Thread: 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway

Biggest US advantages were:
Radar.
Superior damage-control procedures (like purging avgas lines with CO2).
Superior AA armament (the American 20mm and 40mm was superior to the Japanese AA).
Armored aircraft.

Also better aircraft weapons. The .50cal has quite a punch and you can carry more of it than 20 or 30mm shell and it has a greater firing rate.

Originally Posted by Nosferax

Also better aircraft weapons. The .50cal has quite a punch and you can carry more of it than 20 or 30mm shell and it has a greater firing rate.

I don't think that was much of a factor at Midway. Japanese Zeros had an easy time with the TBD's and were just in the wrong place for taking on the SBD's. At Midway itself, the Buffalo's were no match- .50 cal or not. Zero's at that point in the war were pretty much superior to the Wildcats

And when the Japanese were able to launch their attack with their remaining carrier against us, they got through to score a hit.

The single biggest factor was better intelligence due to code breaking, radar and better air reconnaisance

Originally Posted by Panzerkampfwagen

They had the Japanese when they had planes refueling and rearming. That's a lot of things on the deck that could go boom!

One of the most interesting bits of trivia I learned in an interview years ago with Tom Clancey.

As most know, he has a lot of friends who are high level experts in the Navy. And one thing he mentioned is that every year, one of the top Navy Command Schools runs the students through decktop recreations of many major battles, and Midway is the last one they do. And in over 30 years of doing this (this interview was in the 1980's), the US side has never "won" the Battle of Midway. In almost every recreation, the are never able to capture the fighters on the deck as they did in the real battle, and invariably lost (although around 1/3 of the time they had a battle loss with a strategic victory).

And having done a fair amount of wargames myself (including SPI's The Fast Carriers), I can fully believe it. Some friends and I did Midway a few times, and the US never won a single time. Although we did have a lot of fun dropping the USS Nimitz at Pearl Harbor (this was shortly after the movie The Final Countdown came out), and that was a lot of fun.

Originally Posted by Nosferax

Also better aircraft weapons. The .50cal has quite a punch and you can carry more of it than 20 or 30mm shell and it has a greater firing rate.

Actually...the Japanese probably needed the cannon. Remember: all the American planes were well-armored. SBD's and Wildcats, in particular, were basically flying tanks, with armor-glass canopies, self-sealing fuel tanks, and plenty of armor plate.

Originally Posted by Jarlaxle

Biggest US advantages were:
Radar.
Superior damage-control procedures (like purging avgas lines with CO2).
Superior AA armament (the American 20mm and 40mm was superior to the Japanese AA).
Armored aircraft.

One other which often made the difference during the war:

Self-sealing gas tanks. A US plane might get a serious hit in the wing, and still be able to make it back to their carrier or a friendly field before all the fuel leaked out. If a Zero or Betty got a serious wing hit, they quite often ended up ditching in the middle of nowhere.

Once the US realized that after the captured Zero from the Aleutians was studied, one of the big changes in tactics was to instruct pilots to go for wing hits. Once the tanks were ruptured the Japanese pilot had to break contact immediately and head for home or they might not make it at all.

One of the later upgrades did add this feature to the Zero, but by then it was to late.

Originally Posted by SFJEFF

I don't think that was much of a factor at Midway. Japanese Zeros had an easy time with the TBD's and were just in the wrong place for taking on the SBD's. At Midway itself, the Buffalo's were no match- .50 cal or not. Zero's at that point in the war were pretty much superior to the Wildcats

And when the Japanese were able to launch their attack with their remaining carrier against us, they got through to score a hit.

The single biggest factor was better intelligence due to code breaking, radar and better air reconnaisance

The F4F-3's were pretty much equal to the A6M2's used at Midway. The Zeros were nimble and fast, but the Wildcats were incredibly tough and armored like tanks. Also, Midway was where the Japanese really started losing their experienced aircrew.

As for the Japanese attacks...there was plenty of luck involved. In the first attack on Yorktown, there were two things. One, due to what I suspect was simply an error made by an inexperienced and/or frightened fighter director, about half the CAP was sent in the wrong direction. By the time it was re-directed, the Japanese bombers were already in their dives. Two, one bomb was a one in a thousand lucky hit: it punched through the flight deck and detonated in the bottom of the funnel. It destroyed several boilers, broke the air intakes for several others, and blew out the fires in the rest...only one boiler stayed lit. The end result being: when the Kates attacked, instead of her usual 31-knot top speed, she struggled to manage 20.