June 1942: Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway, taking place on 4 June 1942, was a major naval engagement between the USA and Japan and a turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War II. American aircraft carriers surprised the Japanese fleet at Midway and destroyed several Japanese capital ships, including aircraft carriers. The American victory at Midway marked the end of Japanese naval expansion in the Pacific.

The Japanese attack on Midway was intended to seize the strategic island as a way of threatening Hawaii and to draw out the carriers of the US Pacific Fleet to a battle where they could be destroyed. The Pearl Harbor attack had failed to sink any American aircraft carriers, which had been deployed elsewhere at the time. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto believed that Midway was so strategically vital to the defense of Hawaii that the USA would be forced to fight for it, allowing Japan to destroy the carriers that had escaped the Pearl Harbor attack. The destruction of the US Pacific Fleet carrier group would give Japan overwhelming naval supremacy across the Pacific. The capture of Midway Atoll itself would allow Japan to permanently threaten Hawaii, denying the islands as a staging ground for American movements into the Pacific.

The Japanese naval contingent at Midway possessed firepower superior to its American counterpart, but the USA had an advantage in that the Japanese force was not aware of the American force until hours before the start of the battle. The Japanese force had been undertaking operations to capture Midway Atoll when the Americans were sighted, forcing the Japanese to rapidly re-equip their aircraft for naval combat. The Japanese could not make the adjustment quickly enough and the Japanese carriers were sunk before their own planes could take off. American naval air forces were then able to inflict a major defeat on the remainder of the Japanese fleet.

American victory at Midway allowed the American naval presence in the Pacific to survive and inflicted such great material losses upon the Japanese that Japan was forced to halt its offensive operations in the Pacific Theater. Japanese victory at Midway would have destroyed the American ability to contest Japan in the Pacific Theater until either the transfer of the Atlantic Fleet or the construction of a new fleet, giving Japan several months of operational freedom. The capture of Midway would have also permanently threatened Hawaii, preventing the USA from using it as a staging point for operations in the Pacific Theater, and exposed the strategic industries of the Pacific Coast to attack. American victory at Midway denied these opportunities to Japan and inflicted severe losses on the Japanese fleet. Japan lacked the industrial resources of the USA and had great difficulty in replacing the losses suffered at the Battle of Midway. As a result of its losses at the Battle of Midway, Japan lacked the naval forces for its planned offensives, ending Japanese expansion in the Pacific and placing it on the defensive in the Pacific Theater for the remainder of the Second World War.