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The battle of the midway important aspects of the event
The battle of the midway important aspects of the event
Why was the battle of midway such a turning point in wwii
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On December 7th 1941, Japanese Planes and submarines attacked the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor. This event singlehandedly brought the U.S from its then neutral stance in World War Two to a fighting member of the “Allied Powers.” Pearl Harbor was the first of a long series of confrontations between the U.S and the Japanese in an effort to gain control of the Pacific. Unlike the “War in Europe” the Pacific strategy was dominated by naval and aerial battles, with the occasional land-based “Island Hopping” Campaign. As such, one of the most important factors in the war in the pacific was Fleet Size, the more ships a country could send to war, the better. Pearl Harbor was the Japanese’s way of trying to deal with the massive U.S Pacific fleet. However, Pearl Harbor was not the turning point of the war. After December 7th the United States began work on numerous technological developments which would ultimately help them in one of the most important battles of WWII, the largest naval confrontation of the war, The Battle of Midway. The battle, which took place from June 4th to June 7th , 1942 is widely considered the turning point of the Pacific Theater (James & Wells). Through the Post-Pearl Harbor desire for “Revenge” and various technological advantages including code breaking and radar, the U.S were able to outsmart the Japanese at Midway and ultimately win the battle, eventually leading to a victory in the Pacific. Over the year and a half between Pearl Harbor and Midway the United States made headway with various technological and military advantages. One of the most important of which was the code breaking efforts of Commander Joseph J. Rochefort Jr. “Most of the U.S’s information [on Japan] came from Rochefort. R... ... middle of paper ... ...whereas the U.S only lost 1, the USS Yorktown which was already heavily damaged from previous conflicts in the Coral Sea. Had the U.S lost at Midway, the Japanese would have achieved their goal, and finished what Pearl Harbor started by permanently crippling the U.S Navy. In a Preface from an excerpt by Japanese Airman Fushida Mituso (Who famously Shouted “Tora, tora, tora”) the Japanese loss at Midway did the exact opposite of crippling the Navy. “During the Next two years while Japan’s Shipyards Splashed out six new heavy carriers, America’s turned out 17” (Mituso). Ultimately the Pacific Theater, and WWII ended on August 15th 1945 after two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, however, The Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Theater would not have been won had it not been for the various technological advantages and desires for revenge of pearl harbor.
Prior to the dispatch of September 24, the information which the Japanese sought and obtained about Pearl Harbor followed the general pattern of their interest in American Fleet movements in other localities. One might suspect this type of conventional espionage. With the dispatch of September 24, 1941, and those which followed, there was a significant and ominous change in the character of the information which the Japanese Government sought and obtained. The espionage then directed was of an unusual character outside the realm of reasonable suspicion. It was no longer merely directed to ascertaining the general whereabouts of ships of the fleet. It was directed to the presence of particular ships in particular areas; to such minute detail as what ships were double-docked at the same wharf….These Japanese instructions and reports pointed to an attack by Japan upon the ships in Pearl Harbor. The information sought and obtained, with such painstaking detail had no other conceivable usefulness from a military
To begin, the attack on Pearl Harbour was devastating to U.S. naval capabilities in the Pacific at the onset of their entry into the war. Japanese officials had grown tired of the U.S. oil embargo, which was meant to limit their territorial expansion and aggression in South-East Asia as well as China, and as negotiations weren’t reaching any conclusions they decided that the only course of action was a first strike on the aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbour to cripple U.S. naval capability in the Pacific (Rosenberg 1). The attack, which lasted about two hours, had resulted in the sinking of four battleships, among ...
“AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.” This is the message sent out by radioman Kyle Boyer at 7:58 a.m. Sunday December 7, 1941; a date which will live in infamy. The empire of Japan had attacked the United States’ Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor. For months the US Intelligence community, as well as others around the world, had been intercepting and decoding transmissions from mainland Japan to their diplomats and spies in the US. We had cracked their Purple Code, and knew exactly what military intelligence was being transmitted back and forth. The Dutch also cracked Purple and informed our government of the Japanese plan and were shocked to hear reports that we were taken by surprised. Even more disturbing, months before the attack a British double agent, Dusko Popov, codenamed Tricycle, turned over to the F.B.I. detailed plans of the Japanese air raid, which he had obtained from the Germans. The government had the information, and did nothing with it.
Blair Jr., Clay, (1975). Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, p. 78. p. 1072. Buell, Thomas B. -. (1987)
The battle of Midway took place 4-7 June 1942. The US Navy and Imperial Navy of Japan fought near the Central Pacific island of Midway. The battle of Midway was a battle that occurred during WW II Pacific Theater of operations. There were two events that led up to this battle. The first major event was the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which took place six months prior to the battle of Midway ( 7 December 1941). The second event was the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Battle of the Coral Sea took place a month prior and it gave the Japanese Commanders courage to set a new objective. The Battle of the Coral Sea was a key factor that led up to the battle of Midway. The battle of the Coral Sea was Japans attempt to strengthen their defensive positioning
On 7 December 1941 the Japanese Military launched a destructive surprise attack on United States Military Forces in Pearl Harbor, HI. This forced the United States into the ongoing war that they had hoped to avoid. With a Naval Fleet that suffered significant losses in the attack at Pearl Harbor, the US began offensive and defensive campaigns throughout the Pacific region ranging from open water naval battles to close combat engagements in the Philippines. America was quickly losing ground and desperately needed positive news after suffering heavy loses early in the war. President Franklin Roosevelt turned to his senior military advisors in Washington, DC and asked what it would take to strike a blow the Japanese mainland as they had done to America. At the time, the US Army Air Corps had no bases in Asia within bomber range. The Navy had aircraft capable of accomplishing the mission but was reluctant to bring its ships within the bombers range for fear of losing what few ships still remained in the region. It was then that a Navy Captain named Francis Low, an Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer serving on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Ernest King, suggest...
...or both sides; casualties were increasing. This was what mostly led to the U.S to drop the atomic bomb. The Japanese surrender did not occur until after the first bomb dropped of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and a second on Nagasaki. The atomic bomb was the result of a top secret experiment called the Manhattan Project (The Americans. Reconstruction to the 21st Century) the war was finally over when Japan surrendered on August 14th.
...no other option than to fall back. Without a Navy the Japanese had no way to expand. Japan’s greatest weapon was its Navy and without it they were a much less threatening and much less effective enemy. Since Japan is an island there are two ways on and off boats and planes and in one battle Japan had lost almost all of their boats and planes. For the Japanese a Navy was crucial, it was an integral part of their Pacific “domination” and without it they would be unable to expand their empire. Also, the Japanese empire had stretched over many, many miles of open ocean, and without a Navy the Japanese would have a hard time stopping the Americans from taking away the Japanese Empire. The Japanese unlike the U.S. did not have basically unlimited resources to rebuild their Navy. Also, with the huge loss at Midway the morale of the Japanese as a whole was at a low.
It was a Sunday morning, on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor, US naval base located on Hawaii, was attacked by the Japanese. They caught unguarded the whole nation, and for that, this attack is considered one of the top ten failures of the US intelligence. The Japanese were able to attack Pearl Harbor by surprise because of the mindset of US officials, whom they saw Japanese as a weak enemy, who wouldn’t risk attacking US territory, caused by a supremacy factor; As well as the not good enough US intelligence efficiency to encrypt Japanese codes, and the handling of such information. After the negotiations between the Japanese and the United States ended, there was no doubt that they would make an attack, but they didn’t know the target of it.
As the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 the United States officially entered World War Two. The Japanese government later learned later that this single event sets off an explosion that subsequently caused the United States to attack the Midway Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Pearl Harbor was one of the United States largest naval bases and the largest in the Pacific Ocean. This attack ceased all trade with Japan and officially added Japan as one of the US enemies. With a new world war started it created new concerns for the army. “World War II introduced a whole new set of problems in naval tactics” (Smith, 1). The main change driving these changes was the fact that aircraft carriers became more prevalent and common in every major countries naval force. Japan was able to pull off the Pearl Harbor attack as a result of aircraft carriers to launch their airplanes. As a result of the battles leading up to the Battle of Midway and conflicts with Japan this created a lot larger of an impact on WWII as a whole and to boost unity in America leading to a more prosperous period of history following the war.
Historians overall say that the attack on pearl harbour doomed the Empire of Japan in that “It waked the sleeping giant”, which lead to the start up of the US industrial and military capability which once mobilized would be able to pour over whelming resources into both the pacific and Atlantic Battle fronts. This in turn was one of the factors that lead to an allied victory.
Midway itself was not that important in the larger scheme of Japan's intentions. Japan was concentrating on the Samoa Islands, Fiji and Australia to expand their newly acquired SE Pacific territory than Midway. Midway was the closest remaining US base to Japan, and would therefore be heavily defended by the US. Admiral Yamamoto's battle plan was bold. Like most Imperial Japanese Navy strategies, it was designed to lure major parts of the US Fleet into a fatal situation. Yamamoto's main force trailed his carriers and was intended to take out whatever part of the US Fleet that might come to Midway's support. The plan was complicated because it was put together very rapidly in the wake of the Tokyo Air Raid by US Army B-25's flying...
America was not the only one who suffered casualties during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan lost five midget submarines and nine of the men who piloted the small, war submersibles. The tenth man, Ensign Sakamaki, became our first Japanese WWII prisoner of war. Jap...
This paper will compare Gordon W. Prange's book "At Dawn We Slept - The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor" with the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" directed by Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda. While the film provides little background to the attack, its focal point is on the Pearl Harbor assault and the inquiry of why it was not prevented, or at least foreseen in adequate time to decrease damage. Prange's book examines the assault on Pearl Harbor from both the Japanese and American viewpoints to gain a global view of the situation and the vast provision undertaken by Japanese intelligence.
Japan surrendered unconditionally on Aug. 14th 1945….marking the end of WWII.