Midway was one of the decisive battles of World War II.īuried in the many, often disparate, accounts of the battle is the story of a unique mission flown by four AAF B-26 Martin Marauder bombers led by Capt. From that day on, Japan was on the defensive in the Pacific. Tales of heroism by Navy and Marine aviators, especially the torpedo bomber crews, only 10 percent of whom survived, would fill a book.īefore dawn on June 5, Yamamoto ordered a general withdrawal to save what was left of his fleet. Yamamoto’s fleet was harassed by AAF B-17s and Navy torpedo bombers that broke his formations diverted his fighters, and enabled Navy dive bombers to sink the four carriers with the loss of only the Yorktown and one destroyer.
On June 4, 1942, the decisive day of the Battle of Midway, a US force of three carriers supported by about 50 other ships engaged the Japanese fleet of 150 ships built around four heavy carriers. He held his three carriers, Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown (which Yamamoto thought to be out of action after the Coral Sea), and reinforced Midway as best he could with some 100 aircraft,–many of them obsolete. With that knowledge, Admiral Chester Nimitz judged correctly that the main thrust at Midway would be a carrier battle.
#MARKED MARAUDER CODE#
He did not know that, several weeks earlier, US Navy crypt-analysts had broken the Japanese code and knew in detail the disposition and timing of the attacks.
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