Midway

The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle

De: Mark Stille

Narrado por: John Chancer

Bloomsbury presents Midway: The Pacific War’s Most Famous Battle by Mark Stille, read by John Chancer.

A detailed re-examination of Midway, one of the most significant battles in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

In April 1942, the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy was at the zenith of its power. It had struck a severe blow against the US Navy at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, before spearheading the Japanese advance through Southeast Asia and rampaging across the South Pacific. Only a few months later, in June 1942, the US Navy managed to inflict a decisive defeat on this mighty force off Midway Atoll and the strategic initiative in the Pacific Theater passed to the US Navy.

Midway is the most famous naval battle of the Pacific War, and one of the most mythologized. The traditional view of the battle, popularized in its immediate aftermath and surviving through to the present day, is of a heavily outnumbered American force snatching victory in the face of overwhelming odds. This view is simplistic and, in many respects, wrong.

Pacific War expert Mark Stille provides a detailed analysis of this pivotal battle, and argues that Midway was neither a miraculous American victory, nor a product of good fortune, but that the plans, personalities, doctrines, ships and weapons of the two sides meant that a Japanese defeat was the more likely outcome. This new study provides an unparalleled level of insight and thorough analysis into one of the decisive moments of the Pacific War.

©2024 Mark Stille (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Authors need to leave personal opinions out of history books

This book is enjoyable, doesn’t really add anything substantial that you have read in other battle of midway books, but is a good option if you want to revisit the battle.

What bothers me with this book and many other new books on history is the feeling of the need for authors to share their opinions and in many cases present them as ultimate truth or the correct one… give us the facts, I can form my own opinions thank you very much…. On most points of him giving his opinion then he proceeds to give you the facts on why his opinion is incorrect

The need to insult Yamato on every new book is ridiculous, he handed the USA it is biggest military blow in history, get over it already and leave the man alone…

Always downplaying midway, it was decisive please getting into you mind, for a hundred reasons but I will point out a couple… the whole idea of the Japanese island defensive perimeter was to set up a perimeter as far away from the home islands that when the American counter offensive came, every one knew it was coming, they could response with their carrier force and attack an invasion fleet that is tied down to slow transports and repel it with heavy loses, it was a good plan… what happened after midway? They lost four fleet carriers….. the aircrews were mostly saved? They just didn’t have carriers to deploy them…. So soon because of the damage done to the carrier force here comes Guadalcanal the USA counter offensive starts, no carriers to launch the defensive plan, but they still had the aircrews! Ok how can you use them? Send them in ridiculous long range missions where they can only dogfight for 5 minutes…. Expend the finest dive bomber pilots in the world in missions that exceed their range, and still they almost caught the troop transports defenseless… only the fear of loosing more capital ships like in midway made them turn back… when they could finally put the home islands defense plan in motion was at the battle of the Philippine sea… where the ijn even correctly used their range advantage, managed to hit first but all their crew are inexperienced because of Guadalcanal that happened because midway and their aircraft can’t hit anything but the ocean… yes midway was decisive, everything came down like dominoes after that

Author says that there was no way midway could have another outcome yet he mentions how decisions on the spot by 2 or 3 different individuals changed the outcome of the battle, example the change of route by the dive bombers

The number of things that had to happen to have the USA defeat the cream of the ijn was incredible….. not the ijna, they never had a fighting chance because of idiotic superior decisions…. Attacking midway was a bad idea… was it? All of midways air power was expended by the end of the battle and they achieved not a single hit, the only useful were the catalinas….

3 carriers out and the lone one still giving them a run for their money vs 1 island fortress and 3 carriers, imagine if the first wave only managed to disable two carriers or one….

Whole American strike forces finding nothing but empty oceans… who ever says midway was not decisive and surprising victory is crazy, and it is a disgrace, nothing but disrespectful to those who pulled it off and the Japanese that lost, sorry but it is true… yes the industrial capacity would eventually overwhelm the Japanese, but experience is not grown at factories, usn learnt a lot at midway, imagine a defeat at midway, worst case scenario, all carriers lost many senior officers killed, all the experience not gain, imagine the Philippines sea battle with green American carrier crews and battle hardened Japanese crews, using their range advantage managing to deal the first blow, and this time actually hitting something

What doomed the Japanese at the end, was the lack of respect for human life even their own, sending crews to their dead with out any intentions of gaining any goals is ridiculous, if they would have let go of Guadalcanal and preserve their navy crews for another more manageable battle, only if

I could go on but in resume, good book just keep the opinions down a bit

Too much detail

This presentation was so full of detail that it was almost impossible to really follow the big picture. That haven’t been said it was pretty darn interesting.