Shattered Sword
By Jonathan Parshall and
Anthony Tully
Potomac Books, Inc., Washington, D.C.
ISBN-10: 1574889230 ISBN-13: 978-1574889239
Few events in the Pacific War were more dramatic than the Battle of Midway. Within a few hours, the seemingly unstoppable wave of Japanese victories after Pearl Harbor was turned back once and for all, ending Japanese expansion in the Pacific and removing the threat of attack or invasion against Hawaii and the US west coast. It was certainly the most important naval battle of World War II, and perhaps deserves military historian John Keegan’s description of it as “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.”
The Midway story tells how the Americans fought a vastly superior naval force, yet not only won the battle but dealt a catastrophic blow to the enemy, sinking four of six Japanese aircraft carriers. The U.S. victory, as startling to the Americans as to the Japanese, was partly achieved by American ingenuity, which broke Japanese naval codes, so that the attack was anticipated, a good guess was made as to its approach, and American carriers were able to position themselves in ambush. Equally important was a remarkable series of incidents in which sheer good luck stayed so consistently on the American side as to appear miraculous. The American dive bombers that devastated three Japanese carriers in a single attack arrived overhead at the most critical moment, in a miraculous five-minute window, when the Japanese were supremely vulnerable, their decks packed with fully fueled aircraft readying for take-off, fuel hoses scattered everywhere, the below-decks areas strewn with bombs and torpedoes because of a hasty refitting of aircraft caused by a sudden change in plans. In another five minutes, Admiral Nagumo would have been able to launch his planes and fend off the American attackers. Furthermore, the Japanese were caught off guard because, of the six scout planes they had sent out on a search pattern, the very one that would have discovered the Americans on time had had mechanical difficulties and had been delayed in taking off. Who can be blamed for suspecting the hand of Providence in such fantastic coincidences?
Over the past seventy years this Midway story has achieved legendary status, has been repeated countless times, officially and unofficially. The U.S. Navy’s history of World War II records it, it was re-told in the memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, coordinator and leader of both the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor and the Midway operations (who, interestingly, became a Methodist bishop after the war, touring the U.S. as a speaker and settling there), and it has been at the heart of every book written on the battle. After the 1976 Hollywood blockbuster, Midway, it became a staple of popular culture.
It’s a shame that so much of the beloved story is not true. The authors of Shattered Sword re-tell the Midway story, but this time from the point of view of the Japanese aircraft carriers, and a new picture emerges of what really happened on June 4, 1942. Basing their account on a careful study of Japanese sources, operational records, logbooks, naval manuals, writings on military doctrine — many of them newly translated and never before used in Midway studies — they show that a number of supposedly key facts about the battle need to be revised, some of them drastically.
One part of the miracle of Midway involves the huge imbalance between the adversaries, creating the image of a brave and plucky American David defeating a Japanese Goliath. It is true that, in June 1942, the Japanese had the greatest navy in the world, and that the Japanese armada sent out to attack and occupy Midway vastly outnumbered the American fleet. But the Japanese ships were so widely dispersed that many of them were hundreds of miles from the battle and took no part in it. Counting only the ships and planes participating in the fight, the battle was fairly evenly matched, with four Japanese carriers and its 248 aircraft pitted against 353 American aircraft, some from three American carriers, others land-based bombers from Midway.
What about that scout plane? Did the gods delay it to give an advantage to the Americans? Not really. A careful analysis of times and flight plans reveals that, in fact, the scout plane that should have discovered the Americans was a different one, and it missed them, probably because it flew too high, above the clouds. It’s truer to say that luck was with the Japanese in this incident, because it was the famously delayed scout plane that stumbled on the American task force, and that, only after going off its assigned search route. Without its lucky mistake, the American carrier group would have gone undetected until later, when its aircraft were even closer to pouncing on their Japanese targets.
Was there just a five-minute window of opportunity for the dive bombers, after which Nagumo would have launched his fighters and successfully defended his carriers? A clear understanding of operational processes and procedures aboard Japanese carriers buries that notion. The five-minute window was, in fact, a forty-five minute window. Far from arriving just in the nick of time, the Americans had more than enough time to attack without being harried by swarms of Zeros.
The simultaneous attack on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, long viewed as a feint to draw American forces away from Midway, turns out to have been a genuine invasion attempt. And so on. The authors list eight significant misunderstandings that they have uncovered, and many more small corrections are made in the 613 pages of the book.
However, Shattered Sword is not focused on revising history. It is an important work of research, readable and compelling for the layman, detailed and well documented for the scholar. The careful depiction of life on a Japanese carrier, the extensive background and analysis, the maps, diagrams, and appendices, the naming of individual pilots, the granular description of events, sometimes minute-by-minute, make this book stand out from all the others on the Battle of Midway and make it a compelling read.
By Jonathan Parshall and
Anthony Tully
Potomac Books, Inc., Washington, D.C.
ISBN-10: 1574889230 ISBN-13: 978-1574889239
Few events in the Pacific War were more dramatic than the Battle of Midway. Within a few hours, the seemingly unstoppable wave of Japanese victories after Pearl Harbor was turned back once and for all, ending Japanese expansion in the Pacific and removing the threat of attack or invasion against Hawaii and the US west coast. It was certainly the most important naval battle of World War II, and perhaps deserves military historian John Keegan’s description of it as “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.”
The Midway story tells how the Americans fought a vastly superior naval force, yet not only won the battle but dealt a catastrophic blow to the enemy, sinking four of six Japanese aircraft carriers. The U.S. victory, as startling to the Americans as to the Japanese, was partly achieved by American ingenuity, which broke Japanese naval codes, so that the attack was anticipated, a good guess was made as to its approach, and American carriers were able to position themselves in ambush. Equally important was a remarkable series of incidents in which sheer good luck stayed so consistently on the American side as to appear miraculous. The American dive bombers that devastated three Japanese carriers in a single attack arrived overhead at the most critical moment, in a miraculous five-minute window, when the Japanese were supremely vulnerable, their decks packed with fully fueled aircraft readying for take-off, fuel hoses scattered everywhere, the below-decks areas strewn with bombs and torpedoes because of a hasty refitting of aircraft caused by a sudden change in plans. In another five minutes, Admiral Nagumo would have been able to launch his planes and fend off the American attackers. Furthermore, the Japanese were caught off guard because, of the six scout planes they had sent out on a search pattern, the very one that would have discovered the Americans on time had had mechanical difficulties and had been delayed in taking off. Who can be blamed for suspecting the hand of Providence in such fantastic coincidences?
Over the past seventy years this Midway story has achieved legendary status, has been repeated countless times, officially and unofficially. The U.S. Navy’s history of World War II records it, it was re-told in the memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, coordinator and leader of both the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor and the Midway operations (who, interestingly, became a Methodist bishop after the war, touring the U.S. as a speaker and settling there), and it has been at the heart of every book written on the battle. After the 1976 Hollywood blockbuster, Midway, it became a staple of popular culture.
It’s a shame that so much of the beloved story is not true. The authors of Shattered Sword re-tell the Midway story, but this time from the point of view of the Japanese aircraft carriers, and a new picture emerges of what really happened on June 4, 1942. Basing their account on a careful study of Japanese sources, operational records, logbooks, naval manuals, writings on military doctrine — many of them newly translated and never before used in Midway studies — they show that a number of supposedly key facts about the battle need to be revised, some of them drastically.
One part of the miracle of Midway involves the huge imbalance between the adversaries, creating the image of a brave and plucky American David defeating a Japanese Goliath. It is true that, in June 1942, the Japanese had the greatest navy in the world, and that the Japanese armada sent out to attack and occupy Midway vastly outnumbered the American fleet. But the Japanese ships were so widely dispersed that many of them were hundreds of miles from the battle and took no part in it. Counting only the ships and planes participating in the fight, the battle was fairly evenly matched, with four Japanese carriers and its 248 aircraft pitted against 353 American aircraft, some from three American carriers, others land-based bombers from Midway.
What about that scout plane? Did the gods delay it to give an advantage to the Americans? Not really. A careful analysis of times and flight plans reveals that, in fact, the scout plane that should have discovered the Americans was a different one, and it missed them, probably because it flew too high, above the clouds. It’s truer to say that luck was with the Japanese in this incident, because it was the famously delayed scout plane that stumbled on the American task force, and that, only after going off its assigned search route. Without its lucky mistake, the American carrier group would have gone undetected until later, when its aircraft were even closer to pouncing on their Japanese targets.
Was there just a five-minute window of opportunity for the dive bombers, after which Nagumo would have launched his fighters and successfully defended his carriers? A clear understanding of operational processes and procedures aboard Japanese carriers buries that notion. The five-minute window was, in fact, a forty-five minute window. Far from arriving just in the nick of time, the Americans had more than enough time to attack without being harried by swarms of Zeros.
The simultaneous attack on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, long viewed as a feint to draw American forces away from Midway, turns out to have been a genuine invasion attempt. And so on. The authors list eight significant misunderstandings that they have uncovered, and many more small corrections are made in the 613 pages of the book.
However, Shattered Sword is not focused on revising history. It is an important work of research, readable and compelling for the layman, detailed and well documented for the scholar. The careful depiction of life on a Japanese carrier, the extensive background and analysis, the maps, diagrams, and appendices, the naming of individual pilots, the granular description of events, sometimes minute-by-minute, make this book stand out from all the others on the Battle of Midway and make it a compelling read.
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