangar deck, and I don’t know whether there were storage racks on the flight deck, but it sounds reasonable.
I was just trying to refute the claim that general-purpose bombs would have been better than armor-piercing bombs because they would have gone off on the Japanese flight decks, allegedly littered with bombs and torpedoes from re-arming, as opposed to penetrating below and missing all that secondary explosion fodder.
Indeed. One reason the Japanese carrier aircrews were so confident of their superiority over their foes as they advanced on Midway was a mistaken belief in propaganda that Americans would flinch from danger and sacrifice. They knew from personal experience that delivering air attack against an enemy carrier fleet would require reckless courage; they did not believe the Americans possessed it sufficiently to deliver bombs and torpedoes accurately under intense fire. One of the more striking things repeated in Japanese accounts of the Midway battle is their surprise at, and admiration of, the daring and self-sacrificing way the Americans pressed home their attacks. Another in the apparently endless list of times humans have discovered to their shock that “the enemy is just like us!”
Well, consonant with the above part about daring and self-sacrifice, one of the American torpedo bomber leaders, John C. Waldron, fully understood how weak and obsolete their Devastator torpedo bomber had become by 1942. He fully expected his squadron to suffer severe losses, maybe even be wiped out, and said so. And his opinion was not iconoclastic; others agreed. So at least someone in the US Navy understood that the Navy brass was indeed “comfortable” sacrificing torpedo pilots, although not necessarily with the intent of setting up the dive bombers.
I think it was the Kaga that took three 500 lb bomb hits in rapid succession. Her hangar deck was divided into three compartments and each one got a bomb.
I second the recommendation to read Shattered Sword. It really shows how the Japanese strike was not even close to launching when they got hit. The planes on the flight decks were the portions of the Japanese combat air patrol that were being rearmed and fueled before taking off again.
It was a case of “run what ya brung”. The Devastator’s were onboard, present and accounted for. I’m of the opinion that ships crews were more concerned with being hit by a torpedo at or below the waterline than they were by being struck by an aerial bomb. Of course, “neither one” would have been their first choice.
While the TBD was considered revolutionary, in 1935, it was outdated by faster fighters and better, more coordinated, anti-aircraft defenses. The torpedo designs limited the approach height and speed. With a release point of around 100 ft above the water and a little more than 100 mph, the average torpedo bomber was losing (not yet lost) it’s effectiveness by 1942. They still resulted in sunken ships as well as a lot of “clenched cheeks” to the sailors who saw Devestators, Nakajima “Kates”, or Fairey Albacores heading toward them.
Choosing to send torpedo planes or dive bombers or soldiers up a hill is part of a commander’s job and they’re going to send them with the best equipment they have “at hand”. Someone, unfortunately, is going to get killed but there were objectives to be met. The commander’s job is to keep losses at a minimum but ships have to be sunk and bunkers have to be overrun if there is any expectation of winning the battle or the war.
Waldron understood that “torpedo plane only” would suffer severe, if not total, losses. If they were accompanied by friendly fighter planes to straf the AA crews and engage any fighter cover and dive bombers to divide the AA crews attention, the torpedo planes losses would be “less” severe. Waldon didn’t have much of a choice. Wait for the chance of a coordinated attack with planes that might not appear or attack with what he had. Either way, the much faster Imperial fighters would still be shooting down every plane in Waldron’s squadron if other U.S. planes didn’t arrive in time.
Except that the armor also meant that their carriers were slower and had fewer planes. The USN went for a perfectly acceptable trade off. Later, we found we could add a lightly armored flight deck with only minor trade-offs, but this was after several years of study and technical advances.
And the RN was faced with many froudn based bombers, whilst the USA was also faced more often with very deadly IJN torpedo attack planes, where deck armor is useless.
What would they have gained? It was a tiny coral islet-with no deepwater anchorage. Would it have been useful as a base to launch attacks upon Hawaii? Doubtful-it would have been a useless base-expensive to supply, and dangerous to secure. By late 1943, the USN submarine force had overcome the problems with the torpedoes, and the waters around Midway would have become a graveyard for Japanese capital ships. It is like the Japanese conquest of the Aleutians-gaining territory that was costly to defend, and of no strategic value to the occupiers. What good was launching attacks upon Dutch Harbor? Or Guadacanal-cut off from resupply, the Japanese soldiers were starving to death-some were eating rats and mice.
Well, I understand HMS Furious had such weak armor it was dented and had to put in for repairs after a North Sea storm.
Securing Midway would have given the Japanese a seaplane base to gain a recon advantage. That in itself was not a decisive advantage. The plan was to draw out the weakened US navy into an all-out confrontation, much like the American strategy at Leyte gulf.
Expanding from Attu and Kiska would have given the Japanese a base for long-range bombers that could threaten the aircraft plants in Washington state.
As noted, the Japanese never really wanted Midway for anything. It was a place to bushwhack the USN, nothing more. They were sure that if they wiped out our carriers, we would sue for peace. Having Midway in their possession would give them a much larger area of control when that happened.
Of course, it didn’t. 5 minutes changed the world.
In July 1942, Japan began constructing a large airfield on Guadalcanal where long range bombers could then threaten the sea lines between the U.S. and Australia, reducing the likelyhood of any Australian intervention in further Imperial expansion.
The Allied attempt to take Guadalcanal and it’s airfield was something of a “SUPPLIES” to the Japanese on the island. IJN reinforcements were sent from Rabaul and Truk to retake the airfield. Allied reinforcements arrived from Tulagi and Gavutu. Naval battles were fought. The Allies captured Guadalcanal. Australia shipping wouldn’t be threatened by Imperial bombers and there would be a shortage of long-range, land-based air cover for Japanese naval forces fighting in that area of the Pacific.
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Any chance of this happening? (Hitler thought the same about what would happen after capturing Britain.)
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No way in Hell. If the Battle of Midway had gone the other way, we would have just fallen back to Hawaii and regrouped. The war would have lasted a few years longer, and Halsey would have been proven prophetic.
A couple of people have mentioned Japanese “long-ranged bombers.” I guess that’s relative…keep in mind the Japanese had nothing comparable to the American and British four-engine bombers. Bettys based out of Attu and Kiska could not have reached the contiguous 48 states, for example. From Kiska, the nearer of the two, it’s over 2,500 miles to reach any part of Washington State. The Betty’s range is listed in Wikipedia as 1,771 miles, one-way.
Precisely. They were disciples of Alfred T. Mahan’s theory about the purpose of seapower, and believed the key was to bring about a “decisive battle” between the two great fleets. Midway was just a way to force that battle.
Didn’t go the way they’d hoped, though – in part because they thought the US would be scrambling to react, instead of warned in advance by the cryptographers.
The Kawanishi H8K Flying Boat (which was the plan) had a range of 4400 miles and carry a ton of bombs.
Could it do both? It was an amazing plane though. Even if they had Attu/Kiska, and could run bombing raids with those planes, I don’t think they had enough of them to be more than an annoyance. See, e.g., the “2nd raid on Pearl Harbor.”
Point taken.
After reading a bit about them, I guess I stand corrected on “comparable.” Looks like the H8K was pretty fast, for a flying boat…a few mph better than a B-17G. Also equivalent to a B-17 in heavy defensive armament. Half the long-distance bombload, but twice the range.
A fantastic maritime patrol aircraft; probably a good platform for bombing shipping, although I’m dubious about how well it would work as a strategic bomber.
They only built 131 of them in the whole course of the war, though, and they entered service in March 1942, so there probably weren’t a lot of those 131 built by Midway.
edit: scooped by Gray Ghost!
Yeah, I noted the production numbers too. Even if the Japanese had the entire run stationed at Attu and Midway, they’d be nothing more than an annoyance. Too long a supply line and not enough of them.
According to this article, armored flight decks were ultimately not worth the design sacrifices they required. The aurthor concludes that the unarmored open design used by the USN allowed for a larger CAP which was way more effective at preventing damage to the carrier. As to the loss of Midway, both sides knew that it was not that important as a strategic piece of land. The IJN did not understand the USN, though. They thought that the USN would defend Midway to the death as a point of honor. Therefore, they could force a decisive battle on the USN which they believed was too scared and timid to seek battle on its own. This mistaken belief about the USN was an important factor in the battle.
Keep in mind that Betties at Kisku could threaten our Alaskan oil tankers. This was such a concern to the US that we attemped to create an oil pipeline through Canada. The pipeline was an utter failure, a tiny 2-inch line that never delivered enough oil to even offset the oil it consumed in construction.
Well, before the war, all the US factories could turn out were ice boxes and razor blades. But then that’s Goering talking. Don’t be a Goering. 