5 Things You Might Not Know About the Battle of Midway
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The battle was a turning point—but maybe not for the reason you think.
Over the years, Midway has assumed near-mythic status as the moment fortunes shifted in World War II’s Pacific theater. Its impact has sometimes been attributed to the battle’s devastating impact on the Japanese strike force, which included the loss of four aircraft carriers, nearly 300 planes and as many as 3,000 men, including Japan’s most experienced pilots.
In fact, as historian Evan Mawdsley has pointed out, Japan’s fleet rebounded from the battle relatively quickly: Yamamoto retained his two most modern carriers, Shokaku and Zuikaku, and four smaller carriers that had not accompanied the Kido Butai carrier battle group to Midway. The United States also sustained damaging losses at Midway, and by the time of the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, Japan was able to assemble a more powerful carrier fleet than the Americans.
Midway did, however, represent the point when the momentum shifted from the Japanese to the Americans in the Pacific. Japan’s Imperial Navy had failed to deliver its knockout blow, and U.S. war production was just ramping up, just as Yamamoto feared.
While Japan had no effective way to replace lost aircraft carriers as the war continued, U.S. shipyards began rolling out new carriers in 1943. It would be those vessels—along with the rest of the nation’s unprecedented wartime production—that would lead the American fleet to victory in the Pacific in 1945.
https://www.history.com/news/battle-midway-facts