The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History)

by Craig L. Symonds

  All history is the product of human action, and biographies of the major players can offer invaluable insight into their motivations. Between them, Thomas B. Buell and E. B. “Ned” Potter wrote biographies of four of the principal decision makers at Midway. In the interest of full disclosure, I need to report that both men were personal friends. I served with Tom Buell when we were both in the Navy, and a few years ago I undertook to complete a project he had begun just before he died, the result of which is my book Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Ned Potter was a colleague and friend in the History Department at the Naval Academy for more than twenty years. Buell wrote Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980) and The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), both excellent books. Potter’s Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976) is a model of the historian’s art, save for the frustrating fact that in lieu of footnotes Potter appended short paragraphs summarizing the sources of information for each chapter. Potter is also the author of the best book on William Halsey, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), though Halsey’s own autobiography (with J. Bryan III), Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), is not to be missed. Frank Jack Fletcher, long dismissed as a secondary figure in the American victory, did not get his proper due until John B. Lundstrom’s detailed and authoritative Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006). On the Japanese side, Hiroyuki Agawa’s biography of Yamamoto (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969), which was distributed in the United States by Harper & Row as The Reluctant Admiral (1979), is especially noteworthy.

  The Internet has made available, at the click of a mouse, a wide variety of sources that scholars and students would otherwise have to travel long distances to read. Many veterans as well as students of the Battle of Midway are contributors to the website “The Battle of Midway Roundtable” (http://www.midway42.org), founded by William Price and now run by Ronald W. Russell, both of them knowledgeable and authoritative students of the battle in their own right. On this website, veterans and students of the battle share questions and recollections with one another. Many of these firsthand accounts are as fresh today as when they were first recalled, or for that matter, when their narrators participated in the most consequential naval battle of the twentieth century.

  In addition, the following sites are also valuable: “Naval History and Heritage Command,” at http://www.history.navy.mil/; and “HyperWar,” at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar. These contain many of the original after-action reports (some in facsimile format) and other original and secondary sources. When possible, notes indicate both the archival source and also the Internet address for the online source.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Manuscript Sources

  American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie

  Frank Jack Fletcher Papers

  Husband Kimmel Papers

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York

  Map Room Files

  National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

  CINCPAC Files, Record Group 38

  Record Group 457

  Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island

  Richard W. Bates Papers

  Ernest J. King Papers

  Edwin T. Layton Papers

  Raymond A. Spruance Papers

  Operational Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.

  Ernest J. King Papers

  Walter Lord Collection

  Marc A. Mitscher Papers

  Chester W. Nimitz Diary #1 [Serial letters to Mrs. Nimitz], Dec. 20, 1941–May 7, 1945

  Papers of FADM Chester W. Nimitz [“Gray Book”]

  Raymond A. Spruance Papers

  University of Maryland, Hornbake Library, College Park

  Gordon Prange Papers

  Oral Histories and Interviews

  National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas

  Richard H. Best Interview (Aug. 11, 1995)

  Judson Brodie Interview (March 13, 2007)

  Richard Byram Interview (April 14, 2005)

  Richard E. Cole Interview (Aug. 8, 2000)

  Eugene Conklin Interview (March 17, 2007)

  Douglas C. Davis Interview (Oct. 1, 2000)

  Albert Earnest Interview (July 20, 2003)

  Kaname Harada Interview (Oct. 7, 2007)

  Byron K. Henry Interview (June 13, 2002)

  John V. Hillard Interview (Feb. 28, 2002)

  Henry Hise Interview (Sept. 30, 2000)

  Lewis R. Hopkins Interview (Jan 15, 2004)

  Jack Kleiss Interview (Sept. 29, 2000)

  Sam Laser Interview (April 9, 2003)

  Edwin T. Layton Interview (n.d.)

  James H. Macia Interview (July 21, 2000)

  Gilbert Martin and Paul McKay Interview (Sept. 2000)

  Willard “Robbie” Robinson Interview (July 20, 2003)

  William G. Roy Interview (June 6, 2003)

  Ellis Skidmore Interview (June 3, 2005)

  Floyd Thorn Interview (Aug. 14, 2000)

  Richard Toler Interview (Nov. 11, 2003)

  John E. Underwood Interview (Feb. 8, 2007)

  Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island

  Charles F. Barber Interview (March 1, 1996)

  Francis Fabian Interview (Feb. 6, 2009)

  Peter E. Karetka Interview (May 26, 2010)

  Hugh Moure Interview (July 30, 2008)

  John C. Powell Interview (Oct. 8 and 15, 2008)

  Operational Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command

  Noel Gayler Interview (Feb. 15, 2002)

  U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, Naval Academy, Nimitz Library (Special Collections), Annapolis, MD

  Slade Cutter Oral History (June 17, 1985)

  John F. Davidson Oral History (Sept. 4, 1985)

  James Doolittle Oral History (Aug. 3, 1987)

  Thomas Dyer Oral History (Sept. 14, 1983)

  Earnest Eller Oral History (Aug. 25, 1977)

  Stephen Jurika Oral History (1973)

  Edwin Layton Oral History (May 30 and 31, 1970)

  Henry “Hank” Miller Oral History (May 23, 1973)

  Joseph Rochefort Oral History (Aug. 14, Sept. 21, and Oct. 5, 1969)

  Paul Stroop Oral History (Sept. 13 and 14, 1969)

  John S. Thach Oral History (Nov. 6, 1970)

  Joseph M. Worthington Oral History (June 7, 1972)

  “The Battle of Midway: Transcripts of Recorded Interviews” by Major Bowen P. Weisheit, USMCR (Ret.), Nimitz Library, USNA.

  Ben Tappan Interview (1981)

  Samuel G. Mitchell Interview (1981)

  Richard Gray Interview (1981)

  Johnny A. Talbot Interview (March 31, 1981)

  Humphrey L. Tallman Interview (April 4, 1982)

  John E. McInerny Interview (1982)

  Walter Rodee Interview (1982)

  T. T. Guillory Interview (March 14, 23, and 24, 1983)

  Jerry Crawford Interview (Aug. 28, 1984)

  Interviews conducted by the author

  John C. “Jack” Crawford Interview (May 5, 2005)

  William D. Houser Interview (May 5, 2005)

  William Price Interview (May 4, 2010)

  Donald “Mac” Showers Interview (May 4, 2010)

  Official Records and Published Collections

  Goldstein, Donald M., and Katherine V. Dillon, eds. The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2004.

  ———, eds. The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1993.

  Kimball, Warren F., ed. Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence. 3 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

&
nbsp; Loewenheim, Francis L., Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds. Roosevelt and Churchill, Their Secret Wartime Correspondence. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975.

  Office of Naval Intelligence, Combat Narrative: The Battle of the Coral Sea. Washington, DC: Office of Naval Intelligence, United States Navy, 1943.

  OP-20G File of CINCPAC Intelligence Bulletins (March 16–June 1, 1942), Special Collections, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.

  Spector, Ronald H., ed. Listening to the Enemy: Key Documents on the Role of Communications Intelligence in the War with Japan. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1988.

  Traffic Intelligence Summaries, Combat Intelligence Unit, Fourteenth Naval District (July 16, 1941–June 30, 1942). 3 vols. Special Collections, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.

  U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Naval Affairs. Hearings before the Committee on Naval Affairs on the Nomination of William Franklin Knox to be Secretary of the Navy. 76th Cong., 3rd sess., 1940.

  ———. Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack. 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945.

  U.S. Navy Action and Operational Reports from World War II, Pacific Theater, Part I: CINCPAC (16 microfilm reels). Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America.

  U.S. Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence. The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947. (Translation of “CINC First Air Fleet Detailed Battle Report No. 6.” Published in ONI Review 5 (May 1947).

  Primary Sources and Memoirs

  Bates, Richard W. The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1 to May 11 Inclusive, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Views. Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1947.

  ———. The Battle of Midway Including the Aleutian Phase, June 3 to June 14, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Analysis. Newport, RI: U.S. Naval War College, 1948.

  Buell, Harold L. Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive-Bomber Pilot’s Epic Story of the Carrier Battles. New York: Orion Books, 1991.

  Clark, J. J., with Clark G. Reynolds. Carrier Admiral. New York: McKay, 1967.

  Doolittle, James H. “Jimmy,” with Carroll V. Glines. I Could Never Be So Lucky Again: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

  Evans, David C., ed. The Japanese Navy in World War II: In the Words of Former Japanese Naval Officers. Translated by David C. Evans. 2nd ed. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986.

  Fisher, Clayton E. Hooked: Tales and Adventures of a Tailhook Warrior. Denver: Outskirts, 2009.

  Forrestel, E. P. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN: A Study in Command. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966.

  Fuchida, Mitsuo, and Masatake Okumiya. Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955, 1992.

  Gay, George. Sole Survivor: The Battle of Midway and Its Effects on his Life. Naples, FL: Naples Ad/Graphics, 1979.

  Halsey, William F., and J. Bryan III. Admiral Halsey’s Story. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947.

  Holmes, W. J. Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979.

  Ickes, Harold L. The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953–54.

  Ito, Masanori, and Roger Pineau. The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Translated by Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau. New York: Norton, 1962.

  King, Ernest J., and Walter Muir Whitehill. Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record. New York: Norton, 1952.

  Layton, Edwin T., with Roger Pineau and John Costello. “And I was there”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets. New York: Morrow, 1985.

  Ludlum, Stuart D. They Turned the War Around at Coral Sea and Midway: Going to War with Yorktown’s Air Group Five. Bennington, VT: Merriam, 2000.

  Mears, Frederick. Carrier Combat. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1944.

  Robert R. Rea. Wings of Gold: An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II; The Correspondence of Aviation Cadet/Ensign Robert R. Rea. Edited by Wesley Phillips Newton and Robert R. Rea. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987.

  Rowland, Buford, and William B. Boyd. U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II. Washington, DC: Bureau of Ordnance, Department of the Navy, 1953.

  Russell, Ronald W. No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway. New York: iUniverse, 2006.

  Sherman, Frederick C. Combat Command: The American Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War. New York: Dutton, 1950.

  Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History. Rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1950. Reprint, New York: Enigma Books, 2001.

  Stimson, Henry L., and McGeorge Bundy. On Active Service in Peace and War. New York: Harper, 1948.

  Stover, E. T., and Clark G. Reynolds. The Saga of Smokey Stover. Charleston, SC: Tradd Street, 1978.

  Ugaki, Matome. Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945. Edited by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon. Translated by Masataka Chihaya. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991.

  Books

  Agawa, Hiroyuki. The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy. Translated by John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979.

  Asada, Sadao. From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006.

  Astor, Gerald. Wings of Gold: The U.S. Naval Air Campaign in World War II. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004.

  Barde, Robert E. “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command.” Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971.

  Belote, James H., and William M. Belote. Titans of the Seas: The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces during World War II. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

  Brown, Louis. A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives. Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics, 1999.

  Buell, Thomas B. Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

  ———. The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.

  Buford, Rowland, and William B. Boyd. U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II. Washington, DC: Bureau of Ordnance, 1953.

  Campbell, John. Naval Weapons of World War Two. London: Conway Maritime, 1985.

  Catton, Bruce. The War Lords of Washington. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948.

  Coletta, Paolo E. Bald Eagle: Admiral Marc A. Mitscher and U.S. Naval Aviation. Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997.

  Cressman, Robert J., Steve Ewing, Barrett Tillman, Mark Horan, Clark Reynolds, and Stan Cohen. “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4–6 June 1942. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1990.

  Dull, Paul S. A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978.

  Ewing, Steve, and John B. Lundstrom. Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O’Hare. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

  Gannon, Robert. Hellions of the Deep: The Development of American Torpedoes in World War II. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

  Glines, Carroll V. Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964.

  Haufler, Hervie. Codebreakers’ Victory: How the Allied Cryptographers Won World War II. New York: New American Library, 2003.

  Heinl, R. D., Jr. Marines at Midway. Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, U.S. Marine Corps. 1948.

  Hoehling, A. A. The Lexington Goes Down. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

  Hoppes, Jonna Doolittle. Calculated Risk: The Extraordinary Life of Jimmy Doolittle, Aviation Pioneer and World War II Hero. Santa Monica, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2005.

  Horn, Steve. The Second Attack on Pearl Harbor: Operation K and Other Japanese Attempts to Bomb America in World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press
, 2005.

  Isom, Dallas Woodbury. Midway Inquest: Why the Japanese Lost the Battle of Midway. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

  Kahn, David. The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967.

  ———The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

  Kernan, Alvin. The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.

  Larrabee, Eric. Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

  Lewin, Ronald. The American Magic: Codes, Cyphers and the Defeat of Japan. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982.

  Lord, Walter. Incredible Victory. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

  Love, Robert William, Jr. The Chiefs of Naval Operations. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980.

  ———. History of the U.S. Navy. Vol. 2, 1942–1991. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992.

  Lundstrom, John B. Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006.

  ———. The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941–June 1942. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976.

  ———. The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984.

  MacIntyre, Donald. Fighting Admiral: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Somerville, G.C.B., G.B.E., D.S.O. London: Evans Brothers, 1961.

  Middlebrook, Martin, and Patrick Mahoney. Battleship: The Loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. London: Lane, 1977.

  Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. 15 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947–63.

  See esp. vol. 3: The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931–April 1942 (1948); and vol. 4: Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August 1942 (1949).