The Battle of Midway: Admiral Yamamoto's strategic plans and objectives

Battle of Midway: Japanese Perspective

The Battle of Midway is considered to be the most devastating battle of the World War II fought between 4th and 7th June 1942 in the Pacific Campaign shortly after the Battle of Coral Sea and Japan's attack on the Pearl Harbor. The Japanese operation was aimed to eliminate the United States strategic power in the Pacific. This will enable Japan an easy hold in the formation of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japan was of the view that after Pearl Harbor attack the battle will be a frightening defeat for the United States and they would surrender in the Pacific war . [1: Charles Mercer, Miracle at Midway (Putnam Publishing Group, 1977).]

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had planned to make a surprise attack on the Midway, a small island located thousand miles from Hawaii. Their efforts were concentrated on to destroy the American forces after the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and the Battle of Coral Sea. On the other hand the decisive plan of Yamamoto to establish an airbase in Midway was interrupted by the American intelligence and Admiral Chester Nimitz alternative plan to have the American fleet on standby waiting for Japan's naval forces to give blunt answers in form of sever attacks.

battle of midway: Japanese strategic plans and outcomes

After the Battle of Coral Sea, Japan had hoped to shatter the confidence of American military force and wanted to have victory over them for control of the Pacific regime. Therefore, Japan had planned to attack and occupy Midway as an overall strategy in defensive response to the Doolittle Raid in Tokyo. The Admiral Yamamoto had planned future attacks in Fiji and Samoa. Japanese force was well equipped and had put in all efforts with six aircraft carriers, eleven battleships, thirteen cruisers, forty-five destroyers, assorted submarines, transports and mine sweepers. On the other hand American force consist of three aircraft carriers- Hornet, Enterprise and Yorktown; eight cruises; fourteen destroyers and the aircraft station on the midway. The Yorktown was so much destroyed in the Battle of Coral Sea that Japanese had though it was sunk.

Yamamoto's Plan for the battle

The battle plan designed by Yamamoto was a complex and complicated one . The Japanese had clear idea about the forces available to American and their strength to counter the attack. Beside knowledge of the Yorktown they also knew that USS Saratoga was under repairs on the West Coast after damages from torpedo from a submarine. Yamamoto was strong on his conviction that America would be under a miserable state after the defeat few months ago and would not be confident enough to counter the attacks made by Japanese. They were very much confident on their judgment and were thinking to have control over the bases of America through their fierce military action. [2: Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon Miracle at Midway, (Penguin Non-Classics,1983)]

In response to the thinking and analysis of Yamamoto, he decided to disperse his forces to the widest extent so that they are not discovered by Americans before the battle. Japan has targeted through heavy surface forces to destroy whatever U.S. fleet come in way in the defense of Midway. The Japanese fleet also constitutes the largest battleship in the world, the Yamato, the smaller battleships Nagato and Mutsu accompanying with them various cruisers and destroyers. It is out of doubt that Yamamoto plan was very shrewd and technical but its complexity has dominated all the intelligence portrayed in the plan.

Battle Outcome and leadership structure

These drawback in the pre-planning of the Yamamoto battleship and in the process flows had let American to have a clear picture of the battle that where, when and in what way the Japanese would be making attacks and how American force should prepare themselves to counter these attacks. Nimitz had calculated that his three carrier decks, Midway Island, to Yamamoto's four, gave the U.S. vague combination, especially when American carrier air groups were much larger than Japanese ones. The Japanese, on the other hand, were almost totally unaware of their opponent's true strength and dispositions even after the battle began. This is why Japanese has lost the battle in front of Americans who were initially considered weak and no resourceful in the beginning of the battle as compared to the Japanese forces and planning. Retreating pursue

Battle of Midway Lessons Learned and impact

Spruance however gained much criticism for not following the withdrawing Japanese and allowing the receding Japanese surface fleet to escape. The Japanese public was not informed about the defeat of the Japanese force in the Battle of Midway. Japanese news had announced great victory in their part. It was on the Emperor Hirohito Navey Command personnel who were correctly informed about the carrier and pilot losses. Due to the false information floated in the masses, army planners were of the impression that fleet would have been in good condition. [4: Morison, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II Journal Volume IV (1942): 142]

Japanese fleet when returned to Hashirajima on 14th June the injured officers were transferred to the naval hospital in private care units so that the stories about their defeat couldn't be spread among the peer groups and in the masses. They were all treated as secret patients. Other officers were spread to remote areas in the South Pacific and were not allowed to meet family and friends. Nagumo was later placed in command of the rebuild carrier force.

The Japanese navy had definitely learned lessons from the Battle of Midway. They had adopted new policies and procedures and more aircrafts were refueled and re-armed on the flight deck instead of keeping them in the hangers. They had adopted the practice of draining all the unused fuel lines. The new carriers build were redesigned to establish only two flight deck elevators and introduced new fire fighting instruments. Intensive training was given to more crew members in the areas of damage-control and firefighting techniques. Replacement pilots have also undergone thorough training, meeting short-term needs of the fleet. When so many areas were covered to be trained the quality of training had suffered massively. Japanese naval air groups have declined in their progress in terms of generic war quality because the inexperienced pilot were send in the front lines units, veterans were forced to share the ever increasing workload in tough working conditions with minimum chances of taking even rest for few hours. This had declines the productivity and efficiency of the workforce.

Indecisiveness and imperceptive war Approach- analytical perspective

Although Japanese Air Crafts and other war equipments were far much better than what Americans had, but possessing the best does not ensures success in war or any other life endeavors. The utilization of possessed resources is very important and similar situation occurred in the battle of Midway, where despite Yamamoto had all the state of the art war equipments but due to ineffective utilization of these equipments the result was completely different what he had expected. Apart from these war equipment utilization which was due to Indecisiveness of Japanese commander, the imperceptive approach to not to analyze the possible risks was also a major error in the plan. The counter surprise situation that occurred made Yamamoto irresolute because at the start of the attack he was highly over confident that he will easily knock off American army through attacking the American Island, but contrastingly to the situation the Americans were well aware and Yamamoto was himself surprised of the preparation of American army after which he could not decide to what resource should be used at what level [5: Chen, P. (n.d.). "Battle of Midway and the Aleutian Islands"; available from http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=6; Internet; accessed July 28, 2011]

Aircraft Industry in Japan and War Equipments

It was market by few authors that heavy losses in carriers and veterans aircrew at Midway had adversely weakened the Imperial Japanese Navy on long-term. After learning these important lessons from the war, Japanese army also found out the technology edge and its utilization was also one of the prime reasons because of which the result was opposite to what they had thought about. Japan rather focusing on the sequential wars, they strived to improve their internal processes and equipments. The Japanese Naval forces were trained after the war so that they are fully aware of how their equipments need to be used and how they should be able to optimize their war plan. The Japanese naval forces learned that keeping the air craft in hangers and not refueling them is not such a good strategy especially when in the war zone, because situations do not occur always as what is expected and similarly in the case of Midway Battle when more Aircrafts were required by the Japanese army, despite being present on the hanger the aircrafts were useless because of no fuel. Moreover, the refueling strategy was also not adopted and Japanese although had high technology equipments but at the battle ground a faster refueling equipment was required which was unfortunately not present, because its need was not thought about in the preparation stage of battle. Moreover, an important point in terms of strategy was that the Japanese army and its war equipments were not fully synchronized with Yamamoto because he was determined to keep an attacking strategy where he could destroy the American army and contrastingly, the Japanese army had more defensive crew members and equipments that were more suitable for damage control rather than attacking on the enemy base. Another aspect that remained unattended was in the replacement pilot plan. In most of the air battles when a pilot returns to his base, there are always replacement pilots ready to take control after briefings from the returning pilot, but contrastingly on this situation the replacement for every pilot was not available and returning in a difficult situation the pilots did not have enough time to brief the substitute pilot who would had to go on to the battle field regardless of the preparation . During the aftermath of battle of midway, the Japanese came out with the concept of quality of war which had been very poor in this battle and lack of preparation was considered was one of the major reason for the decline of Japanese strategy. [6: Dull, The Imperial Japanese Navy: A Battle History, p.166; Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin, pp.519 -- 523; Prange, Miracle at Midway p.395.] [7: Mitch, P. "Japanese Aircraft History," available from http://japaneseaircraft.devhub.com/blog/category/history/; Internet; accessed July 28, 2011]

Conclusion

Considering the facts from battle of midway and keeping in mind the conventional strategy development skills of Japanese people, the battle was never on the Japanese side. Despite Yamamoto was highly over confident that he would easy destroy the American base, but eventually the impulsiveness and impatient attitude of Yamamoto resulted in non-synchronization and lack of preparation planning which eventually resulted in the loss for the Japanese. From leadership prospect, Yamamoto was not able to understand his team completely and the force that he had chosen in emergency to initiate the battle was not renowned for attacking strategy which was supposed to be adopted by the Japanese. However, Japanese learnt the lesson the hard way and fortunately they were able to recognize their loopholes to which they focused as well and came up with progressive results.

There have been contradicting history representations of this battle of midway, because the print media that was used to report this war has not reportedly to have neutral views where Japanese writers despite admitting that the war was lost they did not addressed one man failure, whereas the American writers who addressed this battle, perceived that it had been primarily one man failure which eventually lead to the failure of Japanese army which reportedly had 3,057 Japanese causalities with four flight carrier sunk.