On 16 April, after several months of discussion, Commander in Chief, Combined Fleet (Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto), convinced the Imperial General Staff to agree to his Midway and Aleutians strategy for the summer. In Admiral Yamamoto's view, the capture of Midway Island would allow Japan to pursue its Asian policies behind an impregnable eastern shield of defenses in the Central Pacific. The centerpiece of this plan was a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet responded to the landings on Midway, Japanese carrier and battleship task forces, waiting unseen to the west of the Midway strike Force, would fall upon and destroy the unsuspecting Americans. If successful, the plan would effectively eliminate …show more content…
Also on the 26th, aircraft ferry USS Kitty Hawk (AKV-1) arrived at Midway with reinforcements for Marine Air Group (MAG) 22, a light tank platoon earmarked for a mobile reserve, and the 3d Defense Battalion, equipped with 3-inch antiaircraft guns. On that same day, Task Force Sixteen (TF 16) under the command of Rear Admiral William F. Halsey, and centered around USS Hornet (CV- 8) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), returned to Pearl Harbor from the South Pacific to begin preparations for the upcoming battle. Although suffering from damage inflicted by Japanese bombs during the 7-8 May Battle of the Coral Sea, USS Yorktown (CV-5) returned the next …show more content…
The presence of U.S. ships at French Frigate Shoals prevented the Japanese from refueling flying boats to reconnoiter Pearl Harbor. Although the Japanese could not visually confirm the departure of Task Forces 16 and 17 from Pearl Harbor, American preparations to defend Midway were on the verge of discovery anyway. Japanese COMINT stations not only learned of carrier movements in and out of Pearl Harbor, simply by listening to increased air-ground radio chatter, but traffic analysis of "Urgent" American radio messages coming out of Pearl Harbor suggested at least one Task Force was at sea. Incredibly, these discoveries by Japanese COMINT were withheld from the Midway Strike Force because of Yamamoto's strict radio silence
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 ...
The people who needed the information the most, Admiral Kimmel, commander-in-chief us pacific fleet, and General Walter Short, the army commander in Hawaii, were kept out of the loop. Why would the military keep such pertinent information from its leaders in Hawaii? Some would argue they hid the information so the Japanese would not know their code was broken. I wonder if the 2,000+ service men and civilians that died that day would share the same concern. Admiral Kimmel had been complaining about shortages of personnel, planes, and radar for months. General Short did not even know he had a special Army monitoring station on the island, and was not even cleared to see the decrypted messages known as Magic.
Even before the battle started, America saw his attack coming. Japan had bombed the Dutch harbor in Alaska on the days of June 3rd and 4th. Japan landed there instead of on the islands of Attu and Kiska, in fear the United States might be there. There attacks failed when the plan to get the American fleet from Midway to aid the freshly bombed Dutch harbor. At 0900 hours an American patrol boat spotted the Japanese fleet seven hundred miles from Midway. At that point admiral Soroku Yamamoto’s plans of a sneak attack were over. Admiral fletcher commanded the U.S.S. Yorktown before it was sunk by the Japanese. Then at 0750, japan spots nine enemy (American) planes fifteen miles out. Tones, a Japanese cruiser, opened fire on the American pilots. Almost instantly if an American bomber plane were hit it would explode and go down. The bombers dropped their torpedoes to far from their targets, so the torpedoes didn’t land a single blow to Japan. At 1040 japan sent from Hiryu,...
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.
Crewmembers aboard the ships were lost without any idea of what was going on at first. “It was the morning of December 7, 1941 around 8 A.M. and I was asleep in my bunk when the first bomb wave started. At first, I thought the navy was having a maneuver, but then I looked out my window and saw the Japanese planes with the red ball painted on their wings. (Harrington) Throughout the attacks Sailors and Airman, from the entire island of Hawaii, immediately was on alert. As the bombs, bullets, and torpedoes began to drop impacting vessels in the harbor, Soldiers of the American armed forces began to battle back. As the vessels and aircrafts began to fight, the Japanese began to fight harder. It was eminent that Japanese fighter pilots had no plan on returning from this mission, for the aircrafts soon began to shoot from the sky and set their point of impact on vessels. Along with numerous 550-pound general-purpose bombs, one of the most detrimental acts during this time was to our battle ships by the Japanese, was the 1,800-pound weapon that dropped from the clouds directly hitting one of the now famous American ships below, the USS Arizona. It slammed brutally through the deck and landed in the ammunition magazine were the ammunition is stored. The Battle ship soon exploded with a ferocious fireball and soon sank to bottom of the harbor. Over one thousand Sailors lost their lives as they too met their downfall at the bottom of the harbor with their ship, in the Pacific Ocean. Throughout the attacks, 18 American ships had taken damage and almost 300 aircrafts suffered major impact. The most devastating statistic accounted for is the number of fallen service members that had perished or received injuries during this attack. Nearly 2,500 service members lost their lives and another 1,000 injured during this time. Of all the ships that took damage all but two
The Battle of Midway by Craig L. Symonds is an in depth look at the events and decisions both before and during The Battle of Midway, which started on June 4th, 1942. Symonds uses a combination of words, pictures, and maps to drive home his message in a beautifully crafted work. Over all the book focuses on the war in the Pacific starting from just after Pearl Harbor and then focusing in on The Battle of Midway. The author uses the Americans, as well as the Japanese, point of view to portray the many factors of war at sea. Throughout his novel, Symonds investigates the many aspects that would lead to an American victory as well as a turning point of the war in the Pacific. “A history of what is perhaps the most pivotal naval battle in American history necessarily must explore the culture of both the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy, as well as the politics and technology of the age.” (Symonds 5).
In the spring of 1942, the Japanese had great gains in the Far East. The conquest of the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, and Dutch East Indies had cost the Japanese Navy 23 warships. Also, 67 transportation ships had also been lost. The naval command had expected a greater loss. Some of the people thought it would be best if they continue spearheading territorial gains, Admiral Nagano was a supporter of these. Others, followed Admiral Yamamoto, wanted to an all out attack on America's aircraft. Yamamoto believed that the destruction of America's aircraft, would make sure they had a security for Japan. Because of these, Yamamoto wanted an attack on Midway, as he believed that such an attack would definitely draw the American navy into a battle, which he believe that Japan would win.
Firstly, according to Toland, many Japanese messages that were intercepted and decrypted were never sent to Pearl Harbor, showing that there was no way they could have been prepared for the attack. Vital messages were intercepted starting in the summer of 1941; one divided Pearl Harbor into five grids and even asked for locations of the warships and carriers. S...
Fuchida, Mitsuo, and Masatake Okumiya. Midway, the Battle That Doomed Japan; The Japanese Navy's Story. Annapolis, Maryland: United States Naval Institute, 1955. Print.
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...
On 9 July 1944, 2nd Marine Division, 4th Marine Division, and 27th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Holland Smith, defeated the 43rd Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito, capturing the Saipan (Moore, 2002), a 44.55 sq. mile island located Northern Mariana Islands, approximately 1,465 miles south of Tokyo, Japan. The capture of Saipan was strategically important for U.S. and Allied Forces, as it was logistically relevant, due to its location from Tokyo. "It was the decisive battle of the Pacific offensive [...] it opened the way to the Japanese home islands (Nalty, Shaw, & Turnbladh, 1966)." By November 1944, U.S. B29 bombers had commenced bombing operations on the Japanese capital city, Tokyo, from airfields located on the U.S. control island of Saipan.
The events for the Japanese side begin on December 12, 1932 when Isoroku Yamamoto was appointed Director of the Aeronautical Department of the Navy Ministry. He inspired reliance and assurance with the opportunity to make the air fleet a resourceful part for the Navy. He established a long needed driving force toward the future. It was Yamamoto's temperament that also had to do with his strategy and lead on his next groundwork. Yamamoto's assessment of the war with the United States came from his extensive research he did while attending Harvard University and his service as naval ambassador in Washington. He became familiar with the United States strengths and weaknesses. It was August, 1939 that Yamamoto was appointed Commander in Chief due to his knowledge base of the United States and his Naval command that earned him this position. Yamamoto determined that if Japan was to have the lead in the war, they would have to destroy the US Pacific Fleet in a long range, preventive attack using aircra...
Pearl Harbor is only forty feet deep and the Americans think they have a defense against torpedoes. The Japanese soon come up with a plan to overcome this issue, they fit small wooden stabilizers to the torpedoes to make them effective in the shallow harbor. American intelligence in Washington, manages to break the Japanese Purple Code, which allows the United States to intercept radio transmissions the Japanese think are secret. At Pearl Harbor, although hampered by late arriving critical intelligence report the attack fleet, the Admiral and General do their best to enhance defenses Short orders his aircraft to be concentrated in the middle of their airfields to prevent
The United States government knew well of Japan’s intent to attack Pearl Harbor well before the occurred. The attack may have been a surprise to Pearl Harbor, but it sure wasn’t to Franklin D. Roosevelt and few select top armed forces advisors of his. An investigation after the attack revealed that the intercepting station received at least forty-three different decoded messages that had clues to the attack. The president had at least four intelligence officers under direct orders from Roosevelt. They had decoded the Japanese code and had been monitoring their communications before the attack. They knew all about news of the planned attack. In 48 hours before the attack, LTC Clifford M. Andrew, was told to burn forty file cabinets of top secret information on Pearl Harbor so no investigation could seek out the truth which was labeled top secret and destroyed.