From Yank magazine during WWII
"In a recent issue of Yank T-5 Nebling stated that the man preceding him in the chocolate-bar ration line received nine almonds in his Hershey bar whereas he himself received only seven. We feel that we can clarify the situation by pointing out that through some gross and unpardonable error the other soldier undoubtedly received an officer’s Hershey bar.
—Copt. FRANK L KIRBY*
Bokor Gun. Hoip , W. Vo. "
Auto-complete: The second largest bane to civilization after O-rings.
Third. You left out Twitter.
Adding to this excellent post, there are more differences between the attack on Wake and a potential one on Midway than similarities. While both were similar sized atolls, Wake was not surrounded by a reef while Midway was. The Daihatsu landing craft were able to directly land on the shores of Wake while they would have gotten stopped at the reef at Midway. At Wake, they intentionally beached two large patrol boats to ensure that troops would arrive ashore.
Wake was attacked at night while the plan was to invade Midway in the early morning.
Wake was critically short of men, with prewar plans estimating defending the island would require 2,000 troops and they only had 450 men of the First Defense Battalion. With only 450 men, they were unable to cover all of the approaches to the island. Most of the individual landings of the landing craft were actually unopposed, in the dark and undetected by the defenders.
Wake lacked sufficient forces to man all of their heavy guns and machine guns. Midway of course had more than enough men, and they also were reinforced with infantry troops.
Wake didn’t have radar or other essential equipment, where Midway was well stocked. Wake was not able to be resupplied after war broke out while Midway was overflowing.
Sandbags at Wake were in short supplies where Midway also had concrete pillboxes and steel instant pillboxes. Wake had no barbed wire where Midway was completely surrounded with it. Wake had not had the opportunity to really prepare while preparation was continuing around the clock at Midway. Even the 3" guns at Wake used obsolete timers for the shells.
These are just a sample of the differences.
One similarity which could be expected is that the heavy cruisers off Wake held off firing after the Japanese had landed because the communication sucked and they were unable to distinguish between friend and foe. Many of Wake’s AA and other guns were able to continue firing despite being bombed and strafed by planes from the two enemy carriers. The Wake attackers recognized the difficulty of destroying the land batteries with ships’ gunfire and bombing.
I saw that 
One question: I’ve read that (part of?) the IJN plan was to attack the island and lure the USN carriers out of Hawaii into a picket line of submarines. However, due to the USN code breaking and preparation, the USN carriers had already sailed past the picket line before it was established.
What happened to that picket line? Did the submarines ever attempt to attack the USN fleet in the immediate aftermath of the battle? Or were they just recalled.
(Regarding earlier remarks about the B17’s range. The B24 for all its faults was a longer range aircraft. General Kenny used it to great advantage, even though he hoped to have B29’s assigned to his command.)
Well, first off, why bother? The invasion of Midway was simply to force the Americans out of Pearl Harbor. (The Japanese thought the Americans were beaten and unwilling to fight.) The ideal was to produce a WWE Smackdown sort of battle.
Well, the Americans came ought to fight. So there was no need to mount an invasion.
Next, naval forces do not attack fortresses. (Cite;
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Pashall and others) Airplanes attack fortresses. The Japanese were pretty well out of airplanes and the defenses of Midway were farily formidable.
The general idea is that sound strategy is force-centered, not place-centered. Once you smash the American Navy, Midway or any other places is yours at the cost of some wet shoes. But focusing on taking a place for its own sake is usually foolish.
The picket line wasn’t there to attack; it was there to observe the movements of the US fleet. Bad weather, bad timing, a huge ocean, and not a little bad planning conspired to neutralize their effectiveness. One of the subs did deliver the coup de grace to Yorktown and her escort.
[pedantic nitpick]
I-168, the sub in question, wasn’t really part of the picket line: it was tasked with observing and reporting on activity on Midway prior to the battle.
[/pedantic nitpick]
On the night of June 4th, as part of Yamomoto’s plan to salvage something from the debacle, her CO (Tanabe Yahachi) was ordered to bombard the island; however, after lobbing a few shells into the lagoon, she was caught in the Marines’ searchlights and Tanabe chose to withdraw. After Yorktown was sighted by Japanese search planes on the 5th, he was ordered to intercept and sink her.
Thank you. I’m surprised that the IJN didn’t plan to make more aggressive use of their picket line - especially since they had the “long lance” torpedoes.
Most of the subs assigned to the picket line were older and slower — which was part of the reason they were late on station — and may not have been able to use the Type 93 torpedo (the IJN didn’t call it the “Long Lance,” at least at the time). Also, unlike the practice employed by the U-Boats, they were assigned fixed positions and not allowed to move around a grid square. Which hobbled their ability to detect the US fleet, although that was moot because it had already passed by.
At this point in the war, though, the Japanese were making plans based on a grudging admission that the Americans were NOT beaten and unwilling to fight; the point of Midway was that the American carrier force remained a huge threat, especially given the events in the Coral Sea.
Yeah. No. The Battle of the Coral Sea was in May. Midway was in June. The Midway plan was already in the can by the time of Coral Sea.
Further, the Japanese were rather slow students during this war. The only time they really massed carrier decks was at Pearl Harbor. After that they reverted to elaborate plans featuring a large number of choregraphed moves that were supposed to happen in close synchronization under radio silence. (The case of Midway, the late departure of the invasion force, and the delay of the AL force.
Had the Japanese used six carriers at Midway, things would have gone better. If they did not want to commit the entire force, well then the objective was simply not important enough to bother with.
Piecemeal penny-packets and a lack of mass characterized Japanese naval operations throughout the war.