1942 Midway—Four Minutes Change Everything ..........................

Lecture 34

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n the 35 years following the Battle of Tsushima, big-gun battleships
had ruled the waves, but on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor signaled the dawn of a new era of naval warfare: The once-
fearsome battleship was obsolete, and airplanes were now the dominant
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anticipated would feature close-range slugging matches between rows of
battleships, would instead be decided by dueling aircraft carriers, separated
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one another. The most dramatic and pivotal of these carrier-versus-carrier
matches took place in June of 1942 around the island of Midway.

The Opponents
x The person who most shaped the Battle of Midway was the
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studied at the Japanese Staff College and was then sent to the
United States for several years. He attended Harvard University
and was appointed as a naval attaché in Washington, D.C. Back in
Japan, he commanded several ships, including the aircraft carrier
Akagi, and this experience made him an early advocate of air power
in naval warfare.

x Yamamoto was part of the naval faction that resisted the army’s

adventurism in China and Manchuria, and he opposed provoking a

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would be able to use their enormous natural resources and industrial

capacity to overwhelm Japan. When Japan nevertheless committed

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devise a plan to maximize Japan’s chances of victory.

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destroy or disable its battleships and aircraft carriers, freeing the